Pity party, table for one

Do you find yourself in those moments when you are doing something super mundane, like driving home and a thought or memory strikes you (almost strikes you down)? That happened to me the other night. I was driving home, my usual route. Got to the road from town where I turn left to head out to my house and was hit by a painful bolt of lightning. If I turned right, I would be headed to HIS house. My car almost went on autopilot……all of a sudden, the flood of the happy feelings and anticipation that I used to have when I’d go to his house were painfully gone. Or I guess not gone, just turned into something else. It took a long time after my divorce, but those painful moments had lessened, had almost disappeared after I met HIM; now they are back, fiercer and more vengeful than ever.

The perils of living in a very small town is the chance that you will run into your ex. My FH moved out of the area to a degree (just to a different “suburb”) so it’s very unlikely I would see him unless we plan it. Now, I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, worrying that I’m going to run into HIM (or them) - that happened once and it was miserable. I have a local place that I like to go, have lots of friends that I will inevitably run into and shoot the shit with. It was my safety zone after my divorce. Then HE and I would go there; HE became friends with my friends. We were an item after all (I thought). After he ghosted me, I ran into them once there. HE could barely look me in the eye and they left shortly after I got there, thankfully. No words were exchanged. But later I was PISSED and SCARED that it would happen again. Pissed because HE knows that’s “my” place – GO SOMEWHERE ELSE, ASSHOLE. Scared because it hurt SO BAD. In a previous post I commented about the dog with her face smeared in shit. That moment, along with the Facebook posts, were what made (make) me feel like that.

We've had some beautiful weather lately. I’m looking forward to late Spring and Summer when we will finally dry out and soak up the sun. I’m also dreading it with every fiber of my being. Right before shit imploded, he bought a street legal “dune buggy”, for lack of a better term. We talked about how I needed to get a helmet and heavy jacket to wear while we would go for rides in it. The vehicle came, but I never got my ride. My first indication that something was more amiss than I realized was seeing them in it, over Christmas, in a Facebook selfie. So I imagine I’ll see them tooling around in the great weather, either in that or on one of his motorcycles (one he ironically bought from me; my FH left his motorcycle at my house and was interested in selling it, so I brokered that deal without them having to meet each other); the living embodiment of a mid-life crisis - a 40 year old man with his 22 year old girlfriend in his sports car or on his crotch rocket.

The thought of seeing them makes me want to throw up.....unless it happens to be a situation where she's having a temper tantrum at him in the buffet line.....

I was discussing these losses and feelings with my childhood friend Melissa, who went through something far worse than what I have. She married her childhood sweetheart; spent nearly her entire life with this person, only to have him cheat on her and leave her in his wake, with some pretty severe PTSD. My heart aches for her; unless you go through something remotely similar it’s impossible to convey how devastating it can be, and the long term affects iy has on your psyche.

I wonder for myself if part of the problem is losing a husband, then losing another perceived future in relatively short order. Who knows…. What I’m trying to remind myself of is a quote I’m plagiarizing from one of my favorite blogs on the topic of heartbreak – https://postmalesyndrome.com

"Realize that if you have to explain to a grown adult why their lack of empathy, integrity, respect and honesty was hurtful, they’re not going to EVER understand what you’re saying in the way that your heart hopes they will".

So it’s time to try and start turning this around, glean some benefit for all the great ideas HE had and take inspiration from the amazing ideas HE wrote all over my windows. I hope I can. I am hoping writing about it helps. I look forward to the moment of indifference when the thoughts creep in.