Hello everyone, I hope this most recent post finds you alive and well. How are we all doing? I just want you to know that if you are not okay, then you are not alone. The things that are going on not only in our country, but in the world, are frightening, so it's okay to not be okay, right now, and anytime for that matter. I am going to be fully transparent here, because that is my purpose, to discuss uncomfortable topics openly: I have suffered on and off with depression throughout my life. It is not something that I choose, but it is something that I have learned to push past and cope with because it is a part of my DNA. The circumstances we are facing during these trying times have the power to be a recipe of disaster for people who, like me, have a mind that fights everyday to keep the negative thoughts at bay. (Yes, I have to fight for that). Mental health issues in our society are often overlooked, dismissed, made fun of, etc. I am here to tell you that they are in fact "real". I also want to say that because of everything going on, even if you do not have mental health issues, you are not CRAZY to feel however it is your are feeling. Your feelings are ALWAYS important, because they are YOUR FEELINGS, and no one should make you feel invalidated in feeling them.
I would also like to touch on one other topic before moving into the "story" for today's post. I truly believe in equality. I cannot remember a time in my life where I have possessed any type of hatred towards anyone for not having the same color of skin as me, it's not how I was raised to see the world. My parents instilled values in us that taught us to love all of our brothers and sisters, no matter what color or cultural background they possessed. Trust me, I do believe that racism exists, but that hatred towards one another is only a by-product of how you were raised. I'm going to challenge you to search deep within yourself and truly check yourself on how you view the people around you. We are all God's people and we all have a right to be here and to be loved. You and God are the only people who have the power to change the way you view the world, so get to work, because there's always something that can be done. I will never understand the darkness in this world, but I know that God gave me this platform to use to shine my light upon it. I will keep fighting for what is good. All that being said, please remember to love and be kind.
Now to continue my story with Cowboy Casanova, please know that this was 8 years ago, and if you are going to read this through a lens of judgement, then you are not welcome here. Everything I write, I am doing so in order to help other people avoiding falling for the same words and lack of action that I did. I write to encourage you to believe in yourself so that you don't feel so small and as if you deserve to be treated LESS THAN, or fed crumbs when you deserve a four course meal.
Okay I'll digress and continue the story:
So I was hooked, do you remember that part? He had me hooked, line and sinker (lol couldn't help myself)
I remember contemplating what it would look like if I walked away. We hadn't ever hung out alone, so at that point I could have made a clean break, and no serious damage would have been done, but there was that emotional attachment we had formed. He used to call me and we would talk for hours into the night about everything under the sun. I felt like we were connected. "He was my soulmate". How naïve I was to think that he had a serious agenda to win over my heart when in all actuality he was just a wolf in sheep's clothing, leading me to the slaughter. We carried on chatting and being each other's emotional support for a couple of months. We never really hung out except for when I would see him once a week. I don’t know if you can consider that "hanging out" since we were always surrounded by other people, but I still looked forward to that one hour, nevertheless.
One night, he told me he wanted to meet up because he had a song he wanted to play for me, he said "it reminds me of you". I agreed to meet in the parking lot of the grocery store. I think it was around 830 pm. We sat in his truck that night, separated by the middle console and of course I got all these butterflies in my stomach if we were to accidentally graze arms. I can still hear his voice and see his face. "Have you ever heard Bubble Toes by Jack Johnson?", "Hmmm, I don’t think so", I said. He proceeded to play. It's funny because I was talking to my sister about this post the other day and Bubble Toes randomly started playing on my shuffled playlist. FREAKY. (If are anything like me and form emotional attachments to songs, then you know how difficult it was for me to listen to that song for a WHILE, but it's all good now being that 8 years have passed.)
We carried on like this for months. Talking into all hours of the night, morning phone calls on his way in to work, late night rendezvous at our meeting point, listening to music. I can't remember the point when I started wanting more, needing more, but when it came, this is the part that tore me up and had me doing things that are so painful to look back on, because back then I felt so little of myself that I actually felt like I deserved to be treated like someone's side chick. So I would end it, thinking every time was the "final time" only to be swept away by him again when he would come back groveling for me to take him back. Begging and pleading that I talk to him again. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry". He said I'm sorry so much in that year of our back and forth tumultuous relationshit that I began to lose faith in that phrase. It went on like this for a long time. End, start again, beg beg beg, "please leave her. Please leave her. Please leave her. JUST FUCKING LEAVE HER." UGH. I didn't think that 8 years later it would be so hard to talk about this stuff, but honestly It is hard for me to describe the girl in this story. The sad, broken girl who didn't think much of herself, because I am so far from her today. I dont even see her in me anymore, but she was me, and she was a part of my journey. I can't believe there was a time in my life that I felt that I had to BEG for someone's love.
