John Tucker must die

I am watching this ridiculous movie right now on cable. (John Tucker must die, hence my title post). A couple more things are clicking into place for me right now while I watch these teen movie- about a guy who was three timing his girlfriends.

Matt's a liar. He was always a liar. He lied and manipulated and used me. He knew exactly what he was doing from the moment he came up with the idea and had no intention of ever telling anyone or getting caught and would have just gone on indefinetly as long as it benefited him.

He was an absolute and total liar and manipulator. His make up is of the worst traits a person could possibly be.

When his wife emailed me, before she threatened me, one of the things she said was that she was "still so in love with" her husband and that she "didn't get married for just a little while," she "got married for forever." Fair enough.

But how long did he get married for? He already broke all of his marriage vows. If you break your vows, have no remorse, spent at least half of your marriage living a lie- and that's a MINIMUM of half of your marriage, it could have been more for all I know... They have been married for 4 years and he was with me for almost 2 of those years. What meaning do those vows have for him? He wasn't the one who came clean here, he wasn't the one who stopped the relationship or felt guilty or anything. He got caught and now he's just obeying orders.

What kind of a marriage is that? What does that say about how he is treating the relationship or the marriage or how he values it? Nobody what he is saying, look how he has and is acting? One of the first things his wife said when he got in the house was, "No wonder you never wear your f-ing wedding ring" and grabbed his hand and flung it back at him. He wasn't even wearing his ring then. I hadn't seen him in a few weeks because he had been so "depressed" over turning down that federal agent job he had been offered (all lies) and he wanted some space to figure things out. He wasn't even wearing his wedding ring in his own house, coming home to this mess.

What does that say?

Is this really the example of a healthy realtionship that I would want to be setting for my daughter? That this is how men should treat women? Look at how daddy treats mommy? Look at what daddy did to this woman?

I was driving around the other day and it occured to me that he dragged me, really they both dragged me, into their marital problems. When he came looking for me, they obviously already had serious issues, otherwise what on earth was he doing with a paid for subscription to a dating service? 10 days after his daughter was born? I was looking for the right person for me and I got duped and dragged into some other person's martital drama. How did this even happen?

Something that bugs me about that day in the house... I think about this alot. One of the many times his wife called to scream at him on the phone while he was on his way back to the house, she told him that their daughter wouldn't be there when he got there because He didn't get to see her right now. That just struck me as an odd comment coming from my side of the situation. As soon as his daughter was born, he created an entirely new identity for himself where he had no children, no responsibilities and found excuses to spend days, nights, evenings, weekends, as much time as possible away from his family. Did he really care whether he saw her?

I'm sure he does, it's just one of those statements that just stuck with me.

Wordless Wednesday

Okay, I am going to say a few words because as you should all know by now, I have difficulty hushing myself up.

On Sunday one of my clients who had gotten wind that I was having a hard time of sorts took pity of me and offered to cancel their session until things were looking better. I majorly hesitated but I accepted and after a ton of debating I gave myself permission to go on a roadtrip at 3 in the afternoon to Apple Hill, which is a place around here in the mountains where everyone goes to pick apples, go to a little festival, get local produce, lots of good snacks, kettle corn, spicy pickles, pies, arts and crafts, carmel apples, pies, etc. They closed at 5pm and it was an hour drive so you can see I stalled for a long time, but I went anyway and brought home some apple cider donuts, among other things.

I also did something the therapists have been yakking at me to do for weeks: practicing "mindfullness." Basically, give yourself a mental break, clear your head of thoughts and just take in the present moment. So when the parking lot at High Hill Ranch started clearing out and I had gotten the last apple cider milkshake before the shoppe closed (with carmel, oh my, when you don't want to eat anything, this place really helps!), I wandered out into the apple orchard, looked around to make sure I didn't have any witnesses who were going to yell at me and I just laid down and tried to take some deep breaths for awhile.

