There's been a phrase, or a kind of concept, that I've heard over the past few years.  The idea of parenting your inner child.  Letting that part of you that didn't get things it needed, or maybe was mistreated, or neglected, or whatever the case may be, feel seen and heard and soothe it, give it what it needs, help it to heal.  On one hand, it sounds like new-age, hippie-dippy shit that is stupid.  But on the other hand...I am beginning to understand it.

I was driving this morning, going no place of consequence for a short errand.  Because my brain is often my enemy, of course it was thinking about things too deep for what wasn't, but basically was, first thing in the morning.  I started thinking about the fact that I really do, deeply and strongly, hate myself.  I have been aware of this for years.  I became consciously aware of it back in 2019 shortly after I got married, and in all honesty, it was probably being with my now former husband that made me realise that I legitimately hated myself.  Yes, he was the catalyst for the realisation (considering how critical he was of me, how me just being myself wasn't enough, etc.), but I'm pretty sure the hatred was there before he came along.  It was just his behaviour and treatment of me that was enough to make me realise it.

But I digress.  If this deep self hatred existed before him, where did it come from?  I've struggled with depression for over half my life at this point.  Depression has been called self-hatred, and/or anger against the self.  You internalize the anger, because it wasn't safe to feel that growing up, so you criticise and blame yourself unrealistically, which turns into depression/self-hatred.

And that's when it clicked for me.  Of course I hate myself.  I grew up not feeling wanted or loved by my family (there is a lot of nuance to this; I know my parents did their best, but it doesn't take away the fact emotional needs that I had - and probably all of my siblings had - were not met).  Not feeling loved or wanted or like I mattered at all taught me to think about myself that same way. 
And as we know from a psychological standpoint, we gravitate towards that which is familiar.  Which honestly confuses my brain, because at the beginning, he was attentive and sweet.  Yes, he was very controlling and insecure and critical as well, but there was some positive attention there (the bad attention far outweighed the good, but I wasn't as knowledgeable back then as I am now to know to pay attention to that and take it for what it was - toxic).  In a lot of ways, he was like my dad.  There were some things he paid attention to, attention he gave me, but he was very, very critical.  It was familiar, because it's what I had been accustomed to my whole life.

(Side note: paying attention to, knowing, and understanding your family of origin when it comes to family dynamics and relationships is incredibly important.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  Know where you come from, understand how that impacts your relationships, and use that to do better, be better, and change those patterns so they don't continue should you ever be in a romantic relationship and/or married.)

My self hatred started when I was a child.  When I had big feelings, and got punished for them, rather than being taught how to manage them.  So eventually I learned to shut off all feelings.  It stopped me from getting in trouble, which stopped the negative attention I always got...
It makes sense.  Getting in trouble for feeling things, being ignored except when I was getting in trouble, not feeling like I was wanted or valued or loved as a child...realising this when I was driving my short drive made me sad.  I try not to cry these days, but I found myself tearing up over this.  Being sad for the little girl Aimee, who so desperately needed to feel like her family wanted her, like she mattered to them, but not getting it.  She was hurt for so long; she is still hurt.  She never got what she needed, which was affection and positive attention, and knowing that how she felt mattered to the people who claimed they loved her.

It all feels impossible.  And, quite frankly, unfair.  That the damage done to me (albeit unintentionally) was done by others, but now I'm the one suffering and the one responsible for fixing it.  How do I parent the child part of me?  How do I tell her that she is loved and valued and wanted, when even I don't feel that way about myself?

Self hatred started in my childhood, but it continued into adulthood and into marriage, because the man who claimed to loved me criticised me often enough to where on a subconscious level I learned that I was not enough for him and he didn't love me for me, even though I never once hid from him who I was, and that sadness was part of my existence.  Then, because he abandoned me rather than doing the right thing, keeping his vows and growing and changing and doing his part in the marriage, it reaffirmed every single thing I grew up experiencing and knowing: I am not enough.  I am not wanted.  No matter if people tell me they love me, they don't, despite them saying otherwise.  And people will never, ever, ever be there for me.  

I haven't come to some miraculous discovery and am now healed and love myself.  Especially considering all of this was just realised this morning.  But my heart hurts for the little girl that I was, who was simply starving for love, for affection, for wanting to know that her family wanted her...and never got those things.

