Love and War

Love and War- This would seem to be the worst summer I have had in many years.
But in reality it only looks that way to my broken heart and wounded ego. If you compare it to last summer, which I remember to be the best summer of my life, there is a huge vastness separating then from now.
Last summer, Chris swept me off my feet. He consumed me. He ravished my body and claimed my heart.
He filled my world with beauty, domestic bliss and an unnerving sense of permanence.

I loved how our love seemed to motivate him. He was relentless and I was the envy of all my friends for being gifted by this attractive man who by all accounts appeared to love me.
He generously re-built and beautified much of this home.
A home, which now stands, as an empty testament and witness to the most profound scorching of an innocent heart that one should need never endure.

This man, my partner, my source of pleasure, my Godsend, became the most vile, hideous, contemptuous creature that at first my blind love and devotion could not detect.
He raped my mind, my soul and every fiber of my being.

I can now see the signposts as the reviews of the events unfold in my mind. He loved me too quick, too hard. Yet it was not me that he loved as he claimed. He loved only himself.
The self that felt omnipotent, creative, lustful, and proud.
And yes for all of these things he deserved to love himself.

Yet little did I know of the darkness that lay waiting in his soul.
It crept out little by little at first. Like a low fog on an autumn morning.
Insidious, vague and dangerous.
The mental gymnastic and hoop jumping that I engaged in was just the beginning of my endless torture.
Not only did he long to possess me, control me and feed his hunger through me, he tried to annihilate me.

He feared me. He feared my purity. He feared to be exposed as the one with the darkness in his heart.
So he attacked. He dodged and he played with same amount of passion that he initially had reserved for his opening game. The game, that captured my heart into his web of deceit.

By all accounts I was a worthy opponent. As was he.
Throughout our time together we had played many games of chess, cards, darts, and other forms of amusements. Not once did I feel to be at a disadvantage, in fact at times I felt very confident of the challenge.
I began to see his strategies, his sorely suffering at any losses. He did not like to loose.

I see now that it was in these moments that I compromised my position. I so desperately wanted his approval and affection and made some kind of deal with myself, although unconsciously, to not challenge him beyond his ability to accept defeat. I believe it is also at this time that he picked up on this opportunity and his black heart hooked into this weakness of mine. Knowing now that he could defeat me, his tangled mess of locked up fears began their quest.
A quest for healing, their desire for release and expression at any cost.

Yet Chris did not recognize this as a calling from his soul, a lovers path to transformation. He only felt this disquieting urge as an unbearable pain to be tamped down as to not expose his abundance of nasty karma. Karma gathered throughout his life as a predator of woman because he is a “ first stage love” junky.
So instead of looking within himself he did what every fear based player does. He turned with a vengeance against what he perceived to be the cause of his pain. Me!

At the time, I will admit that I played right into his hand. I was so blinded by my need for his approval that any scent of his lost affection could send me into a spiral of my own fear. I became his contemptuous slave. He began to mistreat me with his words and actions. He accused me over and over and over of being unfaithful. He would leave me for days and not respond to my pleas for understanding. He excited my warrior nature, which caused me to engage in his self-inflicted battle in order to hide my own vulnerabilities. He sliced me through and through until I lay bleeding and defenseless.

I assumed the position of constantly needing to defend my honor, my character, my loyalty, thoughts, words, actions, everything about me was suspect! He withdrew his love and affection. I believed I was not beautiful enough, sexy enough smart enough, or humble enough, tall enough experienced enough, never enough of anything.
I died.
He took pleasure in wounding me. How dare I be the catalyst to evoke his inner demons?

Throughout this process I had a feeling or more of a realization, one I did not want to accept.
This was a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black! He lied. He shape shifted. He danced around the playing field all the while feeling sorry for himself. Bitch! She deceived me! She fucked this guy and that guy and all this time I have been so good to her. He ranted and raved and slandered my reputation to all that would and could hear him. He wallowed in self-pity like a wounded man destined for suicide. All his self-inflicted fears, phobias and illusions were cast on me and I was painted with a hard red brush. I was to be exiled and banished and laid out for slaughter.

All this time I craved for his love. A love that he so callously dangled like a token, a gift that he new would leave me wanting more.

Of course it is all in the light of retrospection that I can now see more clearly.
At the time, even just a few short days ago, denial was still my double-edged sword. Denial that my beautiful heart could be so mistreated by the one I loved so deeply. I prayed and hoped and wished for him to see, To really see that all of his posturing and accusing and fears were all an illusion made up by his own mind, in an attempt to not have to face his real enemy. Himself!

So what does he do instead of looking love in the face and seeing the truth? He finds himself another victim!
And woe is he. His demons are following right along with him and this time he will not have had any time to lay them to rest. He thinks that this Band-Aid kind of healing on his gaping open wounds is going to fix the mess he created. What a fool!

So is she. I warned her. I told her during my first phone call to her that he had lied to her the first night he met her about being single. I told her I was his woman and that we needed to work this out. I cried on the phone for Christ sakes. She knew I was in love with him, she knew he was looking for solid ground, away from a battleship on a rough sea. She knew she was the calm port. And that is exactly the game she played.

