A shift

Aug 23, 2018 by horsesrcumin 15 Comments

I went to a movie last night. One of the worst things I have ever seen. Truly turgid, and my skin was crawling with both how vapid it was, but also the triggers within what might loosely be described as the “plot.”

It was Book Club. And I arrived to see a group of older women I know from my hometown going also. They got chatting to me, and when the movie had my body on FIRE with the pain of watching more old people online trawling for dates (I often wonder, when people ask how Rog and Trinket met, “oh, on Match,” about the left out bits. “It’s such a cute story really. I was a lonely widow, looking for love, he was in a relationship of thirty years with an awesome woman who he kept cheating on, she’s completely devastated, suicidal, in fact, but she kept forgiving him, and anyway, we just clicked. Romantic, eh?”) I could not leave the cinema – something I have never once done, but would have last night – because they would have seen me leave. The whole audience would not have had a member under 50 there, and the lame sex jokes were deemed to be totally HILARIOUS by the WASPY crowd. Ugh, it was horrendous.

I came home, wanting to end my life. Again. I mean really, I was in the absolute pit, and thinking, why the FUCK did I go and see that??? I thought of our friend, who topped himself after his wife left him, and thought, once again, fuck, I am going to end up like him.

When I pulled into my driveway, my daughter’s car was there, and I thought she must have met a friend and left her car there, as she had messaged me earlier about going to the lakehouse with friends. But, she was sitting in my lounge room, with the heat pump on, cuddling the dogs and warming up my house – it has turned cold again.

Man, I have never been so pleased to see her! She was waiting for her friend to finish a dinner with her family, as her brother had just returned from a long period overseas. They were driving down later. We got chatting, and I knew her presence had saved my life last night. We talked about our upcoming trip together, and the plans she has made with her friend’s flatmates, as we are flying down to her city, to surprise her for her birthday. I have booked myself into an Airbnb, a massage and a cycle tour of the city so far. We talked about her rainy day at the beach, and nattered away about her work. She mentioned that she had seen her aunt while she was visiting her dad the day before, and I said, “he has a cool house, eh?” She agreed, and said it was a nice time, and we didn’t say much else about that. Later, she said that she was surprised by Dad never once saying, my house, or I go here and do this, EVERY time, it was, we did this, Trinket and I go here often. D thought, wow, no me, or I. I was stunned, and silent. I had not said a word to her about this when I noted it too, on my visit with him. We had a brief chat about self worth, a sense of being an individual, and being strong within our own sense of identity, of who we are as independent human beings. I got a tad wobbly, she started talking about how she thought she would never be fully over her last boyfriend (it’s been a year) and we had a discussion about love, and whether it was ever okay to take someone back who has treated you poorly. She is worried that if Lenny asked, she would take him back. She has asked me before if I would take Dad back, and I have said, I really don’t think so, not without him doing a fuckload of work on himself, to understand his neediness and lack of being able to stand without a woman to prop up his ego. I admitted to her last night that I am also worried that I might, but without any reason to, as I know he no longer loves me, and is madly in love with Trinket, so there is no danger there. Her answer to that was, I don’t think that is the case, Mum. I think he still loves you, but he got scared you were never going to be able to forgive him. I did not see him looking like he was madly in love with her, I think it is just like an comfortable old couple thing, he just wanted peace. I then asked if she had met Trinket, that I hoped she had, as it was inevitable. She answered that she does not see a time where she would want to meet her, that she thinks she is cruel and lacking in any self respect. That she had messaged her father before she went down there, telling him she did not want Trinket there if she came. He was preparing dinner, and said, Trinket is on her way, she’ll be here soon, when D looked at him and said, no way – I am not meeting her. He frantically grabbed his phone, messaging her to turn her around.

