BANG- HEAD- ON- DESK

This has just been a bad freaking week. I keep looking at myself, and thinking, "Hey, maybe you are really okay with this! I mean, you're not laying on the floor in the fetal position. Maybe this isn't such a big deal!"

The contrast from which how I handled the ending of my last relationship and how this process seems to be going is drastic to say the least. It's also funny because I have found myself lately wishing I could speak to David, my first boyfriend whom I met right as I graduated college, about some of the things that have happened. We broke up in 2007 after 3 years together. He is married now. When that relationship ended, I was a big slobbery, snotty, mucus filled mess.

It's not like that this time and I don't know what to make of it. Probably part of that is that I am on four different types of mood stabilizers. Another part of it probably has to do with the fact that beyond my heart being broken, I am also simply terrified, and that emotion is overriding everything else right now. It probably doesn't feel safe to cry and that primitive part of my brain shuts me down from doing that because I have to be ready to run at any moment because Matt the Ripper is going to come up on me at any moment with a gun.

I had my first anxiety class yesterday. We talked about the primitive brain thing. What's it called? Your amaglea... amagdlea? (too tired to look up spelling, sorry) It's some section of your brain located at the back, it's very primitive and basically it just keeps us safe. It tells us we aren't safe, kicks the adrenaline into overdrive and tells us to flee. That's how I feel all the time. Right now, sitting in my house, with all the lights on, watching the cat walk around the house carrying his baby blanket around in his mouth (did I mention it's pink?) and sitting at my desk.... my shoulders are pulled tight to my neck and hiked up close to my ears... my upper arms ache from being held tensely all day... my legs are perched in this chair and I keep looking out the front window to see who is there... Even thought it's almost 10pm and of course no one is there.

When I lay in bed at night, I curl up tight, and really nothing changes. My back, neck, arms, shoulders all ache. I hold them tight all the time now. I just can't stop clenching. I'm nervous. Jumpy. Twitchy. I'll hear noises in the night in the house and wake up startled, scared. 9 times out of 10 I think someones in the house. I used to be a heavy sleeper. Now the cat jumps on the counter and I'm looking for my machete. If I had one, anyway.

(Anyway have one I could borrow?)

When I was in that anxiety class they had us do a relaxation exercise by listening to a CD where we systematically tighten and release specific muscles in our body until we are totally relaxed in our chairs.

I had to get up and move seats before we even started because I felt afraid because there was a man sitting diagonally behind me in my seat. I kept turning and looking at him to make sure he wasn't close; finally I got up and moved to a seat surrounded by women on all sides. One of them had terrible BO but I felt much more secure there.

Once they started the tape.... Oh boy. It was not good. Every few seconds, I would jump out of my seat thinking something was coming up behind me. I tried really really hard and I managed to sit through the whole darn thing but I was so anxious by the end of it I was about ready to run a marathon and scream for an hour I was so amped up. And FREAKED. But it did give me an "ah-ha" moment. I'm afraid to relax because I don't feel safe. I don't feel safe anymore. (...gettin' upset...) He took away my feelings of safety. I was so blindsided by all of this that now I feel like I don't know what's going to happen next. Anything could happen and I don't know how to anticipate it. The behaviors and actions of the people around me, particularly men are completely unpredictable, so how and why would or could I ever relax or let me guard down again? Something really bad could happen. I know this is really distorted thinking, but I didn't even know that this is what I HAD been thinking until yesterday when I realized I didn't feel safe. He took my sense of safety and he took the trust I had in myself with him when he left. I think a part of me is angry, but not a yell and scream angry- a crying angry.

Other things he said to me while we were together have jumped out at me this week.

While we was wooing me, talking about marrying me... he told me his wife could have anything she wanted. ...I think she already does, Matt.

I told him I was a little hesitant to be fully honest with him because he seemed to pull away when I did so and he replied that if we didn't have honesty, we didn't have anything. He was just trying to help me open up, but now. What the freak was that supposed to have meant?

**Edited to Add**
He also told me his ex-girlfriend from college whom he had been engaged to but whom cheated on him a month before the wedding so he broke it off (chew on that- cheating is intolerable to him- whether he made that story up or not-- but he expects his wife to put up with it???) contacted him out of the blue 5 years after they broke up a few months after we started seeing each other. She asked him if he was seeing anyone and he said he felt very smug in being able to say yes, and that she didn't say anything else to him after that. (Via text). He also told me last December that she called him out of the blue, again, after over 5 years of no contact to tell him that her mother had died of cancer. He said he had been very close to her mom but that since they weren't together anymore the conversation was awkward and then he had to deal with the grief of losing the ex's mother alone.

I'm guessing all of the above is probably false.

He did tell me a couple of good things. In the scrapbook I made for each of us for Christmas last year, I included notes we had written each other. In one of them he told me that I shouldn't ever give up on my dreams for some guy, and that my wishes and dreams should be respected no matter what.

More recently, late last winter after we had made amends and we were trying to decide whether we were going to put a label on our relationship again or wait until he was back on his feet (he felt like he had nothing to offer me as a partner and it wasn't fair to me to tie me down when he was "worthless" at that time, as he said,). I told him I loved him and wanted to shout it from the rooftops, tell everyone, post it on facebook, etc. And he told me, if I changed my status, I might miss out on my perfect guy because he might see that I wasn't dating and move on. I said something like, I already have my perfect guy, but.... You know what I mean thinking about that statement now.

I wish I knew why he did this. I am starting to feel used. I am starting to feel tossed away like a piece of garbage. Like a piece of trash or a toy he took out and played with and then threw under the bed when he was done with... only to dig it out again when he got bored. How could one person do that to another human being? How can you have so little respect for someone else? How could he have so little respect for my life and my feelings? Does he not understand how much he has messed me up? For his own selfish purposes? WHY? What is wrong with him that he would do that? How could he dare swoop in here and represent himself to be someone and something that he most definitely was NOT? And how long would he have kept up this charade? Would he have married me? Had kids with me? How can you consciously choose to cause psychological damage to another person? And look at how much of my life I have WASTED on this person!

This fall I was supposed to be taking LSAT prep classes, taking exams and going back to school! And now where am I? In the same exact place I was two years ago! In the same house, doing the same thing, unhappy and feeling absolutely trapped. And now a whole new set of issues, this time so much more serious that I don't even know where to begin to cope with them. What is wrong with him? What is wrong with people? Why would you choose to hurt someone? How can you make a CONSCIOUS CHOICE to mess up someones life? WHY?

And why did he have to pick me? Why me? After all the other things that have happened... why did I have to go through this too?

I hope so, so SO badly that I won't have to experience any more major things in my life like this. I am so tired. I feel hopeless. I feel like there is nothing to look forward to. I feel like the future is just one big black blob of nothingness. And that isn't anything to look forward to anymore.