cindy's world

It makes me sad that he hates me so much for leaving what I felt was an irreparable situation. The first year together broke me, made me leave. I think he forgave me for leaving then because he eventually understood all my pain, and paddled hard uphill to show me that if I came back to him, he’d be a better man. I was so hurt from the first year that I wanted never to come back, but despite my starting to date another man, he still won me over because my heart hadn’t left him. We had a couple of decent months, and then I had to know before continuing whether everything I had suspected and that he had denied had been true, because I could not go back into the same relationship it was the first time. My answer was affirmative and for a few stunned weeks, I didn’t know what to do with that. The anger, however, deepened as the level of betrayal and lies over the course of months became clearer, and I could not overcome the anger. He tolerated the anger for a few more weeks, and then I left to save my sanity. What else was there to do? We were killing each other. I had begged him two days after my finding out the truth, to please put my mind at ease about her and show me confirmation that this is still not going on. He refused. I was bewildered that he wanted me to move forward with him on blind trust when the trust was already shattered. I am grateful today that he had refused. He did the right thing; the relationship was over the moment he cheated, and no amount of present proof would change that. It would’ve stalled things, but it would never erase the doubt forever, and there was no way he was willing to pay the price of cheating by giving continual affirmation of his trustworthiness. I probably wouldn’t have believed him for long anyway. Most women never do again. If he had given me that confirmation, I probably would’ve married him and my God, if being betrayed by a boyfriend almost killed me, being betrayed by my husband would definitely have. And what if there were a child involved?

Nevertheless, it makes me sad that what I felt was the “right thing,” no matter how painful it was to do, brings him to such anger for so long. It makes me sad that he is unable to find peace. It makes me sad that he is so enraged that it created an obsession to violate me, to find new ways to cross the line, to “beat me” in some battle existing only in his reality such that he can’t see what he doesn’t want to see.

But, Jaime, all I did was leave.

All I did was leave.

Me: *lying in bed at 11am, a complete mess, crying, angry and bewildered*
Mr. W: (via phone) I wish you wouldn’t have done anything when I wasn’t there.
Me: What, I’m supposed to have done this while you were here?
Mr. W: At least I could’ve helped you through it.

That means the world to me.

I have tentative lunch plans today with my godbrother. He didn’t pick up his cell. Godbro, hello? I need you! I’m still torn on what to do today.

Touch a cold door
What’s behind is more
Of the same chill
Abyss where no will
Can add substance
Apply resistance
You’ll see
What’s done to me
No heart nor soul
No well-intentioned pull
Can alter
The cancer
With its tentacled reach
It’s death in life
It bleeds hope dry
It violates like a whore
I touched the cold door.

There’s my impromptu little ditty. Strange, it reads more like a rap than anything else. That’s the way it plays in my head, anyway. Strangely, Missy Elliot’s voice is reciting it in my head.

There are some people who are SO blind to the obvious that I’m just shocked and dismayed, and I want to smack them upside the head with the weight of their own stupidity. A chicken waddles up to these people and clucks, “I’m not a chicken, SHE is,” and points with his wing toward a cat. These people nod like drones and say, “Yes, yes, you’re not a chicken, you’re a cat. THAT thing you’re pointing at sure is a chicken!” WTF! Match the words to the actions, people! SMELL the hypocrisy! Don’t feed the obsession, do the damn chicken a favor and help him end it!

That being said, I’m still torn between what I should do for the sake of responsibility and morality and plain respect, and my own anger at having to do these things for someone who clearly did not respect me. Karen’s advice was to sleep on it and hear her out. But I may be too offended to take the high road. Except for the guilt that this may kill her since she has been ailing.

I HATE how maturity does not come with age! People out there, grow up! And if you can’t, just leave me the hell alone, seriously!

