Unicorn Guy

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be the same.

Ok, no. I know I'll never be the same.

I guess I wonder if there will ever be another significant other relationship.

Hate to admit it, but I've mostly given up on that front.

And this--this is incredibly depressing.

After something like 101 first dates--coffee or a drink after meeting on a dating site, I realize I'm not willing to put up with a lack of emotional intelligence or somebody treating me like shit.

I dare to dream of intellectual, stimulating conversations about ideas.

I dare to dream of emotional intelligence where rather than running from tears or grief somebody asks why or tell me more about what you are feeling?

I dare to dream of sex with an emotional, spiritual, and psychological connection beyond the physical.

I dare to dream of  someone wanting to know me, even the highly sensitive parts of me that are not wrong or pathological, but just different.

I am so tired of men thinking and acting like my emotions are something to fix and suppress--as if clearly if I had my intellect ruling as it ought, I'd be better, different.

I am so tired of guys staring at my body at the gym, clearly interested, but not seeing me as a whole person. What about knowing me beyond the physical? What of assuming or at least having slight interest in if I have an intellect and that I read and write and play the piano and pool and think and have emotions? What about wanting to know the real sensitive me? The me the ex narc never ever really knew? What about somebody finally seeing the invisible me and seeing value in me? What of someone wanting to desperately know the parts of me that desperately want to be known. My ex missed out on so much. This I am finally getting.

But the highly sensitive males in my age bracket out there are afraid to show or be their highly sensitive selves and thus for all practical purposes, I can't find them. They don't exist, for all practical purposes.

That masculine guy who lifts and boxes and cares about health and yet isn't afraid to cry, and read, and write, and ask extensively about emotions or talk about my narc past--that guy is clearly still a unicorn. Trying not to lose hope.

Emotional Literacy Kindergarten, Maybe

I've thought myself to be in the emotionally literate class most of my life. Indeed, I am in that class of people who seem to not merely feel things deeply, but am highly sensitive to the feeling class of things. Indeed, I've prided myself in being "in touch" with my feelings. Been there, done that. If you must know, on the MBTI I'm strongly into the F region. As in a Feeler. And so maybe you can possibly imagine my surprise in sitting down to write a letter to someone I felt wronged by several years ago. Such things I have needed to heal but seemingly, can't.

The shit runs deep. A friend of mine whom happens to be a therapist suggested that a particular piece in my past was holding me back. This was a situation, where things blew up in my face when I was in the throes of all the shit with my ex. She recommended that I do something to "let go" of said situation.

And so, naive me sat down to compose a letter that I never intended to mail to said person who in my mind, dramatically offended me. And sure there were things that were done unwell. Things that were painful. Things that could have been done in a kinder way, you know. Of course. But as I worked through what happened, I was shocked to discover how much crap I created, myself. Crap that was all mine to own. Just goes to show you that when you are warring with yourself, you often invent an enemy outside yourself in order to engage in battle. You pick up on minor things, shit in the air around you, and then you transform it into an epic Odyssey.

I have done this.

And what shocked me was how much of the shit in the air as regards the past, was actually mine to own. How long have I worked with this shit, exactly? A long time....

And there it was hanging in there as blame for someone who basically helped me on my journey more than almost anyone else. But He all epic-esque failed me. I didn't fail me. He failed me. That is how I have written it. Asshole. Narc?

Perhaps this is the power of writing.

Perspective.

I seriously looked back at the circumstances, of what happened. And I fucked up. Mostly, by not owning my emotions. Me not allowing myself to feel the truth of what I was really feeling. How ironic. Me, the epic feeler. Me, who has always been told, I feel too much.

How ironic.

They morphed--my emotions--into states I could not recognize. And up was down, right was left, and something akin to admiration and love was anger and shame.

I realize now, I must be in kindergarten, emotionally speaking. Will keep you updated, when I make it to first grade.

A#*hole Things Narcs Say to their Own Children

Sure, I will cover all your expenses for your lovely sport, my dear, just figure out how to get yourself back and forth to practice thrice a week.... Being 13 years old doesn't matter. You can figure it out. There is always Uber.

Sure baby, you can have the new Guinea Pig, just figure out who will watch her when you are at your mom's house... cause I might want to go camping with my girlfriend.

Oh damn, you're performing on the Trumpet in front of crowd  of 5500 that thinks you're genius at 10? OMG. I'm so you're doting Dad. I'll be there.

Oh wait, you made a "B?" You failed me. You're not my child. We only make "A"s.

Oh, you're a sensitive boy? I'm sorry, I don't do that.

