Today I am thankful that I am skittish.
So....
I've decided to end my self-imposed isolation. I still dress like a sow. I am not wearing my heels or my nice clothes. I am not wearing make-up or doing my hair.
I am going out in public now.
I decided to stop looking at my shoes when I walk.
While I was at the grocery store looking for tahini, I looked up and saw an older guy watching at me with a smile on his face. I grabbed some couscous and fled.
He smiled at me in the frozen food isle.
He smiled at me in the meat section.
I kept fleeing.
Maybe he was just friendly? I don't know. He tried to give me the last package of gourmet crackers. Ugh....
I went home.
Yes, there are a lot of other fish in the sea. I'm just not sure if I want to swim with the other fish right now because I can't tell a goldfish from a piranha.
*****
Yesterday, as I was cooking, I looked up and my ex-husband was about an inch from my face. He had that "kiss me" look.
I'm terrified. I know he wants me back. For that to happen, I need to understand why his sister and her boyfriend were following me around. I need to know where our retirement accounts went. I need to know that I can trust him.
I can't. We'd need quite a bit of therapy. With him going off to Portland for his new job in the next few weeks, it is not likely to happen.
Maybe I'll keep looking at my shoes for now. Looking up is dangerous.
*****
I'm still only sleeping about four hours a night. I'm abusing sleeping pills. I'll take them around 9:00 p.m., fall asleep at midnight and wake up around 4:00 a.m.
This happens everyday without fail.
I tend to have nightmares. I fear the stalking. I fear Steve's suicide threat from last year.
I think I know what that is about. It has very little to do with him.
Steve....well....I think I know why I fear his suicide. He once sent me a text message asking if he should kill himself. I didn't respond.
I figure he'd be embarrassed if he knew I saw it.
I believe that his stint in the hospital was due to a failed suicide attempt. He probably ate something poisonous and threw it up. I don't know. All I know is that he wrote me a bunch of nasty emails, lied to me about having a son, broke up with me and then was so ill I had to visit him in the hospital.
I don't know. I'm trying to put the puzzling experience together.
That said, Steve looks like a pale version of my step-father. They look a lot alike. They both have the same color eyes. They both shaved their heads. They were both 5' 6" tall and in decent shape. They both had alcohol addictions.
On Valentine's day, my step-father beat my mother in a fit of drunken rage. She died on her birthday, two days later. Every Christmas he'd cry about it. Christmas was my mother's favorite holiday. Her name was Carol. People called her Christmas Carol. Oh....she hated that.
She loved Christmas.
He missed her. Three years later, on the day after Christmas, he committed suicide by playing Russian Roulette with my baby sister. If he had shot my sister and he had survived, I would probably be in prison for his murder. My sister was twelve.
I see a lot of threads between my step-dad's relationship with my sister and Steve's relationship with his daughter. They both lost custody. They both "took" their daughters' mothers away*. They both had minimal visitation. They both have very inappropriate sexually explicit recordings of themselves and their daughters interacting. My step-dad would record dirty songs with my sister. Steve and his daughter put together a video suggesting that he wanted to have sex with her. Those things may have been done in fun -but- they sure speak to a lack of boundaries.
Maybe Steve's suicide threat triggered fears that he would re-enact a scene from my past.
That's probably one reason I can't tolerate his B.S. It hurts too much.
Maybe if I work past what happened with my dad and sister.....
maybe if I accept that there was nothing I could have done......
maybe I can accept that there is nothing I can do for Steve.....
It may make it easier to let go.
I'll work on it. Maybe there will be a day when I am no longer afraid to look into the eyes of a guy for longer than a millisecond.
Love ya,
S.
* Steve suggested that he had custody stripped from his ex-wife because she was crazy and abusive. I believed it before he tried to pull some B.S. with my mental health. He wanted to try to get me committed and claimed that I was abusing him and his daughter. Meta-modeling is helpful when people make vague accusations because it will help you drill down to the actual problem. In this case it is that my driving scares them. That does not necessarily imply a psychiatric/medical condition that one needs to be screened for. I didn't go to see his mental health provider: I've got my own. I work with them. I'd KNOW if I were nuts. At this point, he demanded that I remove all the things I posted on Pinterest to help my friend get out of an abusive relationship. I refused. Then he ran to Facebook calling me a sociopath (and lots of other crazy things, too). My phone starting ringing off the hook. The callers were our mutual Facebook friends.
UGH!!!
WTF!!!!
In short.....whatever a man says about his mother and his ex-wives, he'll say about you.
We can't all be CRAZY!
That applies to women, too. If all five of her ex-husbands and her father are nuts...you can be assured that you've met someone who believes that everyone is crazy....except for her! Run....as far as you can.
Oh.....never....ever.....date someone who brags about keeping an ex away from his or her children.
NEVER! Children deserve to know both parents, even if they have mental health issues. There are few reasons to push one away completely. There are such things as supervised visitation. That kind of B.S. will only give a parent control for a short time.
Kids will be curious. They will want to know where they came from. They will seek out that absent parent when they hit the age of majority. The truth will always come out. Even my twin nephews are planning to visit their father in the pennetentary: Their dad has an issue with stabbing people due to his fascination with watching people die. I'm not kidding about his desire to watch people die. He likes to watch videos....snuff films. It's horrible.
My nephews aren't afraid. We are trying to teach them to have really good boundaries around their dad. They'll learn. They'll have to learn. I can't imagine either of Steve's ex-wives being worse than this guy.
Parental alienation is a good way to insure loneliness in one's golden years. It's not worth it.