I will never forget the day when I decided I had had enough. He called me just as I was about to go to work, and we started off talking like everything was fine (in the end this is always how it started), but eventually I always came back to begging and pleading him to leave her, and I remember distinctly this day because I remember him saying all of these things about her that he needed to do for her, and that's when it finally clicked for me. so I finally said, "What are you doing for me?". He said "I'm here for you. I care about you?" and I replied "You care about me?? You care about me so you make me beg you to leave her, and it seems like you enjoy it, but you don't care about me enough to leave her to be with me. That isn't caring about me. I am done. I give up. I can't do this to myself anymore. I will not do this to myself anymore".
I found a journal that I wrote the last day that I talked to him when I was moving house not toonlong ago:
"I'm counting to three and walking away from this and if I dare look back I will turn into the pillar of salt that is waiting for me.
1, 2, 3. Feet are on the ground.
Good bye this is where our story ends"
There was a moment in time when I thought that this life was acceptable for me. That settling for someone's second choice was okay and that I deserved that, but I'm here to tell you that NOBODY deserves to be treated this way. If you are reading this and you are struggling in a relationship where you don't feel like you are a priority and you are dating someone who is in some way "unavailable" to you, then I challenge you to really look at yourself, your value, your worth. These are the reasons that keep us hanging on to less than what we deserve, for fighting for a piece of the pie instead of the whole pie. It's impossible to seek out a love that is healthy and whole if you cannot even look in the mirror and smile back at the person who is staring back at you. You need to get to a place where you have so much love and respect for yourself that when you're put in a position that comprises your self-worth it's a no brainer for you to walk away, to say no, to get out. NO BODY DESERVES TO REAP THE FRINGE BENEFITS OF YOUR LOVE, YOUR ADORATION IF THEY ARE NOT WILLING TO GIVE YOU ALL OF THEIRS IN RETURN. I had a friend tell me once, a long time ago, "You owe it to yourself to change the way you view yourself and the world so that you don't keep giving yourself an excuse to give people the green light to be shitty to you"
Something else I want to discuss is the other woman, you know what's really sad is I never really thought twice about who I was hurting when I would talk to him, and spend time with him, not in the beginning at least, this was out of pure selfishness of course. I had honestly convinced myself that he would leave her for me so that's why I was willing to stay. I didn't even want to know her name, or anything about her existence because that protected me from having to face reality for another day. What I didn't know wouldn't hurt me, right? WRONG, AGAIN! Just because we are in denial of something being true, does not mean that it isn't. She was not just a figment of my imagination. She was very much a factor in this equation, and she didn't deserve the hand that she was dealt.
This was VERY difficult for me to write about. This is the first time I have truly re-visited this toxic relationship in awhile, and like I said before I hardly recognize the girl that I am writing about, because I am so far ahead of her now. I used to beat myself up a WHOLE lot for the way I acted during this time in my life, but have since come to a place of peace and acceptance. As this was just a part of my journey, another F*cking growth opportunity.
If you relate to this girl, know that I have been there, and I know how you feel, and how hard it is to pull yourself away, but it is possible-- you just have to build up the courage to walk away and to love yourself just enough to know that you deserve better, that's all you need in the beginning.
I also want to give a shout out to my family and friends that stuck with me and listened to my broken record ass over and over and over again when I would whine about CC only to take him back again and again. One of my friends told me that it literally broke her heart watching me do it to myself over and over again, but she didn't want to abandon me because she knew I would need her to help me pick up the pieces of myself when I finally did decide to leave, so grateful she didn't abandon me.
I think it's important also to look at the type of person I was potentially dealing with. When I look back on this time, now that I am happy and healthy, It's easy for me to see his narcissistic tendencies, but because of my low self-esteem, I was unable to look at things objectively at the time. This is something I can cover later on, because there were several things that he did to me that made me feel so crazy. I remember a time when I even felt like my life was threatened because he told me if I didn't shut up he would shove me in a drain pipe (I didn't stick around for much longer after that)
It took a LONG time for me to pull away from this situation...and I used to be sooo ashamed to admit that and talk about this, but if this can touch even one person, or help at least one person to avoid this type of scenario, then I know why God put me through it.
I would like to come full circle and end with the lyrics of the song that I began with in the first post:
“He's a good time cowboy Casanova
Leaning up against the record machine
He looks like a cool drink of water
But he's candy-coated misery
He's the devil in disguise
A snake with *hazel* eyes
And he only comes out at night
Gives you feelings that you don't wanna fight
You better run for your life“
Please stay safe, be kind, spread love!
Until Next Time,
SLG
Comments