Honestly, that is seriously hard for me right now. I don't feel safe enough to relax. I am so tense and on edge, I am afraid something will happen if I am not always prepared. But being alone in the orchard, after sucking down my milkshake, laying in the grass, and focusing seriously hard for like half an hour, I think I got my mind off of it for like a minute and a half to maybe as long as three minutes. Which is like a record. I wished I didn't have to leave.

I want to go back!

For the purposes of documentation so you all can make fun of me and possibly gag up your breakfasts (just trying to help out the dieters!), I'm bathing once a week pretty regularly now because I have to for work- I went to one or two weddings with greasy filthy hair that hadn't been washed in a couple of weeks, but now I'm trying to commit to bathing before each wedding. I'm still mostly just eating turkey sandwiches on smart wonderbread (looks like white but it's wheat and is 50 cals a slice), but the last two days I branched out and had angel hair with marinara. I am not struggling with eating dessert so much anymore... cough cough.... but my weight is still coming down, but it has slowed down a lot, which is good, and I am much more comfortable with the rate now. It is not scary fast weight loss like it was. Even though I am not counting calories or anything and this is more of a problem- I am not eating enough- I am still a bit overweight so I am not as stressed about it as I was, so I am just keeping monitoring it. My hair also seems to be falling out. This has happened to me before when I've been really stressed, it always comes out at the same spots at my temples, so I look like a balding man. It's extremely attractive. My forehead seems scary huge in the below photo. Another extremely attractive quality to add to the greasy baldy hair and body acne I am now developing probably from not bathing. Did I mention that?

The Runaway Bunny

Have you ever known anyone who successfully ran away [as an adult]?



Obviously, my fantasies of running away to Colorado or some other place I have either never been or only have childhood memories of and have absolutely no connections to have been persisting. I want things to change.

I want to feel safe. I don't want to be near him. I don't want to be afraid of running into him. Or HER. I don't want to be afraid of seeing things that remind me of him or her or us or the future we had planned. I don't want to be afraid that the next client inquiry I have for a wedding will be for an event in a location tied to him, or people that remind me of him, or have ties to him. It's the former that scares me most. The thought of having to drive up to or through Redding for any reason whatsoever makes my heart pound. I don't ever want to pass anywhere near Woodland (where they live) again. I hate that the fact he is a highway patrolmen means everytime I get on the freeway I will inevitably see a squad car identical to his, sending me into panic.




Do you know someone, or know of anyone who just picked up and moved somewhere for no particular reason?

I guess my mom kind of did that. She retired to a tiny town in Oregon for the simple reason she liked it. She had never even been there until she went there to look at houses. But she went WITH someone. And she was retired.

Is it stupid and silly that I want to run away? Am I acting like I'm 4?

Is this going to fade? Because frankly, the more freaked out and messed up I feel here, the more intense my urge to flee the area seems to be.

Meet me on Monday

Questions

1. What is your favorite all time movie?

I have a lot so this is really, really hard.

I can watch Sense and Sensibility over and over. (Emma Thompson version.)

I love Catch & Release with Jennifer Garner, even though I don't even like her as an actress... this movie MADE me like her, and it is totally the root of my obsession with Colorado.

I used to really like French Kiss, but now it has bad associations because of who reccomended it to me. (Sour face.)

I also adore By the Light of the Silvery Moon and On Moonlight Bay.

But I think, maybe, the all-time favorite might be... Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. :)

2. How often do you go over the speed limit?

What's a speed limit?

No, seriously.

3. What really gives you the creeps?

Right now? Anything with boy parts.

No, I'm REALLY not kidding.

4. What is your favorite snack?

Me and Java are TWINS. CHIPS AND DIP it's my FAVORITE. I could live on it. I LOVE it.

Guac and tortilla chips

or Onion dip and regular potato chips are my favorite... but I'll eat any kind of chip and dip combo. <3

5. Would you rather be a dog named Killer or a cat named Fluffy?

Was this a rhetorical question? Duh. Fluffy. Nobody's a bigger kitty cat lover than me. Plus being snuggled and petted sounds so nice doesn't it? I don't want to have to fetch and kill stuff... Ick.

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.

Meet me on Monday

Blog Hoppin' from Java's Never Growing Old Blog


No pictures this week. I'm too tired. My Dad was here for his 50th High School reunion on the weekend and he force fed me ice cream and sorbet yesterday and my mom is flying in today and I have to clean my whole house and make it look like a depressed person who hasn't taken out the trash in a month hasn't been living here; that really a more normal person has. So mean.


1. What is your favorite pasta dish?

Pumpkin stuffed Tortellini, or I love the Old Spaghetti Factory's Spinach Tortellini with Alfredo and some Romano on top. It has 50 grams of fat. I can't remember the last time I ate it, but oh, it was good.

2. What is the last thing you do before going to bed?

Lately, I turn the little lamp on on my sewing desk as bright as it will go and I stare out the window or space out at the walls. I finished the book, "When your Lover Lies," but I can't read "How could you do this to me" because it's too upsetting, so I don't know what to read. I have been reading bits and pieces of the "The Language of Letting Go" if I am feeling really anxious before bed. Pitiful.

Sometimes I also try to hold the cat(s) hostage under the blankets.

3. How many nights a week do you go out to eat?

Since money has been so tight I haven't been eating out at all. :( And now I am getting really freaked out about being out in public because I am getting freaked out about being around men. My mom want to take me out for a special dinner tonight but I am so anxious about being around other people and having order something that I will actually have to eat, and then the realization that restaurants don't have bland food and I can't have a wonder bread sandwich (am I a freak or WHAT????) is making me VERY ANXIOUS!


4. Are you an avid book reader?

Before law school I was. Reading 500+ pages a week killed that urge.

5. Would you rather have x-ray vision or bionic hearing?

I'm thinking Java's comment about eavesdropping sounded pretty good, and I'll go with the bionic hearing because I would like to know what is going on at Matt's house right now and the last 24 hours I have seriously begun to worry and wonder if he was beginning to pursue other people this spring. He hates to take pictures of himself and I was always begging him for pictures and randomly this spring he sent me one- to my delight and shock- I asked him why he sent it and he said he just felt like it. But reflecting on months of begging asking him to take one, I wonder if he was taking it for another reason.

I'll take the bionic hearing.



I think the medication is really starting to work... but last night I was having all of these crazy urges to just stop taking all of it. I've never really felt like that before, and I think people who do that kind of thing are so stupid. But, it's working so well I feel like I can't FEEL right now. Not today, not yesterday. And I want to FEEL. Why, I have no idea, because it was the most miserable experience I could possibly go through... but I don't know, maybe I just want to feel it again to make sure it was really real. Does that make sense? Logically, if it took this much medication to make me feel "normal" (come on now, is this really a normal state of being anyway? I can't go out in public and I'm afraid of men, police sirens and want to duct tape down my chest.) then most likely I really am in a lot of pain.

I feel like I am making no sense. I want to cry. I want him to come home. I carry his shirt around with me all through my house. I think about him constantly. I miss him. Sometimes I feel a little angry and upset, how manipulative he was, how much he lied to me, how he lied to EVERYONE, how he must have laughed to his buddies about his girl on the side, he could just take advantage of me and I would just take it because I felt so sorry for him and his sob story. I'd just fall at his feet and believe every word he said.

But... I did those things and acted that way because I believed I was in a healthy, loving relationship with a man who loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and was just going through an unfortunately rough time in his life. I just needed to be supportive and hang in there until he got back on his feet and it was time for "us" again. And I think of how I loved him and how I had never been happier in any relationship or in any other time in my life. How secure and loved I felt when he was here and how much I was looking forward to our future and our plans together. How I loved how I saw myself in his eyes. what a wonderful, caring man who treasured me and would never hurt me.

And I feel lost again.