About a week or so ago, Michael and I were talking about how his and Amy’s relationship has become much less tenuous, and more a reciprocal friendship.  Which for all intensive purposes is a good thing.  There aren’t many divorced couples that have great working relationships, let alone genuine friendship.  Anyway,  she came by one day to pick up Matthew, and Michael went out to deliver Matthew and spent some time chatting with her.  The emotions that I felt were surprising at first, and I tried very hard to dismiss them and became angry with myself for feeling jealous.  I asked myself,  “Is this because they have so much history?  Is it because he lied to me and was still fucking her while he was supposed to be cultivating a trust based relationship with me?  Is this because I feel threatened by her and know that if I were to leave, he would return to pursuing an intimate relationship with her again? “  What I eventually came to was the real reason.  In the five months that I have lived here, she has showed no desire to have any sort of connection or relationship with me.  I am jealous that he has the opportunity to have friends that he can be himself around, laugh, share stories, understand and be understood.  I, for the most part live in a solitary environment.  Business relationships just do not provide that feeling of belonging and acceptance that true friendship does.  We as humans yearn to be connected to people that are similar to us and make us feel comfortable.  I am essentially alone for a large part of my life, and when I see that time is spent with her in that capacity when it could be spent with me, I get jealous.  Jealous that he is interested in talking and laughing with her and I don’t think he has laughed with me in a long while.  Jealous that I am left on the outside and feel as though there will never come a time when I will be allowed even to stand there and be a spectator.

It is very apparent that she still feels that I am to blame for the failure of their marriage, and perhaps her way of dealing with the failure is to blame someone that she has no realtionship with.  So, needless to say, this situation has been on my mind a lot lately.  I have been having dreams about her, and I… and sometimes they are thought provoking and promising, and sometimes they are down right scary.

I have had a dream about her and I standing in the yard, her yard digging a hole together, and placing a hatchet into the hole and covering it with dirt.  I wrote her a thank you note in responce to a dinner gift that she sent home with Michael, and told her about the dream.  Later that day I received a text from her simply saying “Thank you for the card”.

The dream that I had this morning is much more difficult and random.  I know that there must be several “worries” at work that are driving it, but I had to process it and imprint it in my mind, write about it and see if there was some way I could decode it for myself before I shared it with anyone.  Michael was a bit “different” when I would not share the dream with him this morning, but I felt it necessary to write and reflect on it before that happened.  I didn’t want any outside influences skew my view or perception of what my sub conscience mind was telling me at the time.

Michael, Shaelynn, Matthew (although I did not see him) and I were living if a big city and we were out and about enjoying the carnival area that was near our apartment.  My parents were there with us.  We were walking toward our place, and Shaelynn and I were out front.  There was a very large room with one of those giant swing rides in it, and we sort of layed over the seat of the swing and rode it for a few minutes.  Then all of a sudden we were in a pub type room that was crowded with people, and Shaelynn wondered off and was no where to be found.  Amy was all of a sudden there and I becamer aware of her, and it was obvious that we had never met before.  I was yelling for Shaelynn and she was not answering.  I couldn’t get Michael to pay attention to me. Perhaps he didn’ t hear me.  My parents were now gone, and the energy was that they were no longer there with us . Panic set in and I scrambled around the room looking for Shaelynn, until I got close enough to Michael to interrupt his conversation with Amy, and tell him that Shae was missing and I couldn’t find her.

Next we were in the apartment, and we had obviously slept.  It was morining, and everyone was waking up.  Michael was in the LR on his compter in his robe, and Amy was walking down the hall with her robe open and her breasts exposed.  She was wearing panties, and was not timid that I was walking up the hall toward her.  We pass in the hallway, and said nothing.  It still felt like she and I had no relationship.  Never a word between us.   From what I can remember things became tense, and she and Michael began talking.  I could hear them from where I was, but it was obvious that they didn’t know that I was listening.  Amy was asking Michael if I was ever going to fess up and apologize for ruining their marriage.   He said to her “I think she will eventually get to a place where she believes that apologizing to you will cause a door to open with regard to  your relationship.  What she doesn’t know is that once she makes that apologie, I know that you are going to attack her, and I will not be there to rescue her.  She caused this pain, I want her to feel it”  Amy grinned at him and they kissed.  Then he said ” Don’t worry doll, I am going to use her to fuck when I need a good release, and when her company is going really well, I am going to take her for all she is worth! Leaving her and her little brat with nothing.”  Amy fell down laughing,  I woke up.

