Loving Luka

F/NF words

What do I have to say here, that hasn’t been said before? It’s an ongoing battle, repetition begets boredom, boredom, depression. I’m weary from all our conversations that end up the same way, one of us hanging up on one another. I can’t do that anymore, I won’t.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop, near your apartment, trying to drink a cup of black coffee in a white mug, my hands shake, while the rain continues to flood the streets. I just think about trying to jump over the massive puddles but I don’t have any more energy in me to even try. When I was younger that was my favorite thing to do. Not now.

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I feel paralyzed from pain, the pain you inflicted on me. Once, I used to be carefree, like a child, happy and silly and stomp in the puddles.  I am so ANGRY at you. In the past I cared too much and where did that get me? No where. So, instead of being disappointed like I have been in the past, I am turning into myself, safe guarding my heart and not showing it anymore, at least not to you.

I don’t WANT to care anymore, I’m past that point. I’m not lying, I have cared too much in the past, believe me, you know, I wasn’t always like this. People who have known me for years will reassure you that yes, I have changed but I have chosen that change. Why? Self protection. I’m tired of being bullied and pulled apart like a hungry street dog lunging at a piece of a steak.

You know who you are. You blame me but you never look inside yourself. You need ME? That’s not good enough. You don’t treat me well enough to be on your side. You accuse me of everything you do to me, did that ever occur to you?  I just handle it better. I don’t

need to whine and carry on the way you do, I’m an adult now.  Yes, I went through hell to get here but I survived, barely, but I survived and I am strong.

Don’t you see how your view is warped? I don’t live in the past, I do acknowledge it but deep inside YOU are the one who hasn’t moved past it. Why is it that your true emotions only come out when you were bare to the bones, out of your mind? You loved me then, you needed me then. Not since then with all your false bravado. Because if you did love me why would you be so mean to me all the time?

It’s not a big dark secret, it’s an illness. Like diabetes or cancer, get over yourself. I know you think the world revolves around you, you make it that way, you make it that way. Not everybody else does that.

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I know you put yourself first, well, who doesn’t know that? You admit it with pride. ‘A great quality of yours, I’m sure you think.’ Me? You don’t care about me as much as you think. Because if you did you wouldn’t be a bully like you always have been and you still carry on the same way, even after all these years we’ve been together. You could work on a compromise instead of saying “Well, I  just can’t do it, I won’t do it. ” Maybe you can but you have never tried.

I was happy in the past to mediate to reach a solution we can both live by, I will not be influenced by your outbursts anymore. I will stay away. I don’t trust you since you have broken the rules of our relationship time and again and you know you have.  Deep inside you are a very troubled child. I can’t see our relationship continue on the way it has, not at my expense.

I need to put myself first, to care about me now. I hope one day you will be happy without making others unhappy.

 

FWF: Kellie Elmore

English: Broken Heart symbol (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The What ifs and The Should Haves Will Eat Your Brain by John O’ Callaghan

Learn from me.  I allowed your flesh-eating amoebas steal pieces from my soul and heart as if I was no longer a person with feelings, but a mass of rusty, mechanical parts. You won the round for a number of years but not the fight, no definitely not the fight.

You played unfairly, with aggression, the intent to severely wound with a fake smile plastered on your pale face.  I meekly, crept under a colorful fall red leaf, my sense of self, like a worm stepped on in pieces, buried deep down in the tough, brown unyielding ground.

How could you be my best friend one night yet not the next? No one could help me understand, no one understood either. Pain can either kill you or make you stronger. It’s a toss-up. I won in the end. I pitied you and you loathed pity.

There was not a single thing I could have done more than I had done already. Letters and phone calls, messages. I just wanted to talk to you but your holier-than-thou attitude refused my attempts. You ignored me, forgetting about the closeness we had for years. You were mean, hateful. I started, very slowly, noticing your flaws, the discrepancies in your behavior. My conscience was clear, like a clean pane of glass that smelled like freshly cut lemons. You were self-destructing in front of everybody’s eyes.

But I did not forgive you for destroying what should have been one of the happiest days of my life, you stole that from me, like a big, bold bully snatches and stomps on a little boy’s new toy. The night I invited you to your favorite restaurant, nervous and excited; you stole my special joy from me when I told you I was pregnant and you put your head in your hands and wept. I was flabbergasted, shocked, hurt, confused. I imagined joy, “congratulations” squeals of delight. I got nothing.  No, you sat in your seat, head down, tears falling into your soup. I stopped asking what was wrong when all you would do was shake your head from side to side signalling “no.” Our friendship was over. Your cover, blown.