I have accepted that this woman – who chose to be involved with a man who still lived with and made love with his partner of three decades (even after I told her when I was in deep shock, gently but clearly, that she was the side fuck) the woman who bore his children, gave up a career, worked hard alongside him, you know the rest – will be in my children’s lives. It sucks. But is the reality. I can’t imagine what it felt like to be driving to, or about to drive to, the house of the man I have fallen totally in love with, and told, no, you can’t come because my kid does not want to know you (because you are a cheating whore…) I would die inside.

Anyway, the point of this post is to try to articulate what happened next. The shift, I speak of in the title of this post. D left, and I was feeling pretty shit. And then, I thought, you know what? You have been so anguished, so suicidal, so panicked at why you are reacting this way to a cheating man, a man who has cheated on you many times, who first cheated on you just weeks into being totally head over heels in love with him, who you have been trying to learn to hate, and you don’t hate him in the slightest. You still love him! So, let’s break this down a little bit. You have given him so much rope over the years, and instead of him hanging, you are nearly hanging yourself, quite literally! Why? Why is this still hurting you so very deeply? And I realised that I have been using this blogging space to try to get the anger out, to try to summons up some hate for them both for being such selfish cunts.

And I don’t hate either of them. I think he is unaware of his own shit, and just ran. He ran away from what was feeling too much, but he made sure he didn’t run until he had a safety net to catch him. And she is just a needy soul, who has been easily roped by his lassoo. A soft target, a kind person who just hasn’t turned the microscope light on yet – if she ever does. I don’t think she understands she has one.

I remembered then what we discussed when I asked him why he did not leave me for Leanne. He wanted to. He said he just realised she was a bitch. So, Trinket is not a bitch, she is a suburban housewife, with small needs, and no real desire to see the world. When we had that discussion, I remember him saying, “I could picture me leaving you, and it had been a year or two into living with Leanne (see, he never thought to leave and be alone, always visualising what it was like to be with another woman…) and I would meet you for coffee one day, to talk about the kids, and you would walk in, looking stunning, slim, stylish, perfectly made up, with glossy hair, and beautiful clothes, in heels, looking radiant and confident, happy. And I would go, “oh fuck, I gave that up, for this. To be hen pecked by an ungrateful woman who doesn’t even like to fuck that much.” And the funniest thing was, I thought the exact thing! I KNEW I would flourish if he left me! It isn’t arrogance, I don’t think, I just knew that I had become his damn mother, I did EVERYTHING for him, and fuck all for me! I thought, how freeing? I could go back to uni, and get a good career, lose weight! Ha! And one bonus would be that he would see me for all he held me back from.

So, this reaction, this time, when he really did leave me, has been so disappointing to me! I thought I would be flying by now.

And I thought, why? Why has this happened? I realised I found the courage and strength to do some of the things I wanted to do, while we were still together. I said, hey, I want to go to university, and achieve something for me. I gave myself permission to do that, do something for me. And I did it, taking it further than I planned, in gaining a Masters degree with First Class Honours as well. I worked my arse off to achieve that. I hoped he would admire my determination, my intellect, my resilience and perseverance. He didn’t. He just resented the time away from home it took. Petulant wee boy.

But, as I said, I had a shift. I thought, you know what? I think you have needed this time to scream, punch, be totally full of fury at the injustice of all of this, how hard you worked, how you identified that your pain was very place based, and were excited by the prospect of him thinking about new ventures, in new regions, new challenges, and leaving the place of all that pain. And that time might be nearing its end. You still feel completely devastated – maybe you always will. But remember who you are. You are an independent woman, who survived this once. It took you eight long years to rebuild a sense of being “good enough,” after he tore you down, but you did it. You can do it again. Actually, not only CAN you, but you HAVE to. He took the easy route. He found a soft landing, where he doesn’t have to deal with the pain, he can just revel in all that lovely new lovey dovey shit. You have to FEEL it all. Every bit of the pain. Again. And yes, this time it is even worse than what you endured last time. When you curled into a ball regularly, howling your eyes out, when you tried to take your own life – twice – to try to stop the damn agony. But, you made it out the other side. Only to have him shove you down the stairs again, right to the bottom, like sliding down the longest snake on a game of snakes and ladders, just when you were just a couple of squares from the finish.