Considering all of the worries that I have been dealing with lately, I am thinking more and more that this dream is a culmination of them all.  How is it going to reveal progress and growth?  I don’t know.  I just know that it will.

The big city and apartment and the fact that is was a mess tell me that I am concerned about not making enough money to contribute to the financial stability of this house and the possibility that we could end up moving out of it.

My parents – that is obvious.  I miss them

Losing Shae – Again, fairly obvious… she is about to be apart from me for 9 weeks.  Last summer was difficult, because I missed her very much, but she was with my Mom, and very well taken care of.  This summer she is with Dave and Cias, and I will have no real way to ensure that what I am hearing is the absolute truth.  They encourage her to lie so often I will forever be skeptical and feel out of control.

Michael distraction with Amy, and the like – Perhaps all of this stems simply from the fact, that I do bear some responsibility for contributing to the failure of thier marriage.  The right thing to do would have been to tell Michael that he is still married, and if he and I were to be together, then he should look me up when his marriage was over.  I just remember the extremem pain that I was in during the time that we didn’t talk, and that was what kept me from doing what is right.  I know now, and I knew then what the right thing to do was, and honestly if I had it to try over again the only thing that would get me through it would be knowing what I know now about how Amy views me.  If I had it to do over again, void of that knowledge, I would still not be strong enough to do what I should have.   All of the dream part involveing Amy seems to be Fear.  Fear that I will be rejected by her, and by Michael. Fear that all of the sacrifice that I have made over the last 2 years will be a huge waste of time.   Time that I really don’t have to waste.  I am not getting any younger, and essentially I am starting completely over again.  I still have little to no social life, and my business is now an infant again.   Fear…. Fear…. FEAR!  Why is it such a driving force in so much of my dream state?  When I am awake, I can rationalize and understand my fears and implement processes to combat the fear and reassure myself that those things will not happen.  Fear.  Damnit…. Fear…  I don’t want to face it any more.  It makes me weak, makes me self judgemental, emotional, scared, vulnerable, confused, needy, suspicious.  Why?  What does it mean?

1. Honesty.  I have struggled with this my entire life.  Breaking the pattern of overinflation, and deceipt has not been an easy one, and I am committed to not make those mistakes again with anyone. I am not willing to live in a way that would allow someone to dredge up past untruths of mine, and use them today to reiterate past occurrances that I facilitated.  If any person still has issue with past untruths of mine, it is their responsibility, right and obligation to make thier issue and concern known to me.  I will listen, validate and assure them that I am remorseful and that situation will not be repeated.

2.  Forgiveness.  What is in the past has been forgiven and forgotten.  I will not allow myslef to continue to apply past relationship and hardship to mold the way I react in situations today or in the future.  I will fail on occasion, but endeavor to find a way to look past that and move forward. I am not willing to live in a way that would allow myself or those around me to be unforgiving.  We are human and hence we will flounder and falter.  If someone trespasses against someone else, and they see the wrong that they have done, are remorseful and apologize, that sets into motion the responsibility of the wronged person to make a decision.  If they chose to forgive, then the trespass is dealt with to their satisfaction, forgiveness is reached and it is not used as ammunition to harm the other in the future.  If they chose to not forgive the trespass, that is made very clear by the wronged one.  A clear conversation about what is expected from that point on is warranted and necessary.

3. Love.  Unconditional.  I will not turn it off to anyone that is worthy of it.  There may be times when I draw back my connection to them so I can gain clearity and figure things out for myself, however I will not decided that I do not want to engage with them and make them feel unloved and unwanted. I am not willing to accept love from anyindividual or energy source that is in that person, or energy sources soul interest.  I have been used enough in my lifetime and have no desire to ever feel used again.  I will never use love as a way to punish someone and will not accept that as punishment from those that I love.

