Always Put Your Oxygen Mask on First

A series of rejections – however slight, and lies leads to feelings of being dejected.

I believe it’s taking a toll on me.

In the recent past I have been swindled by a guy out of money, which did nothing but anger me for being so gullible; met countless men who don’t know what they want; and others who claim to tell you what they want – but they are simply being deceitful. Not to mention a barrage of texts from an ex that I speak of often on this blog. Once again, I was so mad at myself for forgetting to block him from one particular forum where he tracked me down.

What is the solution to these experiences that result in a range of emotions from minor irritation to disappointment or anger?

Is it to totally give up hope of meeting anyone and make no attempts at all?

Maybe but I don’t want to do that!

Well, then I’m out of answers. That’s all I got.

A sabbatical?

Yes, that sounds sensible.

I have done that before – take a sabbatical from men and it has worked.

Sabbatical it is until further notice. People go on retreats to rejuvenate their spirits- a sabbatical should do the trick for me.

Next week is my birthday week and so I shall put one person up for caring, pampering and copious amounts of TLC. That person is me.

Until I date again!

The Healing Magic of Time

Some mornings I would wake up and forget what he had done. That we were no longer together. That he has slashed my heart carelessly with a dull, serrated knife. That he was no longer mine. That I was no longer his.

I would forget, as I waited for the phone to turn on that there would be no message from him. Messages that he would often leave at night when he knew I would be asleep – so I could wake up to his voice. To his voice that I loved more than any other voice.

The harsh light of the phone would shine into my eyes and I would remember that he didn’t love me any more. I prayed for the day when I wouldn’t love him anymore either. That prayer is yet to be answered.

The pain of the realization that we were no longer one, brought back the familiar ache in my heart that I have carried for months. The cuts from that knife are still so raw – they open up, flare up and begin to bleed with the slightest thought in my mind. The mind that still becomes inundated by thoughts of him on a regular basis.  The thoughts of him telling me that we would make the most beautiful babies together, the way my skin felt when he touched me, the way my heart skipped a beat every time my eyes met his eyes.

This is no way to wake up. My gut couldn’t endure all the bile and the tears I dropped into it for so long.

I would open my eyes, sit up, shaking my head and body in an attempt to rid myself of the painful memory of the man who told me almost each time he saw me that I was his best friend, his life, his jigar (heart). The realization that this same man had punched me in my stomach, with the grandest betrayal of my life seemed too much to bear.

But I have good news. Time really is a great  magical healer. The severe cuts and gashes begin to heal. They don’t split open so easily. Maybe on certain days they still bleed, but the number of those days begins to decrease.

You begin to smile more. The tears don’t run down your cheeks each time you tell the story of what happened, each time you hear a song or smell the flowers he sent you every week.

For this I am grateful.

 

Until I date again!

He made me feel Special – till he didn’t

He reads all your writing. He critiques the writing, compliments the writing, even tells you when you need to up your game.

He does all that till he doesn’t.

Hurtful? Yes. Because what sustained your ‘love’ for him was that he always took interest. He never seemed too busy for you. You felt looked after.

Once again, he did all that till he didn’t.

And now I will be the one pulling away – though he will not even notice.

Such is life.

I thank him for inspiring me to write more. I thank him for making me feel special – till of course he didn’t.

Until I date again!

 

 

A Story of Betrayal – Part 2

In case you missed Part 1:  https://datinginnewyorkblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/a-story-of-betrayal-part-1/

Once I was in the hospital having a miserable time, and he would call me when I could barely speak because I was so weak. He would sing my favorite songs to me. I loved his voice. He had the best voice – I can’t deny that even in my state of hatred. He would tell me stories to make me laugh and then tell me about all the things he had planned for us when I came out of the hospital.

He made the time I spent in the hospital go by faster, me falling asleep with the phone to my ear and a smile on my face. One night I was really uncomfortable and the nurse actually used my phone to call him and asked him to sing to me.

Such moments made me believe that he loved me.

But today …

I will never forgive him.

I will never wish him the best.

In fact I wish him nothing but misery and warts on his dick.

I know this doesn’t make me a sympathetic character. But you should consider me a reliable protagonist because I speak the truth.

I know that all this hate and venom does nothing to him.

He is not even aware.

He thinks he made a mistake – apologized – in a manner that was not fitting of the crime. Actually, the apology was pathetic and insulting.

Now all is good with the world.

But it’s not.

All is probably right with HIS world. But it certainly not right in MY world.

I have never been betrayed in this manner before and so I have no idea how to deal with it.

I have read many many articles and books on the topic of betrayal.

Intellectually I know that letting go is the only way to heal.

I will say again that I have ‘let go’ and I have ‘moved on.’

Clearly not, is what you are thinking as you read this.

I don’t blame you. I would think the exact same thing. But I truly have.

