Meet me on Monday: Reading in the Can

1.  What is was the last piece of candy that you ate?

A reese's a few days ago.... I was naughty.

2.  Do you "read" in the bathroom?

Is "read" code word for something grosser than just reading?

3.  I can't stand when someone _________?

Makes repetitive noises... Clicking tongues, shaking feet, tapping toes, sucking noises, humming... small repetitive noises. I remember we had to write reports on each other in the 7th or 8th grade and this was included in the interview about me. It STILL bugs me.

4.  Do you do daily, weekly or monthly grocery shopping?

Probably bi-weekly or every three weeks, sometimes weekly. I'm a random sort of gal. And yet some days I'm in there everyday.

If you haven't already, I re-wrote and posted my personal story right here, today. I could use some support, so thank you for being here. 

Let's back up a little.

  

If you click on any of the highlighted text in this post, it will take you back to some old posts that tell the story of what happened as it was happening. For more information on any part of the back story, you can click on any of those links.  My "Notable Posts" are always listed on the right hand side of this page and will take you to the "biggies."

***If you have looked at this post before, I have since updated (as of 9/2/14) ALL of the links and they should now work. If any don't, please leave a comment and let me know the problem, thanks!****

I had a big post on Friday, but even one of my oldest readers, who was here before anything ever even happened wasn't sure what was going on, and so many of you are new, I think I better back up a little bit.

From January 2009-August 2010 I dated and was in love with a wonderful man who loved me very much. He went through a tremendous amount of  trouble, grief, and despair on an almost on-going basis from just a few months into our relationship which added some strain and of course drama. He was also a police officer and has some crazy work hours.  I wasn't a fan of any of these things, and it was stressful, but he was so loving, so charming, and so deeply committed and in love with me, and I with him, that I knew that we would always be together and spend the rest of our lives together. We discussed whether I would take his name, or hyphenate mine with his, when we would get pregnant, have babies, how many, what kind of ring I wanted, how much he would spend on that ring, on and on. I even contacted vendors and made preliminary budgets for the big day.

August 3rd 2010 I found out everything he had told me was a lie. The only thing he had been honest about me with was his first name (Matt), and his occupation (police officer.) Everything else about himself- high schools, college he attended, where he grew up, families names, friends names, stories about a friend being killed in the line of duty, all of the "trouble, grief and despair" he had gone through had all been made up. He even lied and said his father suffered a debilitating stroke and that he had to move two hours away to help care for him. Not true. The most explosive things I found out were that he had lied to me about his name- his name that we debated about hyphenating was not even his last name- he had "stolen" that name and identity from another officer he knew- and the fact that he was married and the father of a baby girl. She had apparently been born 10 days before we started dating.

I had no idea. And it wasn't easy to figure any of these things out. It took only a few days, but it took 20+hours on the computer digging through county maps and public records and white pages to find all of this out. Even then I had no idea where it was going. It wasn't until I saw her face starting back at me from the computer screen that I realized what he had been hiding from me all this time. There had always been a perfectly logical, plausible and understandable excuse for why I hadn't met his parents (father was so ill!), or been to his home (quickly rented out once the father became ill!). I never saw it coming. Even now, looking back, everything he told me could have been true. It could have just been a great guy with a string of bad luck in his family and personal life.

Healing from this has been exceedingly difficult and I have not made it very far. I do eat now (I almost stopped eating entirely at first and lost 20 or more pounds over 2-3 weeks), and I can leave the house. I'm not guaranteed to have a panic attack if I walk into a store as I was back then, and although I still can't stand the touch or feel of being hugged by men, I can stand closer to men I know now without feeling like my throat's closing in. I have a chronic fear of police and uniforms. I go to therapy twice a week. I cry alot. I'm confused all the time. I still love the man I was with for those eighteen months and I mourn his spiritual death and disappearance from my life.  He was a beautiful match and partner for me and I miss him very much. Reconciling the man I loved with the monster who did that into a singular being has been one of the most difficult hurdles. I'm still not there yet.

Last week I finally took the steps I needed to take and filed a complain with the state and reported Matt to the Office of Investigations within the police department for his conduct. Impersonating another officer, stealing name tags, signing credit card receipts in other people's name and overall exhibiting behaviors of someone who is likely a pathological liar are probably not ideal habits of someone you want to be able to swear in on a witness stand several times a month to "tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

That is where I am at now and it is a very scary place. I cried on and off over the weekend, worrying about what will happen. The Captain of his department should receive my complaint by today, and then the investigation will start. I'm afraid of retaliation. I'm afraid of them finding a reason to sue me. I'm afraid of hurting Matt. I'm afraid he will get in trouble. I'm afraid he will lose his job, or his career. I'm afraid of hurting his family. ...I'm afraid he will do this to someone else. I'm afraid he already has. I'm afraid they won't do anything at all and he will get away with it.

I have therapy this morning, so hopefully I can get some of this off my chest and talk about it. I didn't make the decision or even consider it or discuss it until after therapy last week so she doesn't know yet. I'm feeling okay right now, which is why I was able to write this pretty clearly, and unemotionally; I'm feeling detached, but the floodgates will open after my appointment and well... let's just hope I don't drown. :(

Any other questions?

I turned him in.