4. Fear.  It is odd to say that I am willing to accept fear, but the truth is, I would be lying if I said that I could not accept it.  There is a certain amount of fear that lies within every situation and in the past four to six months, I have felt a considerable amount of fear.  This fear has led me to behave in strange manner as well as recoil from life, work and realtionships, in an attempt to recoil from feeling the fear. I am not willing to accept fear as a means of communicating with those around me in an attempt to control their behavior.  All to often people want to not feel fear, it is painful, so they decide that because they are hurting, they are going to lash out at those around them in an attempt to share the pain.  I will NOT accept that behavior from myself nor engage in that activity with those around me.   This is by far the most difficult realization that I have made on this journey of discovery, and I undoubtably will struggle with this the most as it has the ability to cause issue in all of the other realms.

5.  Growth.  I am committed to learning a growing in knowlege every moment of every day that I am still breathing.  I want to know more about myself, those around me and the life journey that I have chosen.  Knowlege is power and I am the only person who can hold my power.  I am not willing to accept or surround myself with people who are not like minded and who do not seek the growth that they are capable of.  We are all flawed, and we will gravitate to simply dwelling in the place (intellectually) that we currently are.  It takes great work and introspective disection to seek out the necessary growth in ourselves.  It there is something that I struggle with I will explore it. If there is something that I am ignorant about, I will explore it. If there is something that I need to deal with first in order to mature and grow, I will explore it.  I will not accept or allow stagnancy in my life any longer.  I will keep moving forward.  It is my deepest desire that I will not be the only one.

Instead what I was faced with was a conversation that at first was completely one sided… he ranted and raved and deminished me and found fault in every little thing.  Rambling from one topic to another with the purpose of simply calling every little fault that I have out into the open so it could be chopped up in front of me.  I felt attacked, and he (the one who is supposed to love me) was doing the attacking and felt as if he had the right to do so.  What ever happened to haveing self control enough to say that “I am overwhelmed and I am not going to address this right now.  When I can sit and have a logical conversation with you, I will come back to you and we will have a discussion”.  Instead what I got is something that reminded me of abuse.  The other person seeing me as an object for their usage, and if I was hurt, it made absolutely no impact on how the giver was going to respond.  Most of the time the abuser found some sort of sick satisfaction in doling out their predicted punishment.  He has never made me feel quite this way before, and if this pattern of behavior continues, I am going to spend the rest of my life knowing that the one person who makes me whole is to intellectually immature to provide me with what I need.   I will withdraw and use this situation to my advantage if necessary, and get to a place where I can provide for my daughter and myself and be alone.

What I find unreasonable is that although I have committed to this man on  a deeper level than marriage, it sometimes I feel that committment is simply not reciprocated.  I wonder if he is outlashing at all of us around him because there is an underlying feeling of not being able to control other things in his life, and by verbally attacking those that he love, and making them feel deminished and isolated prevents them from causing any situation that is beyond his control.   All of this is of course pure speculation, because as I have now lived here for 8 weeks or so, I have realized that his communication style is so much more introverted than I ever imagined. It is going to be an immense amount of work for me to explore exactly what it is that he means, because he does not say exactly what he means.  There is so much hidden in what he says.  This is one of the sole contributors to Drama through misunderstanding.  I really never thought that I would be at this place, and quite frankly wish I wasn’t here (emotionally).

I feel compelled to write in the blog that we share, but must do more soul searching before I explore that.  He will most assuredly read it and have an opinion of what I post, and I want to be respectful while not compromising myself with my communication to him.  I simply can not swallow any more pain.  vomit really sux…

I thought that we are supposed to be a team, and deal with things together. .. Perhaps a closer representation of the truth would be that we are a team if it benefits you.  Helping you with your son, helping you with  your laundry, helping you with the housework (all of which I don’t mind right now because I have no other way to contribute) But when it comes time that I reach out and need your help, on something that is not of your choosing,  things never seem to go how I expect.  I wonder if perhaps my expectations of you are too high.