“Oh! I feel so good around her. Oh’ she listens to me. I trust her. She is so down to earth. Oh’ she is just the way you used to be, before you changed!”

O.K. Ya, let’s see now. This woman who YOU gave your phone number to one night at a bar.
Backtrack.
You were at the bar because you couldn’t bring yourself home. You were still so distraught about your imaginary visions of me fucking your cousin that you couldn’t bare to look at me.
O.K. anyway.
You meet this woman and suck her into your web. You give her your number and then when you get home to your apartment you call me and leave an impassioned cry of a message about how you made a mistake, you love me, need me, want to be with me. And so on.
[An apartment set up for the work crew that you so conveniently spent more and more time at.]
She calls you the very next day, Not too desperate!
You call and tell me all of this. Why?
To save you, to punish me, to throw salt on my wounds, to breathe fire into the dying embers of this delusional love?
I rush to you. We have monkey sex.
I tell you DO NOT follow through with her.
What do you do? You take her out for dinner, on a date.
Something we never did, because you were always too busy working on projects around here.
When I would suggest we do something different, you would reply “ when the work is done we’ll have our fun”. You would start in with your mind fucking accusations about how we can’t go out in public because I couldn’t keep my lusty eyes and thoughts off every single male in this world whether he was dead or alive.
After your date with your new love interest you can’t wait to throw it in my face. You take pride in the fact that you still got an edge, your mojo is still working.
I draw my line in the sand. I throw you out!
I tell you I am going to have the biggest and cheapest yard sale for all of your tools if you don’t come and get them now. You come and get them. I cry. I really don’t want you to leave but I must end this abuse, this destructive dance of egos.
Little did I know that once your stuff was gone and you had no excuse for coming by that I would spiral down into the abyss of my own muddy well of unhealed scars and not so forgotten fears of abandonment and emptiness. Of coarse what you tell her is that you are just getting the rest of your things that you left behind months ago.
We talk each night on the phone the first three days after I sent you packing. You come back and we have the best sex, all night long. {I’ll never forget it either. You also told me you won’t forget it, in fact I bet you’re thinking about it right now because you must be getting board with her already.} Two days later you take HER to meet your family!

I got her number off your cell phone the day you were getting your stuff from here.
I call her. I tell her who I am. Who we are!
She lies to me as well.
She says she would never be a re-bound girl or the reason for a breakup. She says “Ya I know I have been miss-treated in the past and I feel for you. You sound like a really nice lady”
She tells me she will tell you not to call her for at least one month so you can find yourself.
Well she phones you every single day after that.
I told her you would charm her. Oh’ no she says I would never fall for that!
I told her that you told me you were going to get revenge because you thought I was unfaithful to you.
She laughs at the silliness of it all and says to me “He seems so honest and sincere, he never said one bad word about you to me, I thought what a nice character trait”
I told her he would not open that subject up for discussion because, THERE WAS NO EX. We were still together the night of their first date.
What happens? The two of them hook up like star struck lovers and leave me to pick up the pieces of my shattered world.
Well it’s been five weeks since the day you two met. Or maybe that’s a lie too. It’s been four weeks since I made you get your stuff out of here.
It’s been four weeks that I have cried and wept and walked around like a starved homeless dog.
Four weeks I have not eaten right or cared for the others or myself in my life, who need me and love me back.
Four weeks that I have laid my pride aside and called you so many times to have you deny me over and over.
Four weeks of remembering only your beauty and generosity, your body next to mine, our dreams and plans and togetherness.
Four weeks and more that you so casually have shifted into another relationship in order to hide from yourself all the while professing to have found love again! Jesus!
What the fuck are you doing?
What the fuck am I doing?
I’ll tell you what I won’t do. I will NOT sacrifice myself on your altar.
Your evil ways can now go straight to her.
I bet she doesn’t even play darts.
She has been forewarned!
She is looking for signs through her rose colored “ Oh’ he chose me over her” in your face glasses.
The two of you deserve each other! You’re both fucking liars!

As of today you no longer have the privilege or the bragging rights of two women fighting for you.
As of today I am pulling up my bootstraps, brushing off the dust, hitting the road and hiding my tender ‘you don’t deserve it’ heart.

If your demons don’t get you, hers most surly will!
The reason you could play me so well is because this was not a game I had ever played and my heart was pure and simple.
She, on the other hand is a desperate conniving, back stabbing man hunter and you my dear will have to play your game fast in order to fake her out. Other wise those demons of yours that you have so conveniently disguised for the time being are going to rear their ugly heads.
So while you are trapped in her den of deception and all this plays out like two puppets in a house of smoke and mirrors, I think you will both self-distruct.

You are going to come crawling back to me Babe.

In the meantime, thanks for the brutal lessons. I will never be the same. A big piece of me has died and yet a bigger piece of me is being born.
My consolation is that I KNOW that I can love fully and deeply and that even though I am somewhat broken at this point I will resurrect and I will be even more willing to love.
A love for myself that NO MAN will ever try and claim as his possession, but a love that will attract one willing to go the distance. Unlike you, you pathetic coward.

Good luck with your oh’ so lovely new bow.
Your’ going to need it!
But like they say

All’s fair in Love and War!
Sandra Bailie

http://www.womensselfesteem.com

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