You know what blows my mind? How men seem to be able to continue a relationship in which they were cheated on. How do you ever look at your mate the same when you know they’ve cheated on you? How do men just put that aside in their heads? I know I can’t ever be at peace in a relationship in which cheating was involved, even if the cheating happened a year before I got evidence of it. I know it seems unfair that the reality of cheating or betrayal is that it takes 20 years to undo (if you’re lucky) the 20 minutes spent destroying the trust. I’ve seen women so insecure and so needy that they went ahead and married the guy who cheated on them hoping it’d lock the man down, and I can tell you, in that marriage there is still no peace. It doesn’t even matter if the guy’s cheated recently; the fact that the trust had been shattered once means there will always be scars and doubts in the woman’s view of the relationship. And the man will hear it and hear it, or see evidence of it in what he will call her “paranoia.”

I’ve often wondered whether the strength is in leaving, or in staying. For me, staying is pointless because there can be no resolution. The knowledge and the memory can never be undone. So then what’s the point? Why not just learn from this and move on to something with a clean slate?

I finally understood tonight that a man really doesn’t get why cheating is such a big deal; he’d stay and work on it if it were the other way around. But I don’t get it, it is huge for me, it is the ultimate betrayal within a relationship. It’s not a second of losing it in anger; it’s actively choosing to take someone over your mate and to actively hurt your mate through the entire act, and in the case of an affair, it’s the continuous choice to lie to, betray and cheat on your mate over a course of week, months, years. Yell at me, neglect me, abuse me in a relationship and I will at least give it a shot and see if we can get past this. But cheat on me, and I know the cracks of this damage will reach no end in time. Hate me for leaving something a man sees as salvageable, but I can only do right according to myself, and I know there is no getting past this.

2 hour 42 minute conversation. I really didn’t expect him to pick up, but he did. He spewed some, I listened, he tried to induce his reasoning, I tried to explain mine, we sighed. I still found some of his viewpoints incomplete, and I tried to put in a broader perspective, but he made me see that I just have to accept that there are narrow things he’s hung up on that he’s angry about (i.e. “the sabotage”), and that’s just how he’s going to feel, despite the context surrounding what he’s angry about. I told him I was told about his blog, and he said that it was just some stuff written during times when he was angry at me, and that he never denied on his blog that he was a horrible boyfriend and a horrible person to me before we got back together again. He offered to let me read it, but I avidly turned down the offer. I said that if he’s angry enough to still be spewing about me even now, on a blog, then maybe it’s faster for his mental progress to just spew at me directly. He actually appreciated that. It was a very controlled spewing, to give him credit. I hope he got out everything that had been boiling under the surface, so that there’s no more residual resentment.

I told him that I think his level of anger is like my prior level of fear and anxiety in the relationship. It’s sharp, it’s consuming, and the only relief you get is when for an hour, for some reason (probably exhaustion), your brain malfunctions and you don’t pass on the neurotransmitters to feel that pain, and you’re so high and happy simply because the pain isn’t there. But then it comes back because it’s always right there. “You can’t stay like that this long, you just can’t, it’ll kill you,” I told him.

He went on a long spiel about how he feels, what he thinks, and how he “knows” I hate him and I want to see him fail and I would love to see him fall on his face and lose his business. I let him go on until he was finished, and then said, and I really hope this sank in, that what he says of himself, I can only accept as he says it, HOWEVER, what he says about me, does he realize it came from him? None of it came from me? That he’s projecting and speculating about what I may be thinking, and that’s the equivalent of him picking up a dagger and stabbing himself with it, while at the same time claiming I threw the dagger. He’s not hearing me when I say I don’t hate him; he’s not hearing me when I say I don’t want him to fail. The world would be missing out on a great eye doctor if his business folded, and why would I be calling him, offering myself as a target, if I just want to see him miserable? It’s so much easier just to say, “He’s STILL pissed? All right! HA!” And I admitted to him, that was my initial reaction. “Let him hate me.” But I had been angry before, and he had said to me, “Go ahead, let it all out, beat me up with it.” I’m not sure if that really helped me, but hell, at least I could do that for him and see if it works for him. He wouldn’t believe that I didn’t hate him and am not wishing he’d “fall flat on his face” until I told him his magical phrases:

“I wish you the best.”
“This phone call is the first step in what I hope will help you find happiness.”

He told me he’s psychotic. I hope he finds balance and happiness, soon. I’ve been to the misery he’s in, it sucks.