Here is what I feel. Read it if you care… Fucking don’t if you don’t at this point it makes no differnece to me at all.

My purpose was to take care of your child, and house, and work as much as I could on my projects and business pipeline so that I can eventually contribute to this household in a monetary way. All the while, I was thinking about how you were up at 3am, and spent the day in Dallas for work, and you would be tired and not want to deal with anything difficult this evening. So I stupidly thought that making a special dinner for you to enjoy when you got home was a good idea. When I was faced with the knowledge that I needed a bit of guidance from you and reached out to you, I never expected that you would become angry and dismissive of that request.

The last time this sort of Gumbo was made, you began it in the evening, and we ate it that same evening so the idea that it takes “days” to make is bullshit. I really don’t even want to add the words to this page in an attempt to gather my thoughts and make some sence of what the fuck just happened. I am not a quiter, and I don’t want to have someone around to hand hold me all of the time. Especially with something that should be simple enough to do. Sure cooking holds a lot of negative energy for me. We all know that, but is it so wrong for me to want to explore learing on my own? Is it so wrong that I should just lay down the spoon and never cook anything again that doesn’t come from a box or a can or out of the microwave, unless you are here to help me. I think not.

After what happend tonight and the past few hours has led me to realize that the self absorption thing is a pretty accurate ovservation from Amy.   Here is how it went down.

Tonight is poker night, and M goes to Bd’s at aroun 4:30 and drinks with his buddies until aobut 6.  At which time he has to come to the house and get matthew to take back to Amy’s house.  He shows up here in good spirits, and I have to share with him that his son tresspassed and that precipitates a session in the study talking to Matthew…. Which from anyones perspective can be and is difficult..

He then leaves to take Matthew home, and when he calls me to check in after dropping M off, he is argumentative…. the energy feels like he is purposely wanting to pick a fight.  So, I ask (like a fool)  how did it go at Amy’s house?  He shares with me that she is thinking about an alternate afternoon care for Matthew on the days that he is supposed to be with her.  Wednesday Thursday and Friday.  And that he feels like all of his hard work and effort is now unrewarded.  Lest there be no reward in the fact that I was right there with him, to support and understand it as best I could. .. Anyway, here in lies fall number two down the stairwell of negative energy..

Poker must have run badly because Shae was still swimming in the hot tub when he walks thru the door and announces his arrival.  Played 5 hands and threw in the towel… Sits down at him computer and starts typiing away… He is surfing and reading about some of the lifestyle groups around here in Austin, and when I ask him to share it with me, in an effort to spend time with him and learn along side with him, I simply get a very dismissive and flippant responce which he says ” I don’t want to “…  Earlier in the night he was just telling Matthew that no on in this house has the power or authority to be dismissive of another.  Yet that is the type of communication that I get.

All I wanted was to spend time with him.  If what he needed was complete quiet and self absorptioun, then all he had to say was that.  I am not so dependant that I need him to make me whole all the time, and I can go about my merry way and figure out my night on my own.

I have no interest, or time left to waste on self created drama.  From women or men alike, and if he is going to treat me like a second rate human than I will seek other people to surround myself with that wont.  I don’t care about his house or money, I will work and take care of my kid and be happy.  And not self absorbed…

March 13, 2009 – You know I have been thinking about what Amy said recently, and if it took her 12 years to figure that out, I am going to seriously consider her intelligence level.  She is exactly correct when she pointed out the fact that he is self absorbed.  It is coming more and more clear to me that he is not really interested in what other people around him are in need of.  All he is really motivated by is what he wants and needs.  If what someone else is in line with what he is interested in, then everything works out, but if not then he doesn’t really hold any care on concern for what the other person needs.