I used to always defend your insecurities and phobias: driving, flying, going on a boat, or a train, going in elevators, the list got longer every year. You made your husband fly on vacation, alone. You didn’t have the decency to show up at your in-laws funerals. Everybody gasped in shock and horror; there was no turning back from that. You crossed the line there, there were no excuses for that type of behavior.

Everyone knew that you were a psychologically impaired person but there are some things people do for those that they love. There were medications and therapy but you refused to go, to try to get help,  therapy was fine for “other people” but not you. You refused to try, you were too scared to go. After awhile even your husband threw up his hands and gave in. Ice water ran through your veins.

Your husband, our friend, had the grace to tell us the truth, he confessed and told us everything, You continued to lie. You changed your mind about a deal you made with your husband, yet when we tried to talk to you, you lied to our faces.There was a cruel side to you, one you tried so desperately to hide, but it would escape when you let your guard down, didn’t it?

I could see the hatred that you harbored deep inside. It came out in whiffs like a puff of smoke or perfume, I couldn’t grab hold of it but I knew, for sure, it was there. I knew something was wrong with you since the first time we met as you handled my laundry, inappropriately, crossing boundaries.You hated that I knew all your secrets. I thought I knew you, and I did, on that very first day when my instincts whispered in my ear and I told them to go away.

I should have followed my instincts on the first day we met, I knew there was something off, something strange about you but I didn’t listen. That lesson, I have learned forever. For this, I thank you.

Plinky Prompt

The Great Kindness Challenge Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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• What do you love most about yourself? What do you love most about your favorite person? Are the two connected? See all answers

• Edit answer |
• December 1, 2013 by hibernationnow

• Love to Love you Love me.

• KINDNESS. WARMTH.

  Being kind and thoughtful to other people is very important to me, being sensitive to their needs. My favorite person is my husband who is also kind and supportive, probably in different ways. We both have huge hearts, we both probably care TOO much and feel disappointed in people who are not as warm and understanding as we are.
  This is the way we are, naturally, it is who we are inside. Dealing with selfish and self-involved people with no feelings about anyone but themselves is hard for us. Most people are not like us, we are lucky to have found each other. In this great big, self-involved world, we are definitely in the minority.
  We have each other for now, I’m terrified, absolutely terrified for the day that one of us will be left without the other.

Plinky Prompt: Best Friends

Friends (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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• We all know someone who could use a pep talk… so write them one! See all answers

• Edit answer |
• November 14, 2013 by hibernationnow

• The Meaning Of A Friend

• Dear Janie,
  I want to tell you that I am here for you, anytime, day or night. Please do not hesitate to call me if you need company, or are scared or just feel sad and don’t want to be alone. I love spending time with you and as much as I am a big talker, I’m equally a good listener. We’ve always been that way for each other.
  It will be wonderful and as I have told you before, you are NOT a burden on me. You can make us your famous hot chocolate (which you know I love!) and I’ll bring the cookies and we will be together. I’ll even bring a pair of my jammies just in case we have a sleepover.
  I know, hon, that what you are going through is rough, believe me, I know. I am not here to tell you any cliche because that is useless. You WILL get through this, and it will be painful at times, but you are strong, I know you. You also have so many friends to support you and we will do anything you need. Besides, just in case you are going to say “NO” we’ve already arranged a food, housekeeping, and babysitting schedule. As we used to say as kids “NO BACKSIES.”
  Sweetie, life is hard enough, please lean on me and on our other friends to help you through this. I know you would do this for me. I love you and will do anything for you and the kids.
  I’ll be over at six o’clock with dinner and a few treats for the children. I love you, love, Nikki

Plinky Prompt: You Get Fantastic News, What’s The First Thing You Do?

English: Two women text messaging on their cell phones in a coffee shop on the campus of California State University, Fullerton. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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• You get some incredibly, amazingly, wonderfully fantastic news. What’s the first thing you do? See all answers

• Edit answer |
• November 3, 2013 by hibernationnow

• Hello Mom? Hubby?

• I race to the phone and call my husband and my mother. It is absolute instinct to call my mom first, I think, my fingers are flying over the telephone buttons in my excitement. How many more years will she be in my life? I want to cherish every second. If I’m happy, she’s happy, that’s how she operates. Me being happy would make HER happy. It’s a gift for both of us. I have two adult children, I totally understand.

  At the same time, on another line, I call my husband who is my best friend and life-long partner. He is the person who knows me best and loves me the most and puts up with my crap. He sticks with me, we go through everything together. We have two adult children and a dog. We think alike when it comes to big issues, family first. We’ve been doing that for over 25 years of marriage, I adore him and we still have a lot of fun. He ties for first place, he would genuinely be happy for me, for us.