Maybe someday she will heal from that.  Maybe even someday, I won't hate myself anymore.  That day isn't today, but at least the awareness is a start.

 So often these days I feel as though I am going mad.

Going mad with what?
With pain.  With grief.  With the inability to understand what has happened to my life.

It's been over two year.
TWO. FUCKING. YEARS. since he told me he wanted to move to a new place alone, without me, to treat our time apart like a deployment, because of course that's what you fucking do in a marriage.

Of course that isn't what you do.  But how would he know that?  He never saw an example of a healthy marriage.  He never saw or experienced what real Love is.  You can't know what you don't know.  And he didn't know a lot when it came to relationships.

I miss him, like the idiot that I am.  Like a fool, because no matter how often he hurt me emotionally, no matter how often I felt dismissed or undesired by him, I still loved him.  Unconditionally.  (I still do.)  He will always be loved, by my family, by me.

In these times, I also remember the bad.  Most of it was bad.  Why wouldn't it be?  He didn't pay attention to the relationship, to the marriage, to me.  He told me he didn't like being around me when I was sad, which was the baseline of my existence.  Something I never hid from him.  Even worse, he told me (shortly, before he deployed, so I lived with that knowledge the entire time he was gone) that he didn't like having sex with me because I was me.

...and you wonder why I want to hide who I am completely from everyone new that I meet from now on.

I don't understand.  I don't know if I will ever be able to truly understand or comprehend what is now my reality.  Because to me, if someone gives their vow, that's it.  End of story.  You keep it or you die.

But he gave his vow.  He said for better or for worse, until death do us part.  But he never truly meant it, because when things were worse, when he wasn't doing well (completely ignoring how I was doing), he quit.  He gave up.  He showed his true colours.

Colours that were there the whole time.  That were evident, even from when we were dating.  But colours I never noticed, because of my lack of experience with dating, because of my blind trust that he meant what he said, because I ignored how he lived and his actions and how he treated me, and paid more attention to his words, which ended up being completely worthless.

My world has turned upside-down and inside out.  It has been that way ever since he confirmed he wanted to move to a new city alone.  And even now, after all this time of being separated, and now no longer being married, I still cannot comprehend or understand it or make sense of it.

It's like my brain refuses to accept what is right in front of my face.
That even though reality is showing me he was a coward, he quit, he gave up, he was a liar, that somewhere in there, those things are not true.
That this is a bad dream I will someday wake up from, and the man who told me he cared about me when he didn't really care for anyone, will still be by my side, will love me in all the right ways, will show me that he meant what he said.

Except that's not true.

What is true is that I meant very little to him.
For all his talk of saying he wouldn't know what he would do if he lost me, he walked away pretty damn easily and quickly.
For all the times he asked me "just give me a little more time" and when I asked "what for?" and he couldn't give me an answer, I still gave him time.  Believing, somehow, hoping against hope, against history that repeated itself, that maybe this time things would change.
For everything he said to me about me being the love of his life, about how he loved me, and wanted me, that all of that turned out to be lies.

Even after we separated, even after the divorce was finalized, he was still lying to me.
In the random times he contact me, he probably still is lying.
Because if history has proven anything, he can say all the words he wants to say, but I should know better by now.  Nothing he says is worth trusting.  Nothing.

How he wanted a divorce because he realized he wanted to be alone?
That was a lie.
How the girl he was talking to at work was "just someone to talk to?"
That was a lie.
Every. Single. Thing. with him has been a lie.

I am an idiot for having ever believed him.
EVER.

And I am not going to make that mistake with him ever again.
Not with him.  Not with anyone else.

No one is trustworthy.
No one tells the truth.

And his actions have only proven to me what I have known my entire life.
I am not wanted.
My love is not enough.
I am not enough.

I have finally learned my lesson.

 I can't stop thinking about him.

I am an idiot.

I thought I was doing better.  Being back home in California, back in February, helped, even though it was because of the death of someone so dearly loved.  But I was able to go to places that were familiar, that I loved, that were mine.

And then in March, things started to go downhill.  I started thinking about him on a daily basis again (when I had started to go for a few days at a time of not thinking about him).  But out of nowhere... wham.

