Category Archives: relationships

The Bus Terminal

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I have to leave you behind at the bus terminal. It is time for us to board our separate buses. I want to be on your bus, but my ticket has a different number on it. I avoided it for a while by taking a longer layover, but in the end, I have a different destination from you. And the longer I delay my departure, the more time that passes before the inevitable will be clear to both of us: that I should have heeded my original bus ticket in the first place, when I realized we had different tickets.

You, who are kind beyond measure with my PTSD and dissociative disorder -I wish you were on my bus. But, alas, we are not even on the same busline. I will miss how you gently rub my head when I shake unexpectedly, and the fab way we baked that chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting from scratch in my kitchen. We learned the difference between unsweetened cocoa and Dutched cocoa. I still have that container of unsweetened cocoa we accidentally bought at first, not realizing our mistake. We planned on doing something with it sometime. But sometime never came, and now there it sits on my pantry shelf. It will likely remain there. I like looking at it, thinking of you in this kitchen, bringing it to life with your presence.

Aside from baking and a fondness for board games, we have little in common. Before I forget, please keep my copy of Power Grid, the board game. I had not played it in years. Let it live on with your friends. Games should be played instead of gathering dust in a study. I will miss playing games with all of you.

My heart does not yearn for you the way it should when two people are in love. We have little to talk about, unfortunately. I think that’s why we usually tried to “do” things together because we both knew, on some level, there wasn’t a connection, a passion, a love -none of that was there. What we had was a friendship, for which I hope some day can be revived if you forgive me for all of this.

I yearn for your companionship, but not your heart, and that’s why my bus ticket is different from yours. We’ve hung out in this bus terminal for a good while, and it’s been a lovely, but I should catch my bus and stop dillydallying. My bus ticket is nonreturnable, and so is yours. As hard as it is, I must wish you well. It was the best layover ever, but we can’t spend our lives in this bus terminal. It’s time to find out where our buses will take us. One last hug, but I can’t turn back when I walk away.

the love drug

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I’ve awakened to a startling clarity that my love addiction works overtime, patiently waiting for a weak moment to reassert itself, like a dormant sickness that lies in wait for stress to shake down your immune system.

For a few years, I’ve been matter-of-fact about my sex and love addiction, running around with the false belief that if I no longer had casual hookups that I was fine. I drew this conclusion because I was well aware that I had been destructive and hurtful to others in my carousel of casual sex encounters.

Yes, this was a good step, and a fine start. What I failed to recognize, until recently, was the fact that this was only part of my problem.

I failed to see that my love addiction was and is more entrenched in me than sex or alcohol. Alcohol was a gateway to forgetting my pain, and running from it. Sex was much the same way, and it provided a way to numb out the feelings in that moment. Though it became a terrible cycle where I needed more in order to keep the feelings at bay.

But love addiction is much harder to harness. We all need and desire love. I find myself stymied with the challenge of not getting consumed with pursuing love the way a marathoner pursues a faster pace per mile. In fact, one should probably not pursue love. Love should find us. The love we have with friends or family has grown over a period of time. It is most definitely not pursued.

It seems like as soon as I figure out one challenge in the love addiction department another one pops up, almost as if the universe knows that it has my full attention again so it says, “Here’s another one now that you figured out that old issue. Take care of this one too!”

Earlier this week I successfully avoided replying to my ex-husband’s email. I was happy with myself that I did not give into my feelings. I was smug with myself for all of a hot minute when I found myself at dinner with this ex-boyfriend from 2008. Since I recently decided not to move in with him as his room-mate we’ve been on okayish terms. I took him up on his long-standing offer to go tv shopping with me since he’s an electronics connoisseur, and I’m barely aware that they don’t make tube televisions anymore.

I love the ease of our friendship in which I pass my yankee bean soup to him while we’re having dinner at the diner before tv shopping. This freakishly big bowl of soup came with my dinner, and I ate some of it, then passed it on to him so that he could eat some as well. We consumed the bowl of soup that way, passing it between each other and eating from the same bowl until the soup was gone.

In spite of the fact that we have few commonalities, I found my heart leaping up and down for him that evening. There’s a comfort in the way we just link arms or hands without even thinking about it.

