Friday, February 02, 2018

Where is Father Merrin When You Really Need Him?

OK, so I maybe has some feels about the last break-up.

Arguments could totally be made that I'm experiencing emotions of a savory, angry flavor. I can't legitimately maintain a 100% lack of any tears. When last I was wrestling on a bra my chest might have sounded like a knapsack of martini glasses. I may have used up the year's allotment of the words "Crap Weasel" and "douchenozzle" as well as the phrase "AND LET ME TELL YOU ANOTHER THING...!" (and by "this year" I mean 2018. Happy February!)

You wouldn't be able to confirm these emotions with any of my friends or family though. I've been playing these cards very close to the chest. Because how else do you win at "Got Dumped!"??? Due to the lack of talking about it I've been able to fool myself into thinking it's all been processed occasionally. Then I'll go for a bike ride or take a shower, something that has me in a solitary situation where my mind (and my mouth!) are free to wander and all of the sudden I'm that crazy homeless lady on the corner by the McDonalds screeching about the government plot to make everybody left-footed via the fluoride in the water! I just start talking.

Well sort of talking...

Sort of talk-yelling. With not so much talking. (and a looooooot of yelling.)

Yell/sobbing.

Yobbing.

...

...

What were we talking about?

Right! Emotions! Yeah, so I was really hoping that if I took a full year and had no contact or chit-chat, etc. about The Cowboy then all these emotions would just quiet down. Slowly but surely fade away. Go nighty-night. I mean after all, that IS how emotions work, right??? But no. This little shits are tenacious. It's almost like they refuse to go away until I somehow actually exercise them! Which SUUUUCKS!!! Because I can only take so many showers a day, people. A one-person household should never have a water bill like this!!!

I've tried journalling.

Have you ever had that thing where the loud, screamy emotions shooting out of your mind come so fast that you can't write them down fast enough? You're just writing down the quick chunks of each thought, with sentences coming out like "Why such a selfish can't even just YOU WERE THE ONE WHO thing with the counselor and you never even paid me back!"

These are journal entries that get you committed by loving family members, people.

I did channel the feelings into quite a few playlists. That actually worked pretty well for a while! But then there were the "cease and desist" emails from the good people at Spotify. (Although one guy did tell me that they had new data about how many songs on their service contain the words "dick punch" thanks to me! That's something!)

I even thought maybe I just needed to go and actually see The Cowboy. Tell him all these thoughts and feelings smashing my poor, defenseless brain. This idea was very short lived because I need my voice for work, and also because I can only take 2 days off from work and that's not even enough time to say it all. (I know this scientifically because of how much time I've spent on bikes and in showers since things blew up. Because maths.)

So I've worked out two 100% foolproof tactics that will definitely process all of these emotion-things in the next few months.
  1. YOU GUYS. I'm gonna share occasional rants here when something overloads the system. You guys like that kind of stuff, right? Sure you do...  ...  ...  Yep, I'm sure of it. You do.
  2. Axe Throwing. 



Sunday, January 28, 2018

The Science of Recovery

So, like I said it's been many months, but not quite a year, since The Cowboy bailed his 5th and final time. Each time I've been kicked to the proverbial curb I've found it a little bit harder to deal, to heal, to figure out how to move to the next stage, which I am hoping is friendship. That's something I've always believed in: that (unless your ex is truly a BAD PERSON or did something WHOLY UNFORGIVABLE) people should be able to eventually become friends with their exes. Ironically this was the first big fight between The Cowboy and I in our early days when I insisted on trying to establish a friendship with T.E. Cowboy's reaction to this was pretty simple: "Why would you do that? Nobody should ever do that. Now allow me to do my ceremonial unreasonable-freak-out-dance."



I disagreed. We fought a bit. But eventually Cowboy made his peace with the idea and T.E. and I made a friendship. It was cool.

Cut to the first couple of times Cowboy dumped me - almost immediately after saying "I don't wanna do this" he was saying "but I do wanna be friends." Apparently when he stood to benefit from the idea it suddenly had merit. Value even!

But I told him then: too soon. I needed time to figure out that transition. Because as strongly as I believe in this idea of exes being friends, I also believe that you can't just flip a switch. We're talking emotions here, people; feelings and the like. They have their own schedule and will be rushed by no man. Or woman either.

Or maybe think of it like chemistry. When you're freshly dumped you're one very specific chemical compound, with your atoms and your... nuclei? Is that a chemistry thing? You've got a very specific atomic number, and that doesn't just CHANGE. It can change, but it takes some stuff to happen first. In chemistry it's...