The body keeps the score, right?  March marked two years of being in this fucking state I never wanted to actually live in.  March marked two years of being separated from the person who was supposed to be my person.  Additionally, going back to the gym, a place where I may not have had personal ties WITH him physically, but certainly spent every waking moment and thought on him when I was there in the past, because everything was so raw and fresh and unbearable...that those things are tied there, too.

And now it's June, but this downward slump hasn't stopped.  Seeing a person I love marry someone who loves her and loves her so well she is secure in that love and doesn't have to question it, made me happy for her, but just reminded me of how I was never secure in his love.  I think deep down I always knew he would eventually abandon me...I just wish he would have done it sooner.

If someone tells you you deserve someone better, maybe believe them if they don't put in the work and effort to become the person you think they deserve.  Because eventually they will abandon you, betray you, destroy your world, cause unspeakable trauma, and make you wish you had the courage to not be alive anymore.

Because the one person who was suppose to be your person, the person who made vows for better or worse, that you wouldn't part until death, the person who wrote you and said they chose you now, and always and forever, ended up being a liar.  They only wanted to be with you when things were easy.  When you made them feel good.  But when things got hard, they didn't want to keep their vow.  They didn't want to put in the work.  They didn't want to prove to you that they could be the "better" person you deserved.  No.  They gave up, they quit, and they proved to you that you are worth nothing.

That no one loves you, that you are not worth the effort, that you are pointless and worthless.

I don't know why I'm still here.

(I do.  It's because I'm still a coward who can't find the bravery to no longer exist.)

I feel nothing but pain.
Excruciating, unbearable pain.

Pain from abandonment trauma.  Having someone who promises to be there no matter what, but then they up and willingly walk out of your life.
Pain from the trauma of betrayal.  Hearing for years how they want you, how you matter to them, how they aren't going anywhere, the vows they made, how things will get better...and then they betray every promise they made, every vow they said, by deciding that "incompatibility" was a good enough reason to quit and not keep their word.

How do people survive this.

The pain feels unbearable, and it torments me every waking second.
I want to do great physical harm to myself, as if somehow that will lessen the emotional pain all this has caused.
Because at least physical pain makes sense.  Physical pain has evidence, it shows scars, there's a reason for it.

There is not one goddamn good enough reason for this emotional pain.

Giving your heart and soul and life to someone, and it meaning nothing, because they so easily tossed you aside.
Even worse, the finality of the end of your marriage didn't even hit 6 months, and already they have moved on to someone else.

It was a lie.
It all was a lie.
Every day you spent with them, every shared moment, every memory, every "I love you"...meaningless.

Nothing brings me joy anymore.
Not even the few things that felt seemingly foolproof.
Hiking.  Ordering new books.  Taking pictures/editing them.
I have felt nothing the handful of times I have tried to do these things in the past few months.

Because nothing is worth anything anymore.
My entire marriage meant nothing to the man who told me I was the love of his life, because it turns out, I actually wasn't.  If I had been, he would have fought to make things work.  He would have been willing to stay.  He would have been willing to be a team so we could actually get better.
But even worse, even if I wasn't the love of his life, the vows he made on the day we got married were empty words.  They carried no weight to him.  He didn't mean to keep them, to follow through.  Even if things got hard, even if the realisation of "oh, we don't fit in any way" hit, it was an excuse to call it quits.  If the vows were sincere, the effort would be there.  The determination to find a way or make one.

Instead I am left with nothing.
Nothing except the knowledge that I wasn't worth it. 
That he never really loved me.
And that now I am used trash, tossed aside, that no one else is going to want.

It was hard enough to find someone who was tolerant of how weird I actually am.
But now being my age, and with all the bullshit that has gone on in the world in the past 3 years, even if it was okay to be with someone else, the impossibility of finding someone in my age range who is 1) single, 2) didn't conform to the lies the governments and media sold to people, 3) doesn't have their own past divorce or children to carry with them, means that I have absolutely no hope.

None.

So tell me, what is the point?
Because truthfully, I don't see any.

What I see is that everyone lies.
I knew that before, and trust was always cautiously handed out.
But if even the one who vows not to part until death, parts from you much sooner, and still very much alive, no one else is going to keep their word.
Family can't.
A former husband can't.
No one else will.