He’s back together with this gal that has an admitted jealous streak. I only learned of their recent reconciliation at dinner that night right before tv shopping. Thankfully, he told her about going tv shopping with me, if you read on you’ll see why that was a good thing.

We had given up on tv shopping for the night, and the store had an arts and crafts section that I availed myself of with the chance opportunity in that store. I rarely set foot in this establishment because of it’s vast size, and my own discomfort with it’s sizable influence in the market. This store has such an influence that I will not give them any further advertising by naming them here.

We turn the corner so that I can look at their assortment of felt stickers, and there she is, the gal he’s dating again, with her house mates. She’s tall, svelte with black hair and fair skin, and she’s waving around Hershey’s chocolate chip bags in her hands when we come upon her in the aisle. She asks me what I’m doing in the store. I say, “shopping.”

“Oh,” she says. “For what?”

“Stuff,” I say, and turn around to go back to looking at felt stickers.

Admittedly, this was a total bitch move on my part. I was aware of it in the moment I did it, and I did not care. While at dinner my ex-boyfriend asked me not to text or call him in the next three weeks because she departs for her home country for good in three weeks, and they are “together” for her remaining time in the United States, as she successfully defended her dissertation a few weeks ago. Apparently, she has a tendency to search his cell phone, and interrogate him about what she finds.

When he made this request of me I laughed at him, and said “Sure, I rarely call or text you as it is. But what the hell happened to you that you’re putting up with this?”

He admitted to me that jealousy is her major flaw (indeed it is, a few months ago she called me from his landline after she found my phone number programmed on his phone), a big reason they do not have a long-term future; however, he proclaimed that she is “a quality woman.” I was stunned that he would put up with such stupidity, but I finally recovered from my stunned laughter, and allowed myself to be dragged into the world’s most controversial store chain in order to shop for a tv.

Back in the ginormous store I’m looking at felt stickers, refusing to move from my spot. She and her house mates are a mere few feet away. Out of the corner of my eye I see her grab onto his arm, she asks him something to the effect of when he will be done so that he can come pick her up, and then I hear her kiss him. Or, rather, I presume she kissed him. The kissing sound was unmistakable. How apropos that this Jerry Springeresque experience was happening in THIS store.

I felt myself become enraged inside my being, all the while aware that I had no right to feel this way. He and I have not been together since 2008. I started thinking ridiculous thoughts like,”Why does he like her over me? I’m crazy, but not that crazy. Did he choose her over me because she’s so beautiful?”

In reality, it was never between her and me. He and I broke up a long time ago, and remained apart for good reason. We’re not right for each other. He’s still one of my best friends, and sometimes that friendship messes with my head. I get mixed up because at the point I met him no one had ever shown sweetness towards me the way he had. His Asperger’s way of overthinking dating behavior, and his awkward, yet sweet demeanor caused me to fall in love with him soon after we met. Only years after we broke up did I realize that I loved him so because no one had ever shown me such pure kindness with a dash of sweetness. Part of me wanted to bottle it up forever in the fear that it would never again appear from anyone else.

He knows I don’t do well with surprises, and that, as much as possible, I like to know what to expect. Even the task of removing my huge tube tv from my third floor apartment was stressful for me, and he knew this without me even saying so. He appeared at my apartment with a dolly and rope. As I opened the door I just said, “I”m freaked out about this.”

He said, “I know. It’s okay. No big deal. Put on some gloves if you have some, they will give you better grip. We are going to lift this tv together. Let me know when you think you have a good grip, and we will lift together. We only have to go a few inches. It will be over before you know it.”

I appreciate all the over explanation that he has a tendency to give in almost any situation. It’s his signature, over explanation. My signature is anxiety about nearly everything. Over explanation is welcome for someone who likes to know what to expect at every juncture.

I have to let him go. I can still be his friend, but my heart has to trust that I can find that kindness and sweetness in the right person. And even if I don’t, he’s not the right one, in spite of the fact that I wanted him to be.

Ex-husband, I cannot reply

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Two years ago we reconnected when your father passed away. I happened to find his obituary on the internet a mere month after his passing. That led me to search for an email address for you. When I sent you a message of condolences I wasn’t even sure if the email would reach you. Much to my surprise, it was, indeed, your email address. Even more surprising, you replied. I still recall the first line from that first reply after 20 years, “My, my … isn’t that a pretty name I haven’t seen in a long time.” 

