I miss being in love...

When I was a teen I fell in and out of infatuation like most girls. I was lucky. I was not gorgeous but not plain either. I had a winning smile and an ok body so I never lacked for male attention.
I married at 23 to a man that some part of me knew I didn't love the way I was supposed to.
I had been so quick to fall in "love" and it never seemed to work out, (I usually got bored or saw greener pastures and moved on fairly quickly) so when I passed the infatuation stage with