I am worth nothing.
I am not worth loving.
I'm not even worth getting better for, even though that was also said a handful of times in the early days.

Nope, instead it's after deciding that I'm not worth it, he starts to get better on his own.
But he couldn't have even tried to do that for me while we were still married.
Our marriage never even got a chance to be a "normal" marriage outside of military life.
And I never got a second chance to be able to love him better, to fix my failures and mistakes, to try to be a safe place for him, to love him and be there for him in the ways he needed.

But that only works if both people are willing...

I feel nothing.
And I feel it all entirely too much.

Please just make this pain stop.
Please.

 Things haven't ever been this bad.

Sure, for years I was severely depressed, and talked about how dead I was inside.  But there were still small moments here and there where I felt some sense of joy.  Hidden pockets of sunshine that glimmered through the darkness.  I was still able to rouse myself to go on adventures, go exploring, go hiking, and find some reprieve from feeling nothing, nature often times being the only thing that made me feel alive, made me feel at peace, made me feel anything at all.

Even last year, when it was (at the time) the worst things had ever been for me, mentally.  Being more suicidal than I had ever been in my life.  Not wanting to be alive by the time the end of the year hit.  But I think, even in the midst of all that, I still had some semblance of hope.

There is no hope anymore.

It all went away as soon as I saw the email in my inbox.  The email that contained the paperwork that was waiting for my signature.  Paperwork I didn't want to sign, but was forced to, because otherwise it would have been too costly, in too many ways.  Paperwork that has one of the ugliest words to ever exist.  Paperwork that, when I read it, made me feel sick to my stomach, and I haven't stopped feeling that way since.

It's different this time.
Last year it was bad, but there wasn't the definitive knowledge.  There wasn't the life-shattering decision that was made that I had no part in making (story of my life).  Last year there was still some communication.  There was still "I love you" and "sweetie" (although way less often than before) and even "I want you" (which turned out to be yet another lie).
There was also confirmation that he was my person.  And although it didn't feel like it for several months at that point, he was still my best friend.  Still the person who knew me better than anyone in my life ever had.  Although maybe that's not saying much, because my own immediate family barely knows me, so by default I suppose, anyone who isn't my [blood] family that I let in, probably knows me better than my own family.

But now we're here.
Except now there's no "we."  It's just me.
Before it was us, and ours, and two lives joined into one (well, my life joined to his).
And now that bond that was made and formed in so many ways, over so many shared experiences, has been severed, and that is a wound that will never heal.  Ever.

Nature always used to make me feel better.  Being out in it.  Seeing it.
And this is how I know things are too far gone.
Because the last time I was out in nature, hiking alone, as I used to do so often before in past years...I felt nothing.  Not one goddamn thing.  I didn't feel at peace.  I didn't feel any joy.  I didn't feel content.  I felt absolutely nothing.

And that's how I know there is now no longer any point.
Because if the one thing that used to be able to make me feel better, without fail, evoked absolutely no emotions within me... Well.  That's just confirmation of how far gone I am.

I know I keep repeating myself, like a madman, insanity seeping through the cracked facade of my once-solid exterior, but I just cannot make sense of it.
I cannot understand how over and over and over he told me he was in this for the long haul, that he wasn't going anywhere, wasn't going to leave me, and then that's exactly what he did.
I cannot understand how someone can be so weak, to not be able to stick it out through the hard times, to follow through and stay, even if things seem hopeless.
I cannot understand how someone can tell me I'm the love of his life, his best friend, his soul mate, that he wants me, and then decides he doesn't want to be married to me anymore.

Never in a million years will I be able to make sense of it.
Never will I ever be able to comprehend how little I was worth to him.  Not worth following through on many things, but the biggest thing of all: the vows he made the day we married, where he promised to be by my side for better or for worse.

If you ever want to know the character of a person, all you need to do is observe them.
To know if they're a person of their word, a person who will follow through on what they say, you will see them do so.
If you want to know if things matter to them, watch where they invest their time and attention and money.  You will see them pour into the things they actually value.
If you want to know if they think of others first (i.e. can express empathy) or if they are self-centered, pay attention to how they respond.  If they first respond saying things like "same" or react in a way that points towards themselves, you will learn they are the first person they will be thinking about in almost any situation.