Suddenly, twenty years after our divorce we found ourselves communicating on a daily basis much like the way we got to know each other through marathon phone calls when we were in high school.  All the familiar laughter and banter easily came back between the two of us. You will always make the best cat voices in the universe. Your signature cat voice conjures up a vision of a handsome debonair Latino alley cat, which is a bit odd since you’re most definitely not Latino, but you can play one on the radio. Now that I think about it, this particular cat voice of yours is a holdover from our college days in the 90’s when you would take on the voice of Ren (from Ren & Stimpy) for sport. You would even refer to me as Stimpy. I strangely did not mind. Not then, and not two years ago.

Two years ago you were on the heels of losing your dad, the one parent that was always on your side, always had your back. You also declared that your marriage had long been over, and you were waiting for your daughter to reach a certain age before you made your move to split, though I can’t recall now what magical age you waiting for. And talking to you brought such a treasure trove of memories that are still out of the reach of my own brain because of my own DID. Though it was sad to not recall some of what you were relaying to me, it was still fun to listen to you. You were just as shocked as I was that I did not recall imploring you to go dumpster diving for my coupons when you accidentally threw them out. You were only a Private in the Army and I was in college. We did not have a lot of money, and I took coupon clipping very seriously.

It was comforting talking to someone who knew me as a kid, knew my family mess, knew my past and current struggles, yet accepted me as I was and as I am.

We both fell hard for each other. I was over the moon, goofy, happy like a teenage girl. I told the universe that I was getting back together with my ex-husband. No matter that you had a family, and a life several states away. Why should reason and logic factor in when you fall in love again? I naively believed you when you said you would move and uproot yourself to be with me.

Sometime after you told your wife your plans there was a meltdown of some sort on your end. The details are still sketchy to me, but this sums it up: your wife admitted she also wanted out of the marriage, and told you to do what you needed to do, but then changed her mind and begged you stay; a series of days ensued where you said you were still coming, suddenly communication became very sporadic with an eventual short apology email ending things followed up with an epic drunken letter that will go down in history as the greatest combination of crazy love ever jumbled into correspondence. I was simultaneously heartened and disturbed by that letter, and I’m still haunted by this line, “I’ll carry you in my heart for the rest of my days, every day without you is a wasted day.”

This next part is hard, very hard. But it must be said.

You proposed to me when we were riding in the trunk of your friend’s car my senior year of high school. I said no, and continued to say no to you. Then one day you said to me (as best as I can recall), “Let me do this for you. Let me get you away from your crazy parents. I know you love me, and I love you. And I know you wish you were going to college like all the rest of your friends. Marry me. You can go to college if we’re married. Your stupid stepfather’s salary will no longer count against you, and I love you. Let me do this for you.” 

I couldn’t go away to any college because of my stepfather’s salary, and he and my mother made it clear that they weren’t going to help me go away to college. They wanted me to live at home. I wasn’t kidding when I said to people that my choices after graduation were my own place, a homeless shelter or death. There was no way I was staying in my childhood home after graduation. I had to make daily commitments to myself not to run away while I lived there. If it hadn’t been for you I likely would have run away while in high school.

As happy as I was to marry you, we both know that would not have happened if I had the opportunity to go away to college like the rest of our peers.

We did not choose each other out of any mutuality. We found each other out of a desire for a connection. We needed each other for the sake of being needed and needing someone.

And here’s the hardest thing of all to say: We were and are not soul mates.

We are two people who were there for each other as kids, and were there for each other 20 years later. But our connection is a love addiction, at least it is for me. I love the way you love me. You love me intensely, wholly and completely. It’s a crazy burning love that is hard to walk away from. It’s a drug I want more than you know, but I know it’s the feeling I want. I thirst for the intensity of your feelings for me. Hell, in that drunken letter you sent me you were quoting lines from Adele songs and Christopher Cross’ song The Best That You Can Do, all the while telling me that you measure all women against me.

But we are not sustainable on a long term basis. We both yearned for an intense love, and that is why we wound up together in high school.

I do love you, but it’s out of gratitude for everything you did for me when we were kids. It’s not love that can sustain us as a couple.

I got your email last night. Yes, I want to reply to it, but I cannot for all the reasons stated above.