This is interesting. Email chain between me and a “friend” re the Cheating Ex (I reversed the order so that it’s easier to read, just read straight down):

>>>>> u know that Jaime has a blog that hes using to
>> talk all sorts of crap about u behind ur back, right?
>>>>>

>>>> That’s so none of my business. If he needs to hate me,
>> he hates me. BFD. People who read my site should
>>>> know me well enough to know what really happened.
>> And if they want to hate me with him for camaraderie,
>>>> how does that affect my life, really? They’re not losses to
>> me, they’re not my friends if they don’t get me.

>>> just thought u’d like to know… u want the site?

>> no. I don’t need his bitterness to disrupt my life. I don’t
>> even respond to his calls anymore, I don’t nkow why he
>> would seem to take the hint when I would stop responding to
>> his emails for awhile, then start calling an d txtmsging me
>> again. I really don’t need to deal with whatever’s going on in
>> his head. I don’t have the patience for his i-love-you, i-
>> hate-you head games. Every time I would try to have a normal
>> conversation with him and I think we can salvage a semi-
>> friendship, he proves me wrong. Thsi is all so unnecessary.

> sorry to upset u… just thought u had the right to know…

You didn’t upset me, I appreciate that you’re looking out for me.
Thanks. But really, every time I talk to him it seems like he’s still
trying to work the relatinoship out in his head and the old issues still
abound (on both our parts) and if his conclusion is that he wants to
dwell on things to hate me, then he hates me. The hell am I supposed
to do about it?

Gawd. Maybe this is why I get into unexplained lapses of discomfort. I just don’t understand that guy. It seems like he’s so delusional and feels like such a victim as to the relationship, like when he told me a month ago he was still mad that I “sabotaged our relationship” by taking the initiative in finding out about his lies and cheating and if I had just let him be who he wanted to be and let him do whatever he wanted to do, then we’d still be together. But then I don’t understand why he always picks up contacting me if he’s so mad or has taken up a blog to bitch about me. And then he’d have his employees or other made-up accounts comment 0n my blog. Maybe I should just call him and talk it out. I’m okay with that. If he wants to throw knives, maybe he can throw knives once and for all and it’d bring him to some peace. What I think I’m not okay with, is if he has to keep coming up with reasons to hate me so that he can smother any residual love he has for me, because then the strange contact would not cease, altho that would explain his hot-cold thing that he does with me.

I think I’ll call him now and leave him a voice mail inviting him for a chat when he gets back from Miami. He’s sent me a few text messages from there in the last couple of days, seems like he’s enjoying himself. Hopefully he’ll be in good enough spirits so that he can just hash this out and finally be done with it all. Or maybe he’s already hating me now because i hadn’t responded to his messages and wouldn’t want to hear from me at all. But I really don’t want him so upset that he feels compelled to keep dwelling on it. I actually feel bad that he feels bad still.

Oh, the teeter-totter of it all. Well, I’m gonna make the offer anyway. He can do with it as he sees fit.

Well, if it ain’t PMS then I don’t know how else to explain it.

I was trying to get back into the old Cindy this weekend, slept in till almost noon, then I got up and got dressed to go to the gym for a couple of hours. Going downstairs in itself was depressing. The house was in disarray, and there’s nothing I can do about much without a vacuum cleaner. I’m not going to fight the “black Friday” shopping crowd, so I’ll have go to w/o a vacuum for a few more days. There are papers on the dining table of things that needed something to be done — opening an ING account online, ordering additional checks, calling my retirement plan and asking why they show me under Plan E when I clearly switched over to Plan D 6 years ago… There was cat hair on my couch so the cat has been taking advantage of my being home less by doing what he knows he’s not allowed to. I felt like I’d let everything slide and get away from me and I’m completely overwhelmed. The neighbor across the driveway from me again had their friend park on the driveway instead of on the street despite all the tow-away signs posted, and I’m blocked from being able to back my car out of my garage. My fat percentage is as high as it’s ever been, I need to vacuum the cat area, the cat’s all sheddy and I need to brush him, I wish I could cure his corneal ulcer problem and finally get him out of his cone, there’s a huge black spider up over the fireplace that I can’t reach without a vacuum cleaner extension hose, there are paid bills that need to be sorted through and filed away and laundry to be done… It was overwhelming me until I was interrupted by the beeping of my cell phone, signalling that I’ve just received a text message.