My whole life I have not felt wanted by my family, or even by other people in my life.  There are various reasons as to why this is, but the biggest indicator were the actions of those around me.  It would only make sense that the one and only person who was supposed to stick by my side, the person I saw and chose to love and know and spend the rest of my life with, would also not want me.
It follows the same pattern of everyone else.

Of course, I get it to a certain extent.
I was a failure as a wife.
I was a horrible example to him of what it looks like to love someone.  So often I got caught up in my own hurt, in my own feelings of not being wanted, of not being heard, of my feelings not mattering to him at all, that I withdrew.  I withdrew instead of working on making sure that I didn't make him feel that way.  And I failed in absolutely every way that mattered.
And the worst part is, is that being so caught up in my own hurt and the constant rejection, I didn't even see it until it was too late.  I didn't see that I didn't make him feel safe, that he couldn't tell me things he should have been able to tell me (if he truly saw me as his best friend/wife).  The biggest indicator was when he got back from deployment, and that very day I picked him up, he got absolutely drunk, and he had to be in that state to tell me he didn't feel safe to tell me things.

And I hate myself for that.
I hate myself for failing him.  I hate myself for allowing myself to feel things, which then made me feel everything, which made me feel rejected and hurt and not wanted.  I hate that I reacted so poorly to things in the past, that I made it unsafe for him around me.  I hate that I didn't push for us to get real help back when we were dating, because had I done so, I know things would have gone differently, and we would have worked out shit early on, rather than letting it pile up from basically day one, because he didn't see it as a priority, nor did he actually want to put in the work on getting better (despite him saying otherwise).

I am a failure in all aspects of the word.
And it makes sense why he doesn't want me, doesn't want to be married to me.
It makes sense that I stopped being his best friend, that he didn't like being around me, that he stopped wanting to have sex with me, that he prefers to be alone rather than being with me.

I hate people, too.
That's one of the things we bonded over early on (if you don't hate people you don't get it).
And I prefer to be alone, too.  I'm a major introvert.  Why wouldn't I prefer that?  But the thing is, is that I preferred being with him over being alone.  Because he was my person.
But I was never his.

There's a show that I've seen before called "Fleabag" which had some really great moments in it that talked about love.  One of the quotes goes something along the lines of "I don't know what to do with it...with all of the love I have for [him].  I don't know where to put it now."
And I don't.
There is never going to be anyone else.
He doesn't understand that. 
It was only ever him.  I saw him, and I chose him, and I rose in love for him.

But even more than not knowing where to put all the love I have for him, I don't know what to do with all this hurt.
To experience the betrayal of someone who told you they weren't going anywhere, who vowed to you before best friends and God that only death would part you, but instead, it wasn't death but their own inability to want to keep their promises...it feels like someone took out your brain from your skull, unwrapped it, and did a poor job of putting it back together again before stuffing it back into your cranium.
I feel like I am going mad, because I am trying to make sense of something that will never make sense.
I am drowning and suffocating in the madness that all this hurt and pain is producing.  Weekends are for drinking excessively, because I need to feel numb.  I've also taken up the habit of slapping my own face as hard as I can (easier to do when intoxicated) to stop myself from being a little bitch and feeling this much.  Anything to be numb and lessen the pain, because it is too much. 
It is too much.

No one can ever explain to me why he couldn't keep his word.  Why I never mattered to him.  Why the vows he made and the life we shared for such a short time wasn't worth anything to him.

There is no hope anymore.
There is no future.  No shared life.  No growing old and grey together, nor arguments about which one of us is going to die first because we don't want to see the other go.

So I have no competition now, but I'm going to go first.
I just need to get over this fucking fear of death.  It's going to happen eventually, so might as well make it sooner rather than later, right?
That's what I keep telling myself.
And it's true.
I just need to stop being such a fucking coward about it, and figure out the best way, and get everything sorted.

And then, at the very least, I will have kept my vows to him.
And when he finally finds the person who he wants to be with more than he wants to be alone (it will happen eventually, from one of the girls he finds to fuck), he can be free to be with her, because I will no longer be alive, so his vows will have been fulfilled.

I will conquer this fear.
And then I will finally be free of all this hurt.

My brain has been my enemy for almost half my life at this point.  There were a few years there (in very recent times) when it actually wasn't, but it has since become my enemy again.  And I've been thinking lately.  Too much.  But it happens nonetheless, and so I suffer the consequences.