What I haven’t done is succeeded in getting him to vacate my head and my heart. He can pop into my head out of nowhere – how long I let him stay there is up to me.

I could be listening to a certain song – something I had to stop doing for several months, and I  think of him. I had to give up entire genres of music because of him.

I could be walking down the street and see someone with his hair or I see the face of the watch that he gave me when I open my jewelry box to pick a pair of earrings to wear.

Last year on my birthday when we had not been together for about 4 months, I spent the day with my friends. I had a nice time with them and was staying over at a girl friend’s place. We were both on the couch, watching TV when my phone lit up and made a sound. It was a text from him, “I hope you had the most glorious day and wish you all the best.” He then called me a name he always did when we were together and I started balling. My friend looked up in shock to see what was up.

I threw the phone at the other end of the couch and couldn’t stop crying.

She got up from her couch and sat next to me, putting her arms around my shoulders.

“Bastard. Motherfucker. Calling me his love.”

She looked at my phone and realized what I was talking about.

“Don’t let him ruin your day. Didn’t we have such a nice day?”

I could barely hear her question.

Yes, we had had a lovely day. She had gone out of her way to make it fun for me. The celebration wasn’t over and tomorrow she had booked us for a day at the spa where we would get massages and mani/pedis.

“Yes, we did and I thank you but he is the lowest, shittiest scum of the earth.”

“We know he is but please don’t cry,” she stood up to go get me water.

I was so angry at myself for even having this reaction. I had been doing so well. I had been on a few dates since the break up. I even had sex a few times and it was good. And now I get a lousy message two minutes before my birthday ends and I lose my mind. What the fuck is that.

My friend handed me the glass of water and I tried to breathe. I glanced at my phone and saw the three dots that you see when someone is writing you a message.

Really? He had more to say to me.

Fuck him, I thought and turned the phone face side down.

“You should really block him.”

“I know and I will.”

I sipped the cold water to get rid of the acrid taste in my mouth and thought about last year at this time when we were sipping way too many beers on the eve of my birthday. I could never keep up with how much he would drink but that day I was happy. I was in a celebratory mood. I was getting text messages from my relatives in India because it was already my birthday there. I would look at my phone, read the messages and smile. He would walk back with another pitcher of beer and I would read him the message.

“That’s sweet,” he said about the message my niece just sent me. He poured the beer into my glass.

“Cheers,’ he gazed into my eyes.

“Cheers,” I smiled back.

“I love you – you know that. You are the most precious thing to me.”

I believed him at that moment. Why else would someone say such things to another unless they meant it.

Naive much? You might say.

But I never told anyone I didn’t love that I loved them.

We finished the last of our beers and he pulled me up from the bench we had been sitting for hours and kissed me like never before.

“Come home but we are not going to have sex tonight.”

“What,” I screamed. I must’ve screamed. What the fuck. It’s my birthday. Why weren’t we going to have sex tonight. What does that even mean. So ridiculous.

“Let’s go,” he said walking me to the exit. His place was right behind the beer garden. As we walked that half a block, sharing a cigarette, I said, “What do you mean we are not going to have sex?”

He took a long drag from the cigarette, “because we are just going to cuddle,” and he burst out laughing.

We stood in the middle of the street and he hugged me tightly, still laughing.

“You are such a bastard. It is your duty to have sex with your girlfriend on her birthday – or any day as a matter of fact.”

“Don’t we have sex all the time?”

“We do and are you complaining?”

“No…but”

“No but nothing, let’s go.  I can feel things are astir in your pants already,” I said giggling and running to the entrance of the apartment building.

He opened the front gate and we walked down the few steps to his apartment.

“You only want me for my body, don’t you,” he said as he struggled to pull out the keys from his jeans.

“Yes, of course. I couldn’t possibly want you for your trust fund which you don’t have,” I said pushing into him as he unsuccessfully tried to stick the key into the keyhole.

“So much trouble finding the holes,”

“I’ll show you how good I am at finding holes,” he said as he pushed open the door.

He flicked the light on and there on the kitchen counter was a vase full of deep purple, almost black calla lilies, my favorite flowers.

“Since you hate roses, my sweetest love. Happy Birthday. I wish you the stars and the moon and whatever your beautiful heart desires this year,” he said as he kissed me.

“Awwwww you listen.”

“Of course I listen. You never stop talking. I have to do something.”

“That’s so not fucking true. You talk way more than me.”

“How about … now that you are an old lady, you talk less, listen more and ….”

“Listen mister, I am your elder and you will respect me.”

“Oh yes – I will respect you. Now come with me.”

 

“Please don’t let that asshole make you not sleep tonight – do you want another scotch?”

I was jolted back from that moment when we were about to make love in his bedroom where the bed was made for once, and I could tell the sheets had been changed in my honor.