Ok, I'll be honest, I'm not totally sure what changes things in chemistry, but I am sure there's stuff. Relationships are the same way. Something has to be added to the situation in order to change the periodic element of ex-girlfriend (let's call that EX) into that of friend (we'll call that.. is BFF already a periodic thing?) With relationships what's needed is time, folks. Good, old fashioned time.

I asked for time each time I got dumped. "Just give me time, please, to process stuff. Make my peace. Find the paths to forgiveness, to healing." It never seemed like an unreasonable request - I'd been dumped for doing nothing wrong, and though lots of folks might tell a person to fuck-off and die I was just saying I needed time. But he just couldn't do it. He couldn't make my needs his priority.

Of course it always backfired on him because neither of us were ready to move on to friendship, so when we were mashed back together it would always rekindle fires that hadn't been allowed to die out  (I'm pretty sure I'm mixing a lot of incompatible science metaphors here with mashing and rekindling. Things that mash normally don't kindle.) and we'd be back together within weeks. Now, as the dumpee that was what I thought I wanted. I hadn't asked to end things and I was still plenty smitten, so when those doors inched back open I was definitely not gonna be the one to close them.

If my stupid Magic Eight Ball had been worth a damn I would have known to slam those suckers sooooo stinkin' fast.


Still, I was consistent in my request, and he in his ignoring of it. So, we were consistent. That's something, right? Yeah, that's definitely a thing...

This last time I knew that we were done done. That there was no going back this time for a variety of reasons (which I just might share with you guys some other time if I find myself all pissy and/or drunk) and so I had to have that time. I decided through 100% unscientific methods to set a goal of one year. I wouldn't respond or make contact with T.C. for one year, in hopes that I'd be able to make peace with it all in that time. And when I say "make peace with it all" I mean all. I'm really good at finding ways to forgive when I'm in the relationship, because you have to in order to keep things going. But I've learned about myself that once I finally stop forgiving of the stuff then it ALL counts. I go back through the archives and I find all the truly shitty things that I forgave, and I throw each and every flammable one of them onto the fire. AND I DANCE NAKED AROUND THAT BONFIRE, BABY, UNTIL IT ALL LOSES IT'S POWER!!!

So here we are at around 8 months - 4 more to go. (because maths!) Cowboy seems to have finally given up his consistency, sending his last reach-out about a month ago. (for those of you still counting on me to do the necessary maths, that's 7 months of contact before he backed off.) So I'm just now FINALLY starting to do that processing and stuff. Oh, and here's a delightful surprise: it's not fun! Not at all! Nope, not a drop of fun to be had... But I'mma stick with it. Due to science.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

I'm not dead, but I'm probably pretty dim...


Hey guys. Long time no write - how’ve you been? Did you lose/gain weight? Is that a new hairstyle/earring/third arm? Well, you look great.

Oh me? I’m awesome! Seriously excellent! Cooooouldn’t be better!

Well there was that pesky heartbreak. That sort of sucks. In that “I am going to crack open that ribcage and scoop you out of there like rotten cantaloupe, you fucker!” sort of way.

Yeah…


But otherwise? Suuuuuper-excellent. How’s the kids?

---

This is the time of this blog where I do three things:
  1. Apologize for being that lame friend who is all about you right up until she finds a boyfriend, and then just totally vanishes. My bad, you guys. I definitely do suck. 
  2. Consider seriously changing the name of the blog, at least temporarily, to “Unlikely in hate, the bitter edition” because guys suck and also emotions. 
  3. Hit the bottom. Bounce. 
I’d be amazed if there’s anybody still out there that even remembers this quaint little blog, but if you do all I can say is thanks, you guys. I don’t deserve you.

Since last I was around here (which, according to the date up above, was a truly tragic 4+ years ago!) I’ve been back and forth in the relationship with The Cowboy. All that drama came to it’s final conclusion last year, and now I’m in the aftermath of it. I’d actually planned to wait until I was over everything before I came back here because NOBODY wants to read the caustic ruminations of a chick who’s all bitter and angry. But I seem to be stuck there. I mean I’m that Top Gear moment where the bonehead has been revving the engine for 5 solid minutes in a muddy bog and the wheels are half buried. Stuuuuuck.

And then I thought maybe what I need is somebody to give me like a push.

So, working on the assumption that nobody is still reading this blog anymore anyway I figured “fuck it - maybe a bit of caustic ruminationing is the solution!” So please enjoy some hours/days/weeks/oh-god-please-don’t-let-it-be-months of Unlikely in Hate, where Femtastic shows her dark side. (If I had the graphic abilities I’d try to give my interobang tab icon a goatee, the universal indicator that our hero has become our villain!)

Now, a little recap:

Last you heard from me the relationship with The Cowboy had ended. But then it started back up.

And then a little later it ended again.

Oh, but then back up it came again!