I've had this blog for so many years, I don't recall if I've talked about the fact that I hate my birthday.  Or if I have talked about that, if I've talked about why I hate my birthday.  But, as it occasionally does, the subject has surfaced again in my brain, with additional realisations.  (After all, with everything in my life, every single thing is analyzed, over and over and over again, trying to make sense of why and how and what could have been done differently, what can be done differently to not have a repeat in the future, etc. etc. etc.)

I hate my birthday.  Anyone who knows me well will know this.  Although I think only a handful of people know why.  It took me a while to figure it out for myself, and this was after going to therapy, then not going to therapy anymore (due to moving), and somehow the residual effects of therapy lingered in my brain long enough for me to make the connection.

I grew up in a household of 8 people.  I'm the youngest of 6 kids.  The children outnumbered the parents, and for a lot of reasons, there wasn't enough attention to go around for everyone.  (Positive attention, I should say.)  From my perspective now, as an adult, thinking about the things I remember from my childhood, it seems like if us kids behaved/were good, we were otherwise ignored, because we were doing what was expected.  Good behaviour, doing the right thing, did not guarantee positive attention or affection.  (Negative/bad behaviour, on the other hand, definitely guaranteed attention, but not of the positive kind.  Ask me how I know.)  Because I was a temperamental child (I used to joke I should have been born with red hair), I got quite a bit of attention.  But not the good kind.  The kind that was a response to inflict disciplinary correction, as a way of making me behave (spoiler alert: it didn't work).  I think I fall into the cliche of the youngest child syndrome, which I absolutely hate, but here we are.  I didn't get enough attention or affection, so my subconscious child brain drew the conclusion that if I did bad, at least I would garner some kind of attention, albeit negative attention.  Et voila.

Until my birthday came around.

On my birthday, that glorious one day out of 365 days, the day was mine.  Parents and siblings alike acknowledged that I existed.  The attention I got was good and happy.  I was celebrated.  People expressed love.
And then the day was over.
And I crashed and burned.

I think I started hating my birthday when I was in middle school/high school.
Because it became too much.  The emotional toll of having one good day, just one, of people in my family paying attention to me, celebrating me, and then to have the very next day return back to "normal" where I was otherwise ignored (more or less), was such a hardcore crash and burn emotionally, that it became too much.  I hated that feeling on the day after my birthday that always came.  Always.  Without a doubt, the day after I would wake up and feel so...I don't know.  Empty?  Lost?  Unwanted?

This is what made me start hating my birthday.

And in thinking about it again recently, that's when I realised it.  My childhood consisted of this: 1 day out of the 365 days that exist in the year, I felt seen.  I felt wanted.  I felt welcome.  I felt celebrated.  Once that magical day ended, and reality came back like a punch to the face, I went back to being just another child in a big family, who really only got specific attention if I misbehaved.
Don't get me wrong.  There were other moments, I'm sure (I can remember just a handful, but maybe there were more that I don't remember), where I did actually get positive attention.  But those moments felt few and far between.  They did not outweigh or outnumber the negative attention, or the most common scenario of simply existing and not really being acknowledged one way or another.  Of course, there were also other moments where, while I was too young for my brain to consciously make the connection, where things happened that communicated to me that I wasn't welcome or wanted.  I'm sure those situations that happened were not the intentions of my parents.  I'm confident they did not mean to have their actions communicate to my small child brain that I was too much, or not wanted; intentions aside though, actions always speak louder than words, and the actions told me that I was too much, and that I wasn't wanted.

There is a reason (multiple reasons, actually, but I digress) that I'm not really close to my immediate family.

I have hardly felt seen in my life.

From not really having attention or affection growing up, or having too many people in the house that I was just another body/face that existed, or whatever the case was, who I was, my likes, dislikes, things I cared about, friends, whatever...those things were not paid attention to.  And it's funny, because I suppose people who experience this can react one of two ways.  The first type of person would experience this, and take that to mean it doesn't matter, and live their life in that same way: not paying attention to the people around them, not bothering to get to know them, to show that they care.  The second type of person would respond the opposite: they did not get the attention they needed, and so they made up their mind that the people in their life would not go through the same experience.  Instead, they would make sure to know the people around them, know their likes and dislikes, their favourite colour, what makes them happy, how to comfort them when they're sad...
I am the second person.

