Hi Friends. I have gotten into the simplification mode lately, getting rid of a lot of things I thought I’d never part with. I think this is normal once you reach a certain age; but if it’s not, too bad. It’s where I am.
I never know anymore, whether my feelings are a result of the trauma I still walk through, or whether it’s age related and thus “normal”. I guess I think that my life is much simpler now and I don’t need so many clothes and pairs of shoes, which makes sense. But I also want to clear out all of the pictures and chochkies and vases and candles…not sure what’s going on there. Decorating is one of my joys/pleasures. But lately I just want nothing, plain, clean. As I lugged a load into the car to take to Goodwill, I got to thinking about the differences in me now, and of all of the “different” relationships in my life and I’m not sure I’ve really written about those aspects of being thrown away in sort of “instructional” detail. It’s pretty bad, almost as bad as being thrown into poverty and chronic financial stress. Almost.
When it first becomes clear that we are about to become refuse to be discarded, I think the first thing we do is reach out to our family or friends (or both), so that someone can help us construct a rational thought. I’m not talking about RESCUE; I’m talking about THINKING STRAIGHT. The shock is so great that the primary reaction isn’t even tears; it’s pacing and hearing the roaring in your ears and feeling your heart race within your chest…and this goes on for weeks. The only respite is sleep, which comes rarely and from which you HATE awakening, because the anxiety races back into the void like a freight train, nearly pinning you down. I reached out and can’t remember a thing I said. I know I just wanted someone to help me THINK things through. I’ve rarely asked for help in my life, and am usually the problem solver. But this time, I couldn’t think linearly and I was TERRIFIED beyond belief. I couldn’t solve a problem as simple as punching my way out of a wet paper bag. I was lost and traumatized. But somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I would be okay, that there was someone out there who loved me enough to be in my corner, just BE there. Wrong.
The first year was a blur; I hardly remember it. But what I do remember is how quickly I went from having a three level, 4000 square foot, beautifully decorated home, to riding out of my driveway with my brother heading away forever. My ex had paid bills out of the equity line to the tune of over 98,000 dollars, leaving the mortgage severely under water. Instead of him sticking me with that, I stuck him with it. But regardless, I was now homeless. Now, I would think that anyone who professed to love me or even like me a lot, would understand the kind of trauma just THAT ONE event brought to bear. Forget about lawyers, humiliation, embarrassment, financial ruin…forget all of THAT. Just think your loved ones would want to rush to you and keep you upright and thinking straight, would feel your pain at least a little bit and want to HELP you. No. Doesn’t happen that way. People don’t really care.
Thrown away wives are INCONVENIENT, in the way, a burden…and like bringing a zombie into your home. I turned away very slowly from the ruination of my life and the ruination of my FUTURE, to face the rest of my life struggling and alone, only to come face to face with the reality of “love”. I faced daily calls and emails from lawyers, and the ones from HIS were designed to drive me to suicide, I’m convinced. And I had to work through bank accounts and records and appointments everywhere, try to SURVIVE..while still trying to work AND not “BOTHER” anybody with my life.
The person who LOVED me embezzled money out of our joint account by writing normal bill amounts in the checkbook…remember HE insisted on taking complete control of all finances…while ACTUALLY paying bills against the equity line…98,000 dollars worth… and withdrawing that money to send it who knows where. Then he told me I needed to pull money out of my retirement investments to “make ends meet”, at which time he would make it a point to show me the checkbook where he had written in all of the monthly bill entries. I’m an idiot. He protested too much and I should have caught that. He took my child’s inheritance. I literally handed him my retirement nest egg too. His plan worked to a tee.
Do you think anybody who SHOULD have come alongside me to help me, actually DID come alongside? Well, one did for a little while, but I was inconvenient and ruined the look of their mansion. So I got thrown away again. 5000 square feet and no children in it, and my one bedroom being occupied was too much. I’m shaking my head. And don’t get me wrong, I’m a nice person! Too nice for my own good a lot of the time, but I’m an introvert. I don’t make a lot of racket! I keep things clean. But I do sleep in the bed and take showers and go downstairs to make coffee. I eat and wash dishes and vacuum, buy food, try to help. Apparently I have a big aura. That must be it. I had the nerve to be broken. That was the problem. People do NOT want to be around imperfection, folks. Look around you.