IT SUCKS!

But, you are strong enough. Loving him was not a mistake.

I don’t know this guy, had a quick look at his Facebook page, but this is simple, and makes a bit of sense, even if it is a bit cliche. I loved. I trusted. I gave him a second (third, fourth…) chance. He chose not to be the man he could have been, had he just LISTENED to me, and BELIEVED in me.

As I was working through some of this stuff today, I was getting such good messages from a friend who has seen this journey, and my unravelling, when he announced he did not want to be with me anymore. She said, amongst other things, to me today that, “she really is nothing but a distraction from reality for Rog. He wants what you guys HAD, but she’s not you. He says ‘we,’ not because Trinket is important, even if he thinks she is right now, but because he has been a we for decades. I truly believe that they have nothing like you two have. I use present tense on purpose, because you can’t just erase all those years. Rog knows this, but is just an opportunist. He has created a strange fantasy version of how to get out from under the burden and be happy.”

I know these things. And I know he is feeling the most peace he has for some time, because, as my friend pointed out here, he was living under a burden. What Roger conveniently forgets is that he created that burden, by cheating on me for a long time, and that I carried the greater part of the burden that I never invited into my, or our, life. And yet, he has now ducked out, leaving me to keep going with that burden. It helps me mentally cut and paste Trinket out of the picture. She is a tool he used to pole vault out of a situation he felt uncomfortable in. That is all. She is a pawn.

Hey, I actually get it. He couldn’t do it anymore. He ran. He ran away from the label of being that cheating arsehole who lived down the road. He ran away from having to face my friends, who know I am a kind, loving person, who never deserved the treatment I received. He ran away from the fact that he knocked me unconscious, telling Trinket that he was provoked (!!!) He looked for peace, and he found it in the beige mouse. I get it. It’s safe. It’s soft. It’s comfortable. It’s a destination.

But, will there be the deep connection, the passion, the love for the arts, the memories, the laughter, the satisfaction of beating the odds?

No, he gave all of those possibilities up.

My friend, Bella, messaged me to let me know our race filly was having a jumpout at the track in the morning. So, as I try to do more and more – like I have to two invitations today – to a concert, and an art exhibition opening – I said, okay, I will meet you there. I got up early, and drove to the town where the track is, and watched her do her thing, before driving straight to work.

It was a funny morning being there. When I first met Roger, I was a trackwork rider, at this very same track. The people there are “my people” – but not anymore, it’s been too many decades. And we had horses in work with local trainers for decades, so used to go together to watch them gallop. This was my first visit to watch trackwork in the morning without Roger.

It is freezing here again, and despite many layers, a warm coat, a beanie, and warm socks, I was shivering. Bella walked alongside me and said, “you need to put on some weight, you look way too thin.” Something that has NEVER been said to me ever in my lifetime! And I froze at work today, every time someone opened the office door, despite the heat pump cranking.

My hairdresser’s apprentice asked me tonight if I had been on any dates yet. I just laughed and said, no, I don’t feel either ready, or the need! Why would I take on another manchild? I have freedom and agency, and don’t have to accommodate another person’s needs, or the judgement of their children, etc. No. Not a requirement in my life right now.

So, that is why I don’t hate Rog. He was just too weak to see it through. Like I want to die, he wanted to run. Both of us were just trying to leave the pain behind us. His way was to hurt me further, but he was just trying to self preserve.

Only time will tell whether it was the right move for him. I know he is content right now, and he wasn’t for a while there, he lost faith in me, and now he has stopped loving me, and decided to choose to love someone who felt safer to him. The bonus is, he is getting attention, sex, and told that he is so wonderful. The softness. Whereas I am having to do it the hard way. On my own, without anyone to tell me I am beautiful, sexy, wanton, lustful, clever, funny, resourceful, wistfully wonderful ……