Lovesick Burnout

My own Room 19

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Lazy #Caturday with cuddles, coffee & Kindle. #catsofportland #cats #petunia

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It's been a long time, now I'm back.

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How can you mend a broken heart?

My heart hurts so much today. I wish it would finally, irrevocably break so I could move on.

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My heart hurts today.

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Plow, Ice Cream Flares and Rocket Sounds. Brilliant.

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Pioneer Square on a Friday night

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Not a suicide threat, just a rant!

I am so fucking over everything in my life right now: job, marriage, cyber boyfriend, every little tie and expectation. I wish I could walk away from all of it, leave behind my memories and feelings and just be anonymous and empty and alone and....free.

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Backyard Hydrangea

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Expectation Management

Today is hard. G and I were slowly being friends. Yesterday he posted many photos of a hike he took with daughter & dog. His wife liked many of the photos of him. It made me feel...not jealous, exactly. But unsettled and sad. Mondays have historically (as much history as a short cyber love affair can have) been emotionally charged days for us. He told me he loved me on a Monday, said he couldn't continue the relationship on a Monday, we considered terminating all contact on a Monday. I am sad and scared today and don't want to share this or be honest with him about it, because, then what? Nothing to be done. When I tried to brush it off earlier he wrote, "Smile blondie, you are loved" You are too, G.

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I am so strung out with loss. We have been trying to disengage romantically. Some days more successfully than others. For three days we have just dissected all the nuance in the relationship. Parsed it down to it's last syllable. I hurt. I haven't cried much, but tears are forming now. I don't know which way to move. I don't know if it is better to maintain contact or cut it off for a while or permanently. I don't understand how a relationship this brief could cause this much pain. Now that I have some quiet time, all I can do is feel how badly it hurts. He is stronger than me. He regained his center and did the right thing. Honor commitments. But...but but. There is no other answer for him.

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Love is Tearing Me Apart

I have been having an intense emotional affair for the last 3 or 4 weeks. And now it's over. And I am devastated.

It scared me to love someone other than my spouse. But I did - I do. I love G so intensely that I am in awe of it. I made a promise to myself to try not to second guess the relationship while it was going on. And for the most part, I didn't. I feared for a while that my feelings weren't genuine - that I was mimicking his, that I was reciprocating because I was caught up in a tidal wave of passion, lust, love, the new, the surreal. And last night I had my moment of reckoning when I realized that nope, I really do feel this. I mean it. I'm in.

And then today G tells me he can't. He's married with a child. We are 3000 miles apart. His marriage is full of the ups and downs and quirks that relationships develop after 35 years together. He still loves me, but it making conscious effort to get his head out of the clouds and not betray vows he took 24 years ago.

The thing is, I get it. I've known him over half my life and even when we first met, I knew he wasn't a cheater, he wasn't some guy that randomly played around for fun. He was true blue to his girlfriend (now his wife) then. I was utterly surprised when he confessed his feelings for me - partly because that doesn't happen to me but mostly because that's not him.

And until now, that didn't happen to me. I had a pretty serious crush on That Friend at the beginning of the year but it wasn't returned in any way other than as close friends.

I'm here, devastated. Wondering how does something so brief hurt so badly? I know I will move on. I will eventually get over it and maybe we will retain the close friendship that G wants to maintain. But I feel so bruised. So heartsick. And I can't blame him or be angry. I am responsible for my own feelings. For allowing myself to fall for someone with other commitments.

Crushed.

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Oops I Did It Again

oh god...this is funny and sort of fantastic and scary.

I think this just took an unexpected turn for me.

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Friendship Standoff

It's probably just me, but I feel like That Friend and I are in a stalemate, waiting to see who is going to blink first.

After a year or so of occasional checking in, we had about 9 weeks of intense daily conversations - the subject matter was all over the place: marriage, kids, jobs, dumb funny stuff. Sometimes it took a turn into the sexual and things got more intense. But I thought we rebounded from that pretty well. There were no declarations, no feelings hurt. We were communicating across all kinds of platforms: text, twitter, facebook, email. The daily contact decreased and though I wasn't happy about it, I said nothing. I just went with it because you can't make someone be your friend or engage with you when they are not into it.

And now...nothing. I guess I've been dumped, but I'm not sure. How many people would actually fess up to that if you had the nerve to ask them? I sent him an email last week telling him I missed him. The response was brief and indicated that the feeling was mutual, but I couldn't help feeling as if he's just grown tired of having me in his life in any significant way.

I'm sad. I genuinely miss my friend but I don't know what to do about it. Do I keep hoping that something will change - that he will re-engage with me or that he will cut ties with me completely? I feel as though I am standing there in the middle of town with a blindfold waiting for him to shoot me or walk away.

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I don't really need my ego stroked - it's nice to hear good things about yourself but I don't require it and sometimes it makes me uncomfortable, but this from my friend Greg made my week:

Chatting with you has been more enjoyable than conversations I've had with supposedly funny friends of mine. You're smart and funny. Plus you're cute. I think you're pretty adorable in your current profile picture.

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Summer Memory #1

Today in Portland is the kind of day that I loved when I was a teen lifeguard: cooler weather, cloudy, overcast, off and on showers. Rain is not heavy enough to warrant closing the pool for the day - not yet. I wake up at 8 and make the 10 minute walk down the dirt road to the community pool where I work. I'm met by Bruce & Rebbie, or Danny & Kevin, or Bonnie & Todd or whatever permutation is scheduled for the day. We put up the speakers, pull enough loungers out of the bathrooms for us, turn on the radio and wait for someone to show up. By 11 am we are dipping into the ice cream freezer and playing Uno. Sometimes some of the other guards show up and we sit around playing cards, eating Good Humor bars and drinking Cokes and just hanging out being goofy teenagers. Eventually we jump in the pool - the water is always much warmer than you expect it will be - and we engage in Horseplay! It's that rare day that comes a couple times a season where it's just us - we have to be prepared for members to show up, so everyone is relaxed but no one is partying (most of us are still too young for that, but that's not really an obstacle either). We are all ready for that inevitable moment that breaks the spell: some brave member shows up to swim some laps or get the kids out of the house for a few hours.

I don't miss those days - don't want to go back in time and re-do them, but I'm happy to have lived them so completely.

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Late at night, all is quiet. The only sound is rain coming down and the tires of a lone car slowly driving down the street

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Hello tumblr. Been awhile. More later!