cindy's world

Hey, I just saw that I passed 30,000 hits on the hit counter! 30,013. Let’s celebrate! Ice cream, anyone?

All right, all right, I’m just looking for any ol’ excuse to eat ice cream. (Only people older than 19 got the title.)

I’m not sure if I have jujitsu today. Jujitsu for this quarter either ended last Wednesday, or it’s ending this Wednesday. I missed last Wednesday because I was making my lowfat, low-cal chocolate cheesecake for Thanksgiving the next day.

Oh, speaking of the cheesecake, I had made 2 and frozen one. I brought that one to work today, along with a can of the lite chocolate Reddi Whip (15 calories per 2 tablespoons!) and the lite Hershey’s chocolate syrup. It was a huge success. So either I’m a really good cook, or County workers will eat anything. I know the latter statement is pretty true. Hmm. Can A and B both be true simultaneously? =P

Neither the TV in my bedroom nor the big screen TV in the living room has been on since I wrote that I would not turn them on. I’ve tried to fill my sleepless nights with either blogging (which leads to IMing, which has been extremely rewarding since it is still time spent communicating with my friends) or reading. The blogging is excellent for getting rid of nagging thoughts, as since childhood I was able to immediately quell mental hauntings by writing them down. Thus all the diaries, journals, elephant-memory. Reading is good for keeping a finally blank mind from wandering back into something self-destructive.

I’ve been trying to read the novel Sister of my Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, which is a national bestseller about two cousins in India. Grace had mailed it to me a couple of years ago and she had written the inscription on the inside title page

Dear Cindy –
This is one of the best
books I’ve read in a while.
The author captures the love
between two sisters beautifully.
I hope you enjoy it as much as
I do.
Love,
Grace

I’ve tried to read it upon receipt, but could not get into it because it opens with too many things foreign to me.
They say in the old tales that the first night after a child is born, the Bidhata Purush comes down to earth himself to decide what its fortune is to be. That is why they bathe babies in sandalwood water and wrap them in soft red mamal, color of luck. That is why they leave sweetmeats by the cradle. Silver-leafed sandesh, dark pantuas floating in gold syrup, jilipis orange as the heart of a fire, glazed with honey-sugar. If the child is especially lucky, in the morning it will all be gone.
Thus reads the first paragraph of Book One, chapter 1.

Now that Grace is gone, I am determined to get through this novel. I found the book on my bookshelf a few days ago in passing and read her inscription first. I gingerly passed my fingertip along the edge of her words, handwritten in blue ink, softly lest I unknowingly wipe away some of the essence that she left on those very pages she touched. I turned the inscription page and tilted the back of that page to the light. By studying the lifted lines left by the differing pressure of her pen strokes, I could almost relive her writing those words to me. The heavier downstroke of the D in “Dear” and the L in “Love.” I’d like to think that those letters were pressed more firmly because they bore more weight in her head as she wrote them.

She had thought of me when she read these very pages. I’d like to know why she felt this book was appropriate for me. There’s only one way to find out.

Off I go to read in my bed, as I had done in childhood, and prior to the days of falling asleep to the sound of sit com laugh tracks.

Wilco had said over the weekend, “He has a calming effect on you.”

Everything’s right again when I’m in his arms. What shouldn’t matter, doesn’t.

I think I hurt my mother very badly. I just realized why they simply turned and left today. How could I have let him make me do it? This is madness. He is cancer.

Oh my God, am I crying for the fourth time in a 13-hour period?!

My chest and my head hurt.

I was driving home about an hour ago, missing you because I hadn’t heard from you, and feeling exhausted from the sleepless nights, the emotional stress (I lost 2.5 pounds this weekend already, from doing nothing) and the very awkward obstacle(s) I dealt with around noon. Then this song came on and made me smile, because it’s you, it’s us…

CHANCES ARE (from the Hope Floats soundtrack)
Bob Seger and Martina McBride

Bob:
Chances are you’ll find me
Somewhere on your road tonight
Seems I always end up driving by
Ever since I’ve known you
It just seems you’re on my way
All the rules of logic don’t apply

I long to see you in the night
Be with you ’til morning light

Martina:
I remember clearly how you looked
The night we met
I recall your laughter and your smile
I remember how you made me
Feel so at ease
I remember all your grace and your style

And now you’re all I long to see
You’ve come to mean so much to me

both:
Chances are I’ll see you
Somewhere in my dreams tonight
You’ll be smiling like the night we met
Chances are I’ll hold you and I’ll offer
All I have

You’re the only one I can’t forget
Bob:
Baby you’re the best I’ve ever met

both:
And I’ll be dreaming of the future
And hoping you’ll be by my side

Bob:
And in the morning I’ll be longing
both:
For the night, for the night

both:
Chances are I’ll see you
Somewhere in my dreams tonight
You’ll be smiling like the night we met
Chances are I’ll hold you and I’ll offer
All I have

You’re the only one I can’t forget
Baby you’re the best I’ve ever met

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.