“Yes, I will take another scotch and let’s go out to the balcony and have a smoke.”

And so this is how it happens. I will be living my life and something, a smell, a sound or some words will take me back to the moments with him when we were happy. The moments when I believed he loved me, that I was the most precious thing in his life.

 

It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved before – cliches are just that. Cliches. But they come into being because they are true and have been said enough times to turn them into cliches. I am not at the stage right now where I find one redeeming thing about the relationship I have described.

I know I haven’t told you what happened, what he did. Maybe you kind of already know. I can assure you this. You know some of it but you don’t know it all. You can’t.

But I am not ready to reveal it yet.

Not because it is a great secret. Just because I am not strong enough yet.

Until I date again!

A Story of Betrayal – Part 1

Hatred is such an awful emotion. It is a burden to walk around with it. It has a dreadful taste that washes over my teeth, front and back, not forgiving a single crevice. The metallic aftertaste is forever on my tongue.

What does one do when one feels this way?

It certainly doesn’t effect the person you have hatred towards. They are just going about their life as though nothing has happened.

Does he ever think about me?

If so – what does he think?

It’s probably a passing thought when he hears a phrase I might have uttered, or walks by a place that we once went to together.

Nothing major.

Two seconds. Three, tops.

And me. The one with the hatred – even though I don’t allow myself to dwell – the thoughts come. Sometimes like a tsunami, sometimes a couple of drops that burn a hole in my stomach, at other times a thin stream that just trickles down the back of my throat.

So what do I do?

I have moved on. I really have.

I am able to feel happiness. I am able to see friends, even go on dates. I have had sex after him and enjoyed it. I can go hours, even days (okay not days) without thinking of him. But the thoughts still come.

So what do I do? How do I turn this around? Make it go away?

I keep asking myself this question, sometimes a hundred times a day.

So far the only way that I have come up with is to tell the story. Write down everything that transpired between us from A to Z.

But what if it doesn’t help? That is my fear.

I suppose I will never know it till I do it.

A fantastical fantasy:

I write the book.

He reads it and admires how well it is written.

Hollywood calls and asks to buy the rights to the story.

A blockbuster, yet meaningful movie is made.

I have to give an acceptance speech at the Oscar’s for the best screenplay, and I am beautiful and grateful, give a gracious speech but mention him where only he knows I am talking of him.

His beer flies out of his nose and he feels the disgusting metallic acid coating his tongue and then his entire mouth. That taste never leaves his mouth. It seeps into his soul. He can never sleep a peaceful sleep again.

THAT WILL HEAL ME FULLY!

While I wait for that to happen, I need to write my story.

But every time I sit down to write it, I am afraid of falling into the abyss that is the memory of him and I.

Were there any happy moments with him?

Sure. Of course there were.

Start with those, I tell myself as my finger hovers over the keyboard or as I click my pen open and close.

But I can’t.

Because each and every happy moment is tainted by what he did.

Now I don’t believe a word he said. I don’t believe in the simplest of gestures he made. When he would move a strand of hair from my cheek and tell me that I have the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen.

I don’t believe in the tenderness when we would be sitting at the two ends of the couch and he would extend his arm and ask me to come closer. He would pull me to him and I would rest my head on his chest. As he played me music or sang to me, I would look at my reflection on his computer screen, then the reflection of the two of us on the dark TV screen in front of us.

If you were to peek into the window, you would see two people who were the only two people in the world at that moment. Two people who loved each other – well, at least one person who loved the other – but you would never know the truth. I don’t know the truth and I was there.

But he has polluted the memories of those feelings of pure bliss that I felt by what he did and what he said. The hours and hours we were entangled in each other’s arms listening to music or talking. Music was our language. He played me happy songs, romantic songs, silly songs – every song that there ever was.

At times his fingers would caress my chin, down the side of my neck and he would hold my waist tightly, pulling me towards him. That would sometimes turn into kisses, gentle ones and then intense ones. I could tell by the way his body moved that he was turned on. I know I certainly was.

I would often tease him that his ‘tells’ were so easy when he was turned on.

“I am always turned on when I am around you,” he would say taking my hand and walking me to the bedroom or we would just stay there, him gazing into my eyes before his body was on top of mine.

He always gazed deep into my eyes while we made love or just sitting and sipping a glass of wine.

Now, after he has betrayed me in the manner that he has, I wonder what that gaze was about.

“She is such a fool. She thinks I care. She doesn’t know that she is just a convenient fuck.”

I know he didn’t think that I was just a convenient fuck but I sure was convenient.

I was always there.

Always there to share a drink. To share a laugh.

Always there to talk him off the ledge, which I did more times that I care to count.

Always there with kind words. Loving words. Sexy words. Encouraging words. Sensible words.

To be continued…

Until I date again!