Then I moved from my cute little Hippyville to “The Big City” or TBC as it will now be known within these walls. TBC was also where The Cowboy lived, but that wasn’t the main reason I moved. More than anything I decided I wanted a life filled with as much adventure as I could get while I still had the money, the health and the bravery to get it. This move has been really great, and I’m totally glad that I did it!

But the move also killed things with The Cowboy again. For those of you keeping score at home that’s 3 breakups in about 18 months. And yes, I should have recognized some stuff at this point. But brains can’t be heard over hearts. Hearts are loud assholes.

About 3-4 months later The Cowboy and I somehow were back together, but in this really shitty “I’m pretending that it’s not serious and trying to have no expectations” sort of way. I’m sure this will come as a surprise to you - nay*, a shock even! - but that didn’t work out either. 5 months later I was dumped a fourth time. A FOURTH TIME. Oh it’s ok, you can go ahead and shake your head. I deserve it.

Three months later - you guessed it. We got back together AGAIN. Now, somewhat in my defense I’ll say here that I was hard to convince that time. To say “I’d been hurt before” was a major understatement, and MOST of that hurt had been at the hands of this same dude. I’m not super-smart, obviously, but I was at least smart enough to know that the odds were not in my favor here. I was the romantic equivalent of all those characters in The Hunger Games that were doomed to die some horrible death. My heart was just one more cannon shot away from tragedy. And so you’d be justified in asking “The WHYYYY? Why would you get back into this again? What is wrong with you, lady???”

I like being in love. Actually no - I love it. And dammit, I’m really good at it! I mean I know it sounds like I’m not based on “on again, off again, holy shit, is this a season of Beverly Hills 90210???” but that wasn’t because of my skills at being a partner. The Cowboy has damage - a lot of it. Some makes sense, some is bullshit, but his damage was the unspoken third member of our relationship and that bitch caused a LOT of drama. But see, I have grown up in the middle of a pack that truly believes in partnership. The people in my universe do the things that the Tom Hanks characters in movies do, and they do them genuinely. We are a species that believes in all the shit that nobody believes in these days. So for me I will always try again if there is any spark left in the love. It feels just wrong to me to do anything else.

So when this man that I had come to love like a part of me said he adored me and was sorry and wanted, even needed, me back I went. I took coaxing, but once totally coaxed I jumped in with both feet. And I made him a promise: as long as he was still fighting for us then I would be too.

Because where I come from that’s what you do. You fight for it.

I want to say that I’m proud of the fact that we lasted 2 more years. And ok, part of me is proud of that. Because after 2 years of lasting only some months and then imploding I guess that’s an improvement. And also because it proves that I was true to my word: I kept fighting because I thought he was too. But to say that those 2 years were really good would be donning rose-colored glasses that I’ve since had to retire. Once we finally ended I had to take a solid, honest look at the four years that had come before and see things for what they were. And a lot of it was not so good.

If there were any justice in the world one’s heart would let go of shit when the brain identified it as shit. Like when the brain did the tv detective thing and exclaimed “He was never able to commit! Not in 4 years!” the heart should go “Whaaaaaa???” followed by a healthy tableflip and then just storm off in a huff. F those feelings. One night of drinking, followed by a day of puking, and then brush off your heart-hands and move on. But if 2017 has taught us nothing else, it’s made it brutally clear that there is literally NO justice in the world. And this is why I sit here, almost 8 months later, sliding through pictures of The Cowboy and crying into my Cheerios…

Don’t worry, I haven’t been that chick for the last 8 months. In fact this one was a surprise to me even! A backslide, if you will. A classic relapse of emotion and bad thoughts. These things happen, for sure. But when they do, it’s hard to know what to do with it. Drinking and puking is really not my thing. I could get stoned and eat a pallet of Cool Ranch Doritos, but that would make the last few years of constant exercise and calorie counting seem pretty stupid, and I feel stupid enough, so… I decided to write.

I’ve been wanting to get back to you guys for most of the last 8 months, but I did something I know you won’t even believe: I overthought it. I came up with all these ambitious post ideas and overworked them and then hated everything forever and then Cool Ranch Doritos were texting me “U up?” and it was all bad. But this morning as my pillow developed two pathetic little wet spots about a head’s width apart I thought to myself “you’ve been stupid enough for a lifetime. How about you try being a little less stupid in this moment???”

And here we are.

So yeah, my hope/plan/dream is to get back into this now. I’ve ripped off the bandaid (and holy hell, that hurts you guys! How come nobody ever talks about that? And why is there hair literally EVERYWHERE??) so now I should be able to just do this. I don’t think anybody out there is still reading, but maybe you’ll find your way back to me. But in the meantime I got stuff to say and I’mma say it.

*that’s right, I said “nay.” I’m fancy like that now. Deal with it.