2/3/22

Yesterday I started to write about Patty. A deep dive in the years of memories to attempt to see where, when, or even if she actually loved me or was trapped in our relationship. I know how I felt from the first day. I know how her slightest touch comforted me and helped quiet my mind. I didn’t write this to torture myself, rather I have been trying to do a process called Radical Acceptance. I had mentioned this a while back and the other day I finally got a book about it. Now I’ll be the first to admit I’m a little dense when it comes to reading and learning. I have always been what they call Kinesthetic.

Kinesthetic – Taking a physically active role, kinesthetic learners are hands-on and thrive when engaging all of their senses during course work. These learners tend to work well in scientific studies due to the hands-on lab component of the course.

So needless to say, doing this on my own is kind of breaking my brain. The thing is, I have to embrace the pain and work out the cause of it all to come to grips with the why and what of it. I told you it makes my head sad. Who knows, maybe I am doing it all totally wrong, need to read on.

A lot of people understand what I am going through but, for some reason I want those close to me to understand. I want my Sister to say she’s sorry and she’s here for me. My friend’s the same. They all have known me all my life and they know who I am and how things effect me. Yet for some reason a 20+ year relationship with a person, who you have 4 children with and made no secret about how you felt about her, your children, and them, doesn’t matter and I should have just brushed it off like dirt.

I just wrote a long Fuck You post on FaceBook. Found out one or more of my “friends” were running to Patty and telling her anything I may say about my feelings on the whole divorce for the past 3 years. I held nothing back, I don’t care anymore. Feelings for the village I grew up in and where I chose to raise my family in and how people knew us. Almost everyone in that village knew us, but chose to not say or inform me about her “affair”. I had know these people all my life. I went to church with them, school with them, ate beside them and they just chose to ignore it. I blasted her work. All the people who work there and knew us for years. They always a loving couple and children, but chose to “not get involved” and even encouraged her relationship with him. Even before the “break” they knew and all just stood there, with their fake ass smiles as they saw me and my kids when we stopped there for items or to pick her up. I called out the fakes who “had my back” yet were no where to be found when I needed them the most. The liars who said up and down how they would get together with me and have me over if they ever came home to Silver Creek, only to come home and totally ignore me like the rest. I yelled at the world.

Is this helpful? Should I have done it? I don’t care. For 3 years these “friends” have known what I was going through, how it was breaking me, and the dark places I found myself and they did nothing. Oh the occasional, “it gets better” was said. Yet the same one’s would tell me how they just didn’t do things because of covid, yet would post pictures of the party they had or the bar they went to. The same ones would say they weren’t looking to date, when all I wanted to do was go for coffee and talk, yet would find themselves in new relationships days later. And, of course the ones that would messenger me and would get me to tell them my feelings and then run right to Patty. Could we have reconciled? Could we have gone to counselling? I guess not when people were filling her head with doubt and encouraging her affair.

I talk about it, obviously, but I have become numb. Over the course of the last few weeks, I have tried not to. I have wrote here and in men’s divorce groups to try to hold onto my feelings and empathy. I just don’t have it in me anymore and I want to not feel, anything.

Happy at Home

That really sucks that so many people knew what she was doing and didn’t bother to tell you. Maybe some just wanted to stay out of it, but it sounds like you were friends with some who knew. Yes, that would bother me a lot too.

Sisyphus

This is hard. This is work. This is scary, but you do not turn away, and we are glorified in your presence. Tears make us strong, not weak.

Trust is fragile. Sorry you found out the way you did. But it is also freeing, if one lets it push us a little further into the ‘fuck it everybody already knows’ area.

See, the last rap battle in 8 Mile, that is a great trick. I am not catholic, but my mom was until she balked them to have me. They have this idea of confession, and it really helps. We all need a witness to our life, that is why we feel lonely and confused and betrayed when who we thought we could trust to tell us the truth so we could make our tomorrow selves a better us. But in the end, it is all just data to be reviewed, tears to be shed, giggles to be had, and stories to be told.

I for one, and proud to be your friend, as it were, if only so that I can read this. Thank you for sharing what is obviously difficult. We applaud you in your efforts at the Mangum Opus! The Great Work

Are not the contradictions that are evident in ourselves and others the most fascinating?

We have vented. We felt good to do it. We regretted hitting send shortly after we were glorified in hitting send. This is a contradiction that made us feel dirty, for it is so obvious that we both want and do not want to say these things. Odd, yes?

The only way to not feel, I am afraid and have found, is to fall upwards. See, the metapor I hold onto is the hilltop, I am king of the hill, and the only thought in this space is bliss or hope or courage or whatever I am thinking about to uplift my spirit, you know? I feel ONLY that, when I am wise, and I am uplifted. And those other emotions and thoughts have to go somewhere, right? Like my Rock, in the myth of my name, they roll back to the bottom of the hill if I am not there to push them to the top.

But I will always fall, yes? History says and immediate experience agrees I will always fall, so I should be aware what will greet me at the bottom of the hill, and I should be ready to start pushing that rock, because what is at the bottom of the hill, which is underwater, are all the thoughts we hid from ourselves. And they will eat us alive and surprise us, but if we are ready, we can understand some of them and take them also to the top of the hill next time.

This process, my friend, will never end, as far as we can tell. But like a sunrise, don’t we revel in the opportunity to do it again?