Soundtrack:
FYI: All those "independent city girls" aren't as original as you might think.
I wake up early and head to work.
I don't kiss her goodbye but rather go through the motions by rubbing her back as she stirs slightly. I'm ready to get to the office early, do some work, and have some peace and quiet before the hurly burly of the workday sets in like an unstoppable cancer or Mongol horde.
I look to the weekend and consider what may come.
I put those thoughts aside and accept I will do things as they come and make decisions accordingly.
I see my eyes wander these days. I haven't cheated since before I went to *********. I've toed the line, my toe in the warm water of the pool of indecision, but I've avoided and resisted some overt requests.
Before my changeover, life was a maelstrom, a never-ending, always impending calamity both self-induced and of the unseen assailant variety.
Now, I see a slow walk through privation, at times, altogether devoid of passion.
Passion, for me, is dangerous.
Strong emotion in my heart is inevitably tied to instincts, and my instincts are wholly untrustworthy as they so effortlessly phase shift and transmogrify to dysfunction and 30 some years of unhealthy emotional patters and self-destruction.
Relationships, and dare I say it, even sex, seem less interesting these days....just a minefield of unhealthy people playing Russian Roulette, fighting for dominance and control of perceived need and want, endlessly calling one anothers' bluff(s).
Last night she and I argued, she challenged me to leave as she had become accustomed to do as of late. But I saw that I had not called her bluff the last few times and thus she was doing as she has passively been taught to do by my not calling her bluff. So, I left.
I was done doing it the Recovery way.
You can't use healthy emotional patterns with a normal person.
No, I didn't even consider going to drink, but rather, I saw that, a good woman appreciates nothing so much as cruelty and that Oscar Wilde was right. It's only now, that I see, the thought of drinking as a response to pain or discomfort or uncertainty no longer crosses my mind.
This is new recovery, and I know that on a long enough timeline, my disease and obsession will return, but for now, I am grateful it has been lifted, if only for however long as that may be.
I'd been far too considerate and tolerant of her tempestuous ways and I had to reassert that she is comme ci, comme ca in my world by calling her bluff. What a tiresome dance, we must do the steps!
I didn't call her bluff to prove a point....I just stopped caring.
Silently, I grabbed my stuff and left, I didn't shout, I didn't yell, I didn't swear, I simply turned and left. Fuck this, my interior monologue muttering as I felt myself letting go.
I don't need this.....I told myself, but rather than the old me saying it who says it to convince the self, I saw and felt that...I don't need this.
I wasn't calling her bluff, I just didn't care anymore. She had driven all that out of me.
I was pretty sure I knew how it would play out, but I'm done with experiments and gambles, and manipulations. She asked me why didn't I just leave, so I did.
I'm done with all that played out faux relationship dynamics and falsely independent people putting up the charade.
If I wanted to play games, I'd buy a desktop and play Counter-Strike and wield the double pistols.
She stops me before I reach my car.
For a moment, I don't know why I go back inside, but then I know what I'm doing.
It's an old pattern.
I'll wake up, soak in her peacefully sleeping and commit it to memory one last time....not to return.
I feel the vestiges of my care and concern slip from me as a giant blankness takes its place. She needs me to break her for us to stay together but I'm not in the business of breaking and remaking people anymore.
---
I think the hunt begins again this weekend. No, that is untrue.
I don't have the hunger for the hunt.
The battle is fought to be won and fight to win or don't fight at all.
The weekend crowd out and about to be seen always proves so tiresome. Amateurs parading around doing a laughable impression of the mating dance.
Sloppy make-out sessions, phone numbers to nowhere, mindless frenzied grinding, the same as facebook and social media substituted for actual substantive human interaction.
I see a world I don't understand nor care to.
---
In stranger news, I had a dream about my ex. The girl I dated before I was married.
In the dream, a friend of hers, who I know
I weigh this out as I have several other times. Is this the death knell of my old life reaching out for some perceived life preserver? I cannot trust myself either consciously or unconsciously so I do what I have learned to do: wait and trust that time will reveal the appropriate course of action.
----
In the past, these doldrums drove me to a mania, and I'd flee the loneliness of solitude for surrounding myself with a crowd with whom I wouldn't actually interact. These days, I know this will pass and so I sip my coffee and trust that this will give way to a better time which will give way to the depths of melancholy yet again and then again.....but knowing that this, right now, this moment in the here and now will eventually pass, is enough to keep me from drinking and/or using.
For that, even if I don't feel it, I say the words and think the thoughts that I am grateful, for I have faith or at least hope that by doing and saying the right things, emotion will follow. And if not, at least I'm not drinking or using.
Good luck and happy hunting,
- Yrs. in Christ
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