More and more often, I am finding that the things I should be relying on him for, like intellectual connection, and physical gratification are going unfulfilled.  I am looking at other men and wanting to spend more and more time investing in them, and less and less time investing in him.   This is a dangerous road and it is hugely concerning.  What happens next is unknown

Knowing that my love language is words helps me to realize that I need to hear my value in order to be filled.  I need to know that others find value in me and they admire, respect and adore me.  Just being told that once will never be enough to fill me, nor will it sustain me. Perhaps it is self judgment that leads me to say, how self centered of me to think that I should expect someone to tell me that they find value in me.  I suppose if that is self judgment, then so beit.  I simply wish to create a life for myself where I feel like my “love tank” is filled.

When M and I began our courtship, if you call it that, our entire relationship was based on words.  He would call me on his way to work in the morning.  We would chat on Instant Messaging. He would call me on his way to lunch and on his way back to the office after lunch. We would chat on IM in the afternoon, until it was time for him to leave work, and then we would talk again on the phone on his ride home.  The frequency of which we spoke only became more and more frequent as his relationship with Amy closed, and she moved out of the house.

I drew an enormous amount of love from those conversations as well as poured my heart and soul into them.  The time we spend learning about each other was the perfect avenue to make my love tank filled.  Now that we are together physically, I am learning more and more that not only is my love language “Words” but there is a part of me that needs to be connected to him physically as well.  This doesn’t apply to all of my loved ones.  It seems to be reserved only to him.  Oddly enough, I do not crave the physial connection of my little one.  I will give it to her because it is what she needs in order to feel loved, but my love tank is not filled by her connection to me.   His language is Acts of Service, so the more I travel through this journey of discovery with him, the more I find myself doing little things to help him feel my love.  Oddly enough there was one point in my life that I professed I would never dote on a man again, and here I find that I want to do it so he is loved.

Michael and I went to lunch together.  which was gracious of him,  I appreciate all that he does to try and make things enjoyable.  So I traveled back to the house with the purpose that I was going to revise an estimate that a client is waiting for, and while I did that I was going to listen to some Sandler sales training info.  I asked M last night how to access the old qb data, and he explained something that resembled a way to get to it.  When I tried to find it, I was lost looking around in different places on some “network” that I have no idea what to do or look for!  I even tried to restore an old version of it , and was unable to create even a back up cd…  So I switched gears thinking that I could just talk to him when he got home and get that figured out.  I went to look on my laptop and play a session of Sandler… much to my surprise, there is no itunes on my laptop anymore!  And when I look in the My Music files, I am unable to find anything that resembles any of my music or audio files at all.  In an effort to perhaps work the way I want to and on my terms, I Im him asking if he uninstalled the itunes, to see if there might be some suggestion…. which there was.  here is the thread for future reference..

GenieBraemer (01:51 pm): did you uninstall the itunes from my laptop?
AirhartMichael (02:09 pm): might have..  trying to simplify that laptop so I can reload it..  The new desktop should be your new “1 stop shop” for all things
AirhartMichael (02:10 pm): The music will still be there
GenieBraemer (02:10 pm): so where is all my music\
GenieBraemer (02:10 pm): where?
AirhartMichael (02:10 pm): but there is a shit pot of music on the M: drive
GenieBraemer (02:10 pm): I am looking on the M and none of mine is there
AirhartMichael (02:10 pm): removing itunes would not have removed the music
GenieBraemer (02:10 pm): ok, I do not know where else to look to sync my ipod
AirhartMichael (02:10 pm): I can work with you on it tonight if that helps..
AirhartMichael (02:11 pm): or if it’s a high priority now, you can reinstall iTunes on the laptop
AirhartMichael (02:11 pm): and I’ll just pull it back off again later
GenieBraemer (02:11 pm): I ws just looking to listen to someting from sandler and cant find it
AirhartMichael (02:11 pm): check in MY DOCUMENTS
GenieBraemer (02:11 pm): wasted too much time already so don’t worry.. well figure it out later.
MוIairhartmichaelGenieBraemer (02:20 pm): I am going to need you to show me how to get the file I need from the old qb files as well.  A bride is waiting on a revision of her estimate that I did on the old version of qb, and I have tried to figure out how to get to the correct thing.  Cant do that either
AirhartMichael (02:20 pm): okay..  I am not in a place to deal with that right now.. sry
GenieBraemer (02:20 pm): I didnt say right not
AirhartMichael (02:21 pm): okay..  so perhaps you add it to the ToDo list and make a note to tell me about it when I get home?
GenieBraemer (02:21 pm): Sry just frustrated ttyl
AirhartMichael (02:22 pm): So perhaps when I am working on IT stuff in the evenings, we do a better job of focusing and using my time more efficently?
GenieBraemer (02:22 pm): I told you when you got home that I neede that file, and you explained how I could do it…. I tried and cnat
AirhartMichael (02:23 pm): So make sure the TO-DO list is accurate and we track directly down it.. no distractions.. Sean, Marie, whatever…
AirhartMichael (02:23 pm): I can only do so much for so many people in a 24 hour period..
GenieBraemer (02:23 pm): exactly why I should be able to do things for myself
AirhartMichael (02:23 pm): nice..   so you can get frustrated trying to do PC stuff instead of selling or designing..  good plan
AirhartMichael (02:23 pm): ttyl
GenieBraemer (02:24 pm): I was trying to sell michael. revising an estimate is selling and so is refreshing my memory of sales technique
AirhartMichael (02:24 pm): ttyl
GenieBraemer (02:24 pm): there is nothing to design.
GenieBraemer (02:24 pm): protea12
GenieBraemer (02:24 pm): sry
AirhartMichael (02:24 pm): logging off AIM now

So,  realistically, what he was saying was “Genie, why are you not selling?”  I’ts frustrating because he assumes that I should be selling in his way and on his terms and that is just not the case.  I have a successful way of doing things, and I am an individual person who is very compititant and capable.  I should NOT have to adapt the way I am doin somehthing from day to day and still be expected to be successful .

Moving half way across the country for the love of my life seemed easy in word, before I actually took action to make it happen. When someone would as me, “Why would you do that?” I guarded my response. Not entirely proud that I was looking at the move mostly because I was in love, and yearned to be close to the one that I am soul connected to. I told myself that there was nothing else I COULD do. When in fact, the harder thing to do would have been to stay there, and not persue the possibility of having that one person that completes me. That would have taken strength. Or perhaps that would have been weak from another perspective.

“It took balls to do that!” I have heard that more than once since I have begun sharing my story with those interested. At first, my response was dismissive and I could not really understand how someone could view what I did as “ballsy”. Now that I have begun to live my decision, and feel the full weight of it, I am realizing that Strength, or Balls, is really what it took.

I left my family behind. Even though our relationships were shallow and guarded, they are my blood and a part of who I am. I know it took strength to leave them, because in the last few days that I was there, I could not bear to be involved in family affairs, it would send me into an emotional pit from which I would retreat and be alone. Leaving them took strength. I left my first born daughter behind. My sun, the beginning of my Motherhood. Of course the choice to stay was hers, founded from perhaps a selfish perspective, and fear or hurt. But leaving her took strength.

I left the few friends that I held close to me behind. Although; divorce, life and work had taken it’s toll on the number and quality of the friends that I had, I still left them behind. Perhaps not quite as difficult as leaving family, but hard none the less.

I left the empire that I was creating for the past 14 years of my life behind. My business, built on an idea that I was the engine. The creative brain and caring advisor, to clients with basic working knowledge on a budget. This continues to be difficult. I constantly remind myself that each day brings new opportunities here in Austin, and the strenght I can gain here is going to forever be linked to my hard work on Blossom’s Wedding Flowers. My brain has a tendancy to ask me…. but you are not making any money here! How strong can you be when you are completely dependant on someone else? This is what causes me to pull up my boot strapps, sit down at my computer and begin looking into ways to generate revenue for myself quicker than I did in Orlando. I do owe a small bit of gratitude to Dave, as if her were not there for that period of time to support our family, while I started Blossom’s and gained the experience necessary to be self supportive.

Believe it or not, as I sit here writting essentially to myself, I am crying. Feeling the weight of the strength that it takes to make such a bold profession of love and change. Reliving all of the decisions, and emotions attached to them causes me to reflect on the Strength that I must have found, from somewhere.