There have been a few moments in my life, however, where I have felt seen by my family.  By the people in my life.  And I have not forgotten those moments.

Like the time where my brother was dating someone, and he kept pushing me to try to talk to her.  And our dad warned him to stop pushing, because I wouldn't react well.  And dad was right.
Or the time when I was visiting family in the Midwest, and my sister-in-law told me that my brother had told her that I'm an extremely loyal person.  The fact that he knew that about me shocked me, because I don't think my family knows me very well at all.  But he was right.  And in that moment, I felt seen.
Then there was the time I was visiting home back in California, and I was with my parents, and we were trying to find a local coffee shop to go to (the one I initially was trying to take them to had closed sometime after I moved away).  And my mom suggested a place, and my dad shot down the idea, stating their coffee wasn't very good, and I wouldn't like that.
Or on that very same trip, my dad broke out the grill and made hamburgers, because my parents know that's my favourite type of food.
The time years and years ago when I had wanted to visit a friend I made from summer camp, to be at her high school graduation, but didn't have money and gave up on the idea, and my sister, out of nowhere, surprised me with a plane ticket to make the trip.  I don't even remember talking to her about wanting to do that, but somehow she knew, and she made it happen for me.
And the most recent time was a couple years ago now.  We were still living in upstate New York, and there was a specific place my husband had went for work.  He noticed the architecture in the area was beautiful, and knew that I loved architecture, and so one weekend made it a point to drive me out there, just to show me the beautiful homes.  I felt so loved and so seen in that moment.

Those moments in my life have been few and far between.
But I remember them.
Because it is not often in my life that I feel seen.
That I feel like I'm wanted, or that I matter.
And so I treasure those memories, those moments, for what they were.  Because it showed me, that against all odds (or so it feels), somehow people still paid attention to me, and saw me, and knew me, in some way.

And that means more than they will ever know.

 It's been a long time since I woke myself up in the middle of the night from hyperventilating due to a dream.  But it happened again last night.  All the times it's happened in the past year have been because of dreams with him in them.

The one last night involved me seeing him again.  I can't remember if other people were around; I think they were.  And he was talking as if we were just two old friends catching up.  Completely ignoring the history we have together.  And he started talking about the last girl he fucked, about how he was banging it out with her, and how it seemed like she was getting attached and wanted an actual relationship with him...I cut him off.  I don't remember what I said, but I think I just wanted him to stop.  I didn't want to hear how he moved on to fucking other women, just like he did before we were together.  And I couldn't just pretend like everything was okay, like hearing the man I would die for casually talk about his sex life outside of our no-longer-existent marriage.

I think in my dream I started crying.  I didn't wake myself up by crying (although that happened the last time), but I did wake myself up by hyperventilating.

...

I don't know how to not be married to him.

I don't know how to carry on with life, where everything about my life currently is not at all what I ever dreamed or imagined it would be.

I thought I found the man I loved.  The man who loved me.  Who called me the love of his life.  Who reassured me over and over and over again that he wasn't going anywhere...only to abandon me.

It's like no one understands how deeply and severely that absolutely fucks up your mind.

I only ever wanted a future with him.
To create memories.  To travel.  To take pictures together of the things we saw, of each other.  To have a happy, safe, loving home, filled with the babies he dreamed about wanting us to have.

And now I will never get to experience that future.

I have no future now.

I know he's no longer mine.
I know that whatever he does is no longer my business, and I have no say in it.
I know that.

And yet the thought of him being with someone else makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Even though I know I have no right or say in the matter.

How do people do this.
How do they love and allow that love to be torn out of their hands and carry on?  How do they pretend as if a limb that was part of their body wasn't ripped away, and the bleeding goes on and on and on and on, because that wound will never, ever heal?
Even worse, how do they put themselves through it again?

I cannot.
For several reasons.
Most of which have been laid out in previous posts.

I have been damned to grow old (if I actually do grow old) and to grow old alone.

If I were to ever have children, I would tell them to never, ever, ever give their heart away to someone else.  I would tell them that it's not worth it.  Because it's true: love equals pain.  

And the pain is too much to bear.