I eagerly went to check it, and I didn’t realize how much I miss Mr. W until the disappointment of seeing it’s not from him nearly made me want to drop to the floor in exhaustion — if the carpet weren’t so dirty from cat hairs. Then I thought, there’s nothing wrong with my calling him. It’s not like he’s out in Vegas partying with the guys and doing things I’m not supposed to know about so that I can’t call him cuz he wouldn’t pick up and would only accuse me of “checking up” on him. Mr. W doesn’t do crap like that. So I called. He picked up and upon hearing his voice, I almost cried.

***
I remember how hard first grade was. Strange new country, mean racist kids, language barrier, different rules. I’d thought I was doing pretty well, holding it together. The class was walked over to another classroom in a portable building for an hour of games and crafts. Like sheep or lemming, we allowed ourselves to be herded into the classroom where different tables were set up with a parent volunteer at each station, each teaching a different activity. To my absolute shock, my mother was at one of these tables and she waved happily at me. She had never looked so beautiful. All my control evaporated and I started bawling. She walked over toward me as I yelled, “Ma!”, broke from the line of kids and threw my little arms around her waist and I just sobbed and sobbed, like a shipwrecked passenger who had been clinging to driftwood for days, listless and hopeless, when a sudden rescue snaps the passenger out of a state of shock. I remember a part of me skeptically saying to myself, “What’s your problem? Why’re you clinging to your mom like that? Why’re you crying? There’s nothing wrong. You’re embarrassing yourself.” But I didn’t care, I told the voice. Everything was so hard, and this is the one thing I knew. My mother.
***

Wow, I’ve th0ught of that event before, but it never made me cry like I just did. So anyway, Mr. W is with his parents and his daughter, his dad driving them to a pizzeria that Mr. W had been craving forever, where they supposedly make authentic Chicago-style pizza because the Chicago-based chain ships ingredients out to the Vegas branch. (Mr. W grew up in Chicago.) After that they’re going to see an enclosed residential community that turns its frozen lake into an ice skating rink and the European style villas do an artificial snow show. I’m glad he’s enjoying himself. He needs to see his parents more often, and they’re only in the next state. He told me yesterday that his dad asked him to convince me to go, and he’d told his dad he already tried. Today, I asked him to tell everyone hello for me and sorry I couldn’t make it.

*Sigh* I’m gonna have to get over my retarded emotions and make a dent in the crap downstairs. Good grief, what is wrong with me? Just because this is the first weekend we’re going to spend apart since we started dating? It’s only been a few months!

IM conversation just now between Wilco and me:

Me (1:28:51 AM): for hors d’oveures we had fondue.
Me (1:28:54 AM): so of course I thought of you.
Me (1:29:03 AM): actually, I talked about you, too.
wilco (1:29:13 AM): oh yeah?
wilco (1:29:17 AM): i’m having fondue tomorrow
wilco (1:29:22 AM): i invited jimmy and sabrina over
Me (1:29:35 AM): I said that my friend made up a punishment for the person who dropped the food item into the fondue pot, i.e. you have to kiss the person to your left.
Me (1:29:49 AM): to which the sister of the hostess said, “I think Cindy just wants a kiss.”
Me (1:29:59 AM): so the lesbian to my right (who actually did drop something into the pot) turned and kissed me.
Me (1:30:04 AM): maybe I should blog that.
wilco (1:30:07 AM): hahaha
wilco (1:30:15 AM): it’s a real rule!
Me (1:30:23 AM): no one’s heard of it.
wilco (1:32:27 AM): http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/family/feature/famf129fondue/famf129fondue5.html
wilco (1:32:59 AM): that is a disney web site
wilco (1:33:04 AM): so it HAS to be true
Me (1:33:08 AM): omg.
Me (1:33:11 AM): okay, i’ll add that into the blog entry.

And you guys thought fondue was just a high-fallutin’ Swiss food.