Leaning into the Lies

Somehow with the divorce final, I thought the need to lie and exaggerate things would slow down in my ex. Who the fuck cares anymore? We're done. I'd like for the record to reflect that. We don't need to interact except as regards my kids. But alas, my ex, filling the shoes of his father appears to have embraced the path of becoming more pathological in the lying. For no reason whatsoever?

Good news is I've made progress in the healing. I'm getting better at seeing perspective in his antics.

Case in point, yesterday. Had to have a conversation about the upcoming schedule. In the planning, we reviewed my upcoming plans next month.

That's the first I've heard of that... he said when I reviewed the March plans. He pretended that I was springing this upon him. It was so preposterous, I watched myself hardly allow his antics to register. I may have actually been bored. I felt so much indifference, it was as if he was far off and I could hardly hear him.

No. This is not the first you've heard. I said. I can forward you the texts, the emails, the transcripts of the phone conversations, if you like. Yawn. But, I know that I don't need to. Not for me. Go ahead and lay down in your own lie. Allow yourself to be enshrouded in it.

I felt calm. Nonplussed. Unrattled. I had the sense some two year old child had approached me with a plastic sword. Run along child, go play.

This is the first I've heard of that.

No, the stack of emails, texts, and conversations say otherwise.

There was another document from the lawyer. CC'd his name and mine at the bottom--mailed nearly a week ago--a document that stated that for some reason funds were "insufficient" in a financial account only he has access to.

He feigned ignorance. Even going so far as to take a picture on his phone of the document, cause yeah it's not your lawyer who sent it, not your name CC'd at the bottom on record, not you who moved funds out of the account. Right. Of course.

But, he needs to lie. He feeds on this stuff. And somewhere it has drifted past the point of even having threads of connection to reality, past the point of no return. The lies grow more intense, more bombastic, more ridiculous, so that he can have more food to suck down in order to stabilize his own blood sugar that depends upon the lie. I suspect he's unravelling, falling apart at the seams, self destructing. He's so focused on lie creation, nothing else holds relevance.  He's like the insect that keeps flying into the bug zapper, lying to itself about the shiny pretty light. The light can't kill me. The light can't kill me. The light can't kill me.

Of course, it can't kill you, Mr Amazing Logician. You say you are impervious to that! There is no arguing with your logic.

Keep saying that. At some point, it won't matter that you feel compelled to tell the world that your little bug self is impervious to the light. Eventually, you'll get settled into that truth. You'll get to bask in the light of a truth all your own. No one ever need contradict you. The truth is patient. The truth will wait to assert itself. But eventually, your little bug carcass will be found lying in its own truth on the ground. 

on Clutches and Transitions

The clutch "went out" on my Honda. Maybe, you can blame it on the 200 thousand miles it has weathered and disclaim that it is rather old. You might even suggest we ought expect such behavior from a 1999 Honda Accord. We might even plan for it if we were the planning type.

But the what it "going out" means was that I was driving north on the 17 at 5am on a Saturday morning in the dark and cold when the revving in 5th gear wasn't right and I lost power and the missing sound was obnoxious enough that even I, non car-whisperer that I am, could recognize pathology in the sound and behavior. I prayed for non-texting teenagers as I hung out in the desert shoulder.

The tow truck showed. Only 4 dollars per mile plus the $80 per hour. Geez, what a deal!

Anyhow, the clutch.

The clutch's going out, miss firing or whatever clutches do when they fail struck me as strangely appropriate on some sort of grand symbolic level. You see it is the thing that facilitates the changing of gears, the switching of speeds or the redirecting. It is the one transitioning element.

And the clutch going out, might as well speak for my whole damn life at this point.

Because, I struggle with the transitions. Indeed, I feel like my own gears are perpetually missing as I go back and forth between my two opposing worlds--mountains and sun, entrepreneurial work and motherhood, future and past. There never seems quite enough time to feel settled in one locale before I'm on a plane back to the other.

I've never felt more alone.

I've never felt quite so detached--as if caught between worlds--as soon as I begin to more deeply connect, it is as if I'm sucked back up to that other place.

The garage said the flywheel had to be replaced. Apparently, sometimes you can file it down rather than replace it. But this can only happen if it hasn't taken on too much damage. So not this time--too much damage.

Right now, I feel like that flywheel--worn down to the nub. I feel the endlessness of the journey, like my Honda on the side of the 17, I am broken down, exhausted, unable to seamlessly shift between the different worlds I must inhabit in order to survive. I tell myself that slowly and surely all my parts are getting replaced. I am being rebuilt. I am also reminded that this is probably the antithesis of what my ex Narc would choose--pain leading you down a path of growth, change, and transition? No way. And so I remind myself to let the pain guide me toward the transformation that only this pain can build in me. I clutch tightly my beautiful future that will be all the more meaningful having been here.