And love. Love is parasitic. That’s the way our world has become. People run around looking to OWN someone and take what they want from them. They want to jump on and ride for a while or take their assets, they want to be taken care of, to have a trophy, to control or to rescue themselves from loneliness. They want a cook, a housekeeper, a sex object. And LUST is not love, but most people think it is, particularly men. Nobody seems to look at love as two way at all. So when people talk about love, I IMMEDIATELY start assessing who the parasite is. And I almost always find it very quickly. So love is a four letter word for me. It never used to be. Maybe that’s the worst part of being thrown away. I don’t know. But I imagine love like this: Everybody has at least one arrow, but HOPEFULLY two. If your love is mature and true, you have two arrows, one pointing out, one pointing in. But MOST people have ONE arrow, and it points right to them. Check it out! You will be amazed.
Trust. Don’t make me laugh. I was played like a cheap banjo and stripped of my very life by my ex. And I am SMART. But he as the ultimate predator and he killed my life. Killed it and never blinked. He took everything I worked my ass of for, my whole life an never looked back. So…I WONDER whether I will ever be able to trust again. I really hope I can. I miss that part of my character. I used to be very trusting and loving.
Bottom line is this: This crap messes up the emotional equilibrium for…well about six years so FAR. And as I have said, some women cry when they talk about it after TEN years. So the jury is out on the healing timeline. But all of my relationships are broken. Parent (my father passed away before the blowup), brothers, sisters, daughter. All. I have asked myself a thousand times whether it’s really possible for people to be so compassionless and cold hearted, whether they can really NOT get it to the extent that they DON’T. And yeah, I think they don’t get it, but is that because they don’t WANT to or because they’re not that smart. Well….both. And they make it very clear that they can get along fine without us. That is until they are thrown away. But it hurts that they don’t care about us, really, don’t “love” us. And they CAN get along just fine without us. Just like our exes. So does it really matter that we were thrown away? I’m trying to answer that one.
Not everyone has my IQ, but let me tell you, if someone I love is isolated and desolate, I NOTICE. And that’s mostly because of my heart, not my smarts. I go to them and FIND OUT why they are absent from life. AND I find out if I can HELP. There’s a good word. As long as I see them doing something to try to help themselves, I am right there, right alongside. I know when someone is down, trying to get back up. It’s therefore my job to try to help. Period. But that, folks, is apparently UNUSUAL.
But there’s another layer of the emotional bog. I don’t feel the same around my friends either. I feel like I’m somehow out of focus in the context of our friendship, so I’m awkward in a way I never was before. I don’t feel important anymore, and if you think about your friendships, you know you do feel important. That’s part of being friends. That part of me is wounded, maybe permanently. And yes, one would think I could benefit from counseling. Well, the thing is, most counselors don’t understand this kind of trauma either, because most are men and they haven’t been women thrown away, and most of the women counselors haven’t been thrown away because they knew the sh(&heads when they approached and drop kicked them. So…no help. Nobody gets it. I LIKE counselors; they have great ideas, but in THIS case, they are clueless. (Sorry counselors). And when I make new friends, which I have…quite a few of them…it’s not the same. There’s a wall behind which I hide my insecurities. It’s HARD for me to reach out; in fact, it’s easier to just stay to myself, which I do. And of course that feeds the loneliness. So…another important aspect of being thrown away.
It’s lonely, the weight of which is nearly as bad as that initial anxiety; but it’s better than being around people whom you know don’t care about you enough to notice that you’re turned around backward, that your life has been thrown on the trash heap. And yes, I have changed. I, for example, can see the sh*^head syndrome from a MILE away and have learned, happily, how to decapitate (figuratively of course) these so called men. I feel sorry for them, skipping happily near to me, thinking they can play that stupid game. I have a lot of cat energy so I study them and pat them around a bit just to watch the manipulations and lies…then I tell them to get lost. Which they hate because they’re narcisists. And which I find immensely amusing and funny now. The bad part is that there are so MANY of them. They are EVERYWHERE.
A fellow throw-away asked me why she attracts guys like this and my answer is this: We provide stability, financial well being (good credit), goodness and light, honesty, integrity and strength…and we look good. These are all things these predators look for. So yes we are always going to be targets for them. The trick is to recognize the beast and cattle prod it away. Several times until you laugh.
But recovery and realizations aside, emotional healing is SLOWWWW. I wonder whether I will ever really feel joy again. I wonder how it feels to laugh and be carefree…like I used to be. I wonder whether I will ever feel good about myself again…after six years, this is how I’m feeling.
So there you have it. Remember this and let’s see how it is next year. And I cried when I wrote this, for your notes you know. So if you cry too, that’s okay. We’re still here. We’re moving forward.
Until next time…