Mr. W dropped me off back at home about an hour ago from Thanksgiving dinner with his friends and the friends’ family, and he’ll soon be on his way to Vegas. The Thanksgiving food was wonderful, the company was warm-hearted and light-spirited, the fire in the outdoor firepit was lively and mesmerizing, and my cheesecake was a success. (It really does taste better chilled, with dramatic dashes of Hershey’s lite syrup and a fluffy floral swirl of chocolate lite whipped cream.)

But this is what I actually wanted to blog about, and ask for feedback on.

The host’s niece asked me whether I watch “Gray’s Anatomy.” I don’t, altho I’ve heard it was a pretty good show. She said that there’s an Asian actress on the show and that I look “exactly like her.” No one else around the table said anything, altho they seemed to study me a bit. Before we left, the niece reminded me to watch “Gray’s Anatomy” on Sunday nights at 10pm on NBC because “you have to see that actress. I swear, you look exactly like her.” I asked if she remembered the actress’s name. She didn’t, but she suddenly remembered another movie that the same actress was in. I got a little excited. “What’s that movie when this woman just decides to go to Italy…” “Under the Tuscany Sun?” I asked her. “Yeah! That’s it! She played her friend.” Sandra Oh is the actress’s name.

Because everyone was leaving anyway, I didn’t say anything until Mr. W and I were back in his truck with the doors closed. I asked him if he knew who the actress is that the niece was talking about. He didn’t.

***
Margaret Cho is one of my favorite stand-up comedians. In one of her shows, she talked about an incident where a cab driver recognized her and raved on and on about how he loves her because she looks exactly like his sister. He then handed her a photo of his sister and Margaret’s first thought was, “Oh my God, she is sooooo ugly.” She then goes on, “Don’t you just hate it when people say how much you look like someone, and then you see the person they were talking about, and she’s sooo ugly?”
***

Even tho Mr. W said, “I think cross-racial identifications, especially on a first impression, aren’t exactly accurate,” I still felt compelled upon my return home to immediately take a photo of myself and give you guys a side-by-side comparison. So here is me, right now, no touching up whatsoever just the way the niece saw me, and actress Sandra Oh.


Photos of Sandra Oh courtesy of Yahoo!Movies:


Just for kicks, I’m even gonna show you guys a photo of me in which I look the most Korean:

I will say this: I take it as an extreme compliment that she’s really skinny.

For more comparisons of me to the few Asian celebrities in American media, see previous posts here and here.

Happy Turkey Day, peep holes. Well, for the people living in the US of A, of course, altho I don’t know anyone here who can actually trace back their roots to the Mayflower, the harbingers of smallpox, or the American Indians with their generous disclosures of how to raise maize.

I made (with Mr. W’s assistance) 2 lowfat, reduced calorie chocolate cheesecakes. By substituting Splenda for sugar, Neufchatel cheese for cream cheese, Special Dark chocolate for milk chocolate, leaving out the butter, sour cream, and by using premade reduced cal pie crust, I’ve managed to get each slice to about 150 calories. But I will never cook with Splenda again. Remember the NutraSweet aftertaste? Splenda has it. After you swallow the cheesecake, your mouth suddenly tastes sweetness, and your tongue sorta goes all over your mouth in a hunt. There’s no food in here, but something is sweet! Where is it? Where is it? It’s all rather confusing for my brain to process. I will be serving the cheesecake tonite with loads of Hershey’s syrup (fat free) and fat free whipped cream.

Speaking of the dinner tonite, Mr. W and I are having Thanksgiving at his best friend’s house, and I hear they’ve been up cooking since the wee hours of the morning, and his best friend has already made numerous trips to the market for things they’d forgotten. It’s gonna be an outdoorsey, campfirey Thanksgiving in Huntington Beach. I can’t say I’ve done that before, but I’m sure it’s gonna be fun. I like being outside (sometimes), and his friend’s backyard is so…Martha Stewart with a nautical theme.

After dinner we’re splitting up for the rest of the weekend. Mr. W’s going to visit his parents in Las Vegas, and I’m hoping to get some of my neglected chores done, plus spend some time with the god-family, the ‘rents, and the puffy fur-everywhere-leaver. Wow. Friday, Saturday and Sunday all to myself. What to do, what to do? Heh heh*.

* “Heh heh” means probably nothing because I’m Procrastination’s bitch lately.