Probably not what you were expecting. Kind of out of left field. I mailed it yesterday right before the post office closed. I told them everything he did, including possibly stealing the other officer's name tag. I cried the whole way there and most of the way back. I had so much anxiety I couldn't sleep at all last night, which is very bad because I have to drive 4 hours through mountains to shoot a wedding today- in bad weather.

Putting his Captain's name on the envelope made it very real, very scary and very upsetting. I was afraid to put my own return address or name on the outer envelope- what if somehow he saw it or intercepted it? To my understanding, this will first be investigated by his office and is being sent there. So I used another address he wouldn't know and no name on the envelope.

I'm afraid something will happen, and just as afraid, if not more afraid that nothing will happen.

GRE

I still feel like I don't have a clear answer on what I should do about the GRE. I had therapy yesterday and today (Tuesday and Wednesday- I always blog in the middle of the night so this might be confusing for you when I say "today" and it's 2am; I mean Wednesday still even though it's after midnight now.)

Anyway, I had therapy yesterday and today and I never managed to bring up any of the GRE stuff that has been on my mind because we were so busy talking about other stuff and I left the appointment with still a thousand other thoughts in my head and I had to call my mother on the way home (who is an MFT) and make her let me talk and finish my thoughts I was wanting to have with my therapist since I wouldn't be able to until Monday and it was important.

So I don't see the therapist until Monday and the GRE class starts Tuesday and I am afraid every day I wait that the class could fill up. I keep worrying but I still don't know what to do. I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO! I can't think straight; I don't know what I want, I don't know if I'm ready, I don't know how to tell, or how to figure this out for myself. I NEED HELP. But I am on this huge time crunch and WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?

I have to leave in 2 days for another out of town wedding in Yosemite National Park this time.

How can I figure this out? What do you do to figure things out? I don't know how to do this anymore. I know it is so basic to make a decision, but I don't know how to anymore. :(

Wordless Wednesday: Hail Attack!

I'm sorry, is it June or NOVEMBER?

 

Charlie is not sure what to think of being pelted by huge frozen rocks while trying to do his business on the front lawn.  He is thinking real hard. He is also pretty sleepy.



OOPS! Hit on the nose by hail. He's awake now. He's also going potty. I censored this image for you. You're welcome. For another post on censoring.... go here.


You can actually see it coming down in this one!


I took these a couple weeks ago. It rained yesterday too; it's been raining all the month of May! Everybody has been complaining- rain and hail in California in summer? It's supposed to be 100 degrees right now! But I am like, DUDE! I'll take winter weather to hide my holiday turkey fat any day!

Double Dose

As honest as I am on this blog, if you can believe it, I don't share everything. In fact, there's a lot I don't share.  Which is hard because I'd really rather put all of my thoughts in one place and just get it ALL out, but because of who some of my audience is, I feel like I have to censor myself. (So, yeah, it's even worse than this!)

I was in therapy last week and ended up running thirty minutes over our hour long session. That's right, I talked for a straight hour and a half. Pretty much all I talk about in therapy is what happened. Once in a while I will bring up some other issue that has come up, but mostly, all I talk about is Matt and all of this issues related to him. I've been in therapy ever since I found out, and have been seeing this therapist weekly since October or so. And still even now, I have so much to process and talk about, I'm running over on our sessions.

This week, we changed our schedule and we're starting to have me come in twice a week. I came in on Tuesday, and I'll come in again Wednesday, and then I have appointments next week for Monday and Wednesday. This is going to get to be expensive for me. But what else do I do? I have felt like since I started therapy that I needed to be seeing someone more than once a week but I felt like I couldn't afford it. That situation doesn't seem like it's ever going to change unless I get better and I can't get better without more help. (On a side note, feel free to click on my google ads- the boring texy looking ads- not the fancy graphic ones- on the right hand side- I get like a $1 every time you click on them!! I am very close to getting a check! [You only get a check when you get up to a certain dollar amount.])  It's a good thing my therapist is very, very cheap. That is a HUGE blessing.

For our GRE update for the day, I read almost all of the introduction to the Princeton Review GRE book, and browsed through some pages on fractions, and couldn't understand any of it. Can any one let me borrow their 3rd grader so they can teach me fractions?! I haven't done fractions since 3rd grade and I never got them back then anyway!

My flashcards also came in the mail today. Super fast shipping!

A friend of mine from law school who just graduated, and passed the bar on the first time (just got the results a couple weeks ago), is also apparently certifiably insane and for some reason is going to take the GRE in July and asked to get together and study. (Why, she is taking the GRE now that she is an attorney and just got out of law school I have no idea!) She is really smart, and really hard working- like, her brain runs 10x faster than anyone else's so she's really hard to study with. (I used to study with her in law school). I think she must drink too many energy drinks, or she's on Ritalin or something! LOL She's TOO focused to be normal.

So... I have books, and flash cards and someone to study with.

But I still don't know that I am ready to jump! I am still hesitating. I need a shove off the diving board, or I need someone to grab me off the platform, give me a towel and tell me to go sit down until I'm ready.

I just don't feel confidant in making decisions for myself anymore. I don't trust myself. I don't trust my abilities anymore. I don't trust my judgement. I don't know what to do.