March 24, 2010

I had forgotten the rush of emotions when messaging over the Internet with someone of the opposite sex. The overall heady-sense of "wow, someone thinks I am interesting enough to talk to." I believe that I do well controlling the emotions of desire.

For the past six years the desire for a mate has been the strongest it has ever been in my entire life. After my three year...step away from common sense, when I finally got to the point I could breathe without pain and work through a day without crying, I shoved the desire as far away as possible. I feel that I have done a good job with this. I don't utter his name. My kids are not allowed to speak his name. I can have random conversations about him for a couple of minutes now, all without feeling like I will fall apart.

I spoke to someone randomly the other day via face.book. It was an intriguing conversation about very random things. It triggered the emotions from conversations I had with the man I will not name. They were both born in another country; the same country. They both have some of the same issues. It has unnerved me to my core. I want contact...but from who? From where? To what degree and why? I am back to the original feeling I had before my life and heart were ripped to shreds. I want.

I want. Those two little words rule my existence at the moment. Even if the man who shall not be named tried to come back into my life I would not let him. There is no way that I could ever trust him again, nor do I believe he ever loved me in any way. Oh, but did I love him. Just writing that sentence causes my eyes to tear and my soul to weep.

I heard my grandmother tell my mom a story once, when I wasn't quite a teenager. All her life, she said, she had told people that the first man she had been engaged to had died. It was not the truth, but in her youth the truth hurt too much. In reality he had married someone else. I wondered from that point on every time I thought about that conversation, how it must have made my grandmother feel.

I no longer have to wonder. I know the excruciating pain. I know why she wouldn't state his name. At three years post breakup I can still have my heart stop in my chest if I see someone who resembles him. If someone calls my phone and it is the same area code that he used to call me from I have to take a deep breathe before I answer the phone. My head knows. He will never call again unless I hunt him down and ask him to. I did two years ago. It was excruciating. I will never do it again. Every time I see a vehicle the same color and make as his my heart cries. I will never get over the hurt he caused me. It is not entirely his fault. I chose to walk down that path. I accept my part in this.

It took me months to get used to the fact that no one calls my phone any more. I am okay with that now. There is peace in not waiting for the phone to ring. Sitting at the computer became horrible. There were no instant messages to answer, no chat rooms with familiar gamers to talk to. My world became a black hole that I was sucked into and there was no light. I stumbled across blogs of kids fighting horrific diseases and focused my mind on those kids. I prayed for them, I followed them, and that became the new me. There were several of those children that I fell in love with. They fought their battles courageously. Most of them have given up their suffering to becoming completely healed in Heaven. Now that most of these children are gone, my father has been gone for over a year, and Autumn is about to graduate from high school, I find myself somewhere I have not been before. The battle with my ex is almost over. In 68 days he will forever be out of our lives. Tomorrow, we begin that process. The door closing on another chapter. What is next? Do I continue to believe in the unreality that there is someone out there for me? I think not. I know that I am not what men desire. Then that leaves little in the way of what can be. Do I believe that there is a purpose? A reason? There has to be or God would have taken my life already. I know my life is not what God had meant for it to be. I contaminated it. I made it what I thought it was supposed to be. I was so horribly wrong.

In the end, my life will be what God wants it to be after the decisions that I have made. I know that that does not include a mate. It does include my children and their lives. We are already moving on in that regard. Ashley is dating a wonderful guy that feels like he is already a part of our little family. Autumn is excited about moving on to college, as she should be. Still. There remains only one question.

Where do I go from here?