  There is no joy in having amazingly good, fantastic news if you can’t share it with the ones you love.

Plinky Prompt: Simply Be Thankful For Something or Someone

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  English: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  

• The internet is full of rants. Help tip the balance: today, simply be thankful for something (or someone). See all answers

• Edit answer |
• October 7, 2013 by hibernationnow

• Thankful

• I am thankful, every single day and night, for my husband, Dan. We just celebrated our 25th anniversary together, focusing on what we feel is important: Love and Good Food. We went away to a Bed and Breakfast for two nights and spent two dinners at the Culinary Institute of America. In all these years, it seems like we blended into one person. I love him and appreciate him in every way, he is my best friend and the thought of losing him brings me to tears and I panic. I try not to dwell on it. He is the one person that I feel the most comfortable with in the world.
  Being married isn’t always easy, nobody said it would be. People stop us and are amazed that we have been married for so long. One friend told me that all her friends get married for two years at the most, they get divorced, they try again. Marriage vows are not about just “trying” they are about sticking it out and working things through.
  We are NOT talking about a pair of shoes or next year’s jean style.
  We have two wonderful (adult) children, hopefully one day they too will find the husband or wife of their dreams and will treat their marriages with the same respect, friendship and love that we have for each other.

Carry on Tuesday: I have wiped the slate clean

Description unavailable (Photo credit: wakingphotolife:)

There was so much anger and resentment in my past, in my youth, it piled up like a bloody automobile accident on an icy winter day. Black ice that you can’t even see, like feelings that you didn’t know you still had. They snuck up from deep inside me and burst, like popped balloons. Years and years of self-teaching and negotiating and drawing lines and speaking up and creating boundaries had finally come. There had been teachers and books and confrontation to arrive at this peaceful place now, a place of breathing and thinking, forgiving and living in the present. It took a lot of work but I was proud of myself, finally.

I had wiped the slate clean and all the baggage of my past was behind me. However, I look across at you, my lover of five years and I fear it is still in you. I begged you for years to come to therapy with me, to work on our relationship but you refused. Does it mean anything to you that I have done all this work for our relationship? You shake your head back and forth and say in a low tone: “Not really.” You scratch your beard and stroke it, a habit that I have come to detest. I shudder from the cold temperatures in the room and in your answer which is void of emotions. You do not like change, I know, why would you like change; you haven’t noticed anything was wrong to begin with. I sigh deeply. I don’t know what to do, how to respond to you, you are a creature of habit and you annoy me now, this highly predictable presence in MY artist’s cottage. I don’t know if you belong here anymore, I mutter that under my breath but you don’t listen to me, even if I had shouted it out loud. You never listen to me, do you? You just hear what you want to hear, as if you were a five-year old boy, plugging his ears with his fingers and screeching some vile noises, getting louder and louder by the minute. I want to slap you but I have to control myself because that would be getting nowhere and I abhor physical violence in every form. Look what you have almost made me think of doing!!

I get up from our scratched wooden kitchen table, I feel sick to my stomach and head to the sink and heave into it, my long brown hair falling far into the sink. I am trying to vomit the destruction out of my body but nothing comes out. I want to look at the decay, describe it, name it, show it, but I can’t. I can’t even do that right. Nothing comes out of my body except the decaying dry heaves of a woman starting to become undone. No, I will not let myself do this. I stop myself and breathe. Slowly.

I lay on the sofa, with a red and blue crocheted blanket tucked around me that my mom made for me years ago. I’m tired, confused and feel very much alone. I don’t know what to do right now. I know in my heart and deep inside me, just one thing, we need to separate.  I need to be free, he is stifling me and I feel I can’t breathe anymore. “He had” no idea, he will wail, I’m sure, when I would later say this a mere week later. But, it was in the room with us for a very long time. He just wasn’t paying attention.

Honoring Someone Else’s Pain

Postavaru Mountain – ROMANIA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes the hardest thing we can do, when a friend is suffering, is nothing. It goes against our natural instinct to nurture and comfort and try to make people feel better. However, we need to think of what they want and not do what we feel comfortable doing.We need to honor their wishes, respect their needs. I identify so very well with this particular pain, I lost my best friend, Callie, my dog, less than a year ago. My friend, everyone’s friend, Judy Judith lost her dog Max the other day. He was not only her dog-friend but ours, he was an icon and part of all our lives. We all knew him, and apparently, he knew us too. He wrote us letters.

His name was Max. The dog owner of the wonderful blog “Creativity to the Max” helped by his “human,” Judith Westerfield, one of the loveliest and intelligent people I know. Those who know her adore her, those who interact with her form her wide fan club and fall in love with her. She is direct and honest and she will tell you what she thinks, good or bad, directly, no matter what, and when she says something you wrote is good, you better believe her because if not, she will theoretically smack you on the head over cyberspace in a loving way, of course. She is also extremely funny and she makes us laugh.

To know that she is in pain is killing me. When my dog, Callie, died a few months short of a year ago, Judith was there for me, telling me it will hurt but it would get better, Selena told me about the Rainbow Bridge that I had never heard of before. Maureen and Rosemary and Lorraine and Tammy and other friends supported me and helped me through it. I relied on these friends that I have never met in person. These friends on-line had become family, our own family, they knew the right things to say, there was no drama between us (okay, maybe just a little), no childhood memories or lapses in judgment. They were here to listen and to support and encourage; I am here for them as well.

Friendship is both about being there for someone when she needs you but, even harder, stepping back, when she asks you to. We are all stepping back in honor of your request, in honor of Max. We will miss you, Max, and we will hurt because we know our dear friend Judy Judith is hurting. Don’t worry, Max, you can count on us to take care of her for you. In memory of you, Llliiiiickingly yours, Lexi-Pro and her human friends.

I’d Be Lost Without You

Image by cfinke via Flickr

Every morning I am greeted with a smile, a hug and a freshly brewed cup of coffee. He even sniffs the milk before he pours, knowing I have a super-sensitive nose and will gag if I even think something has gone sour. Today there was a small fruit cup with blueberries, strawberries and cantaloupe, sliced with love from a steady, beautiful hand. My hands shake so he carries the full cup of coffee to me, so I don’t feel bad and so there will be no spills on our fake linoleum Spanish tiles in the kitchen. In the middle of the night our feet or hands search for each other for reassurance and comfort. I don’t even mind when he snores loudly, though I do punch him lightly in the arm. Without protest he turns over. I used to say “turn over” but with our marriage code I have shortened the phrase to “apple” as in apple turnover and he knows exactly what I mean.

We have our own language, he and I, built on twenty-five years of togetherness, love and friendship. We are each others’ best friend.  I am not saying we have always had the perfect marriage because no marriage is perfect. We have had our rough years, our tough times but we struggle through it together, knowing that home is not just a place but a feeling. I sat through a Gordon Lightfoot concert for him, he came to see Neil Diamond for me. Sometimes he blurt things out that are supposed to be secret; sometimes I reveal my feelings when I shouldn’t. Sam Adams for him, Diet Coke for me. His Scotch is my Yoo-hoo, his dark chocolate is my milk chocolate.

I want our children to see that our marriage is strong, loving, yet not without flaws. I want them to know that marriage, like any relationship, needs work, a strong commitment and loving companionship. We help each other when difficult situations arise, and in life, they always do. When we were first married, we went through the infertility process together; it breaks many couples apart yet it brought us closer together. We share pain and joy, I am more emotional, he is more practical. We balance each other like a delicate balancing toy, sometimes tipping over, always able to right itself to startling precision.We try to laugh even during hard times. He has taught me to be less pessimistic; I have taught him that it is okay to be vulnerable.

Through the 25 years of our relationship we have grown closer together even after we have grown apart. He likes skiing, I like sunshine, he plays racquetball, I need to write. For a little while we thought it was odd that we did not share activities in common but we adjusted and compromised. We trust each other so that if he wants to go skiing, he goes with a friend. If I need sunshine in the middle of a gray, cold winter, I have flown to Florida for a few days. We can be independent of each other yet always happy to reconnect. We share the joy of traveling together, France, Australia, Amsterdam,  Aruba, Rhode Island. We held hands when we snorkeling on our engagement trip in Hawaii, my most favorite memory. While he would prefer to stomp through old ruins, I would rather walk on the beach finding seashells; we compromise.

He is an atheist, I believe in G-d. We have two amazing children, a boy, 18 and a girl, 16. We share their triumphs and their pain; we help each other deal with our ever-changing reality. If the children attack us, as teenagers often do, we immediately look at each other. The silent language of marriage is a subtle one, but we speak it fluently.

I fear the day that one of us is left alone. I pray it won’t be for a very long time yet thinking about it frightens me. He is the one person that I trust with my life, that I can count on without question. He feels the same way about me. We know the best and the worst of each other and accept and acknowledge both. If I had to, I know deep down, that I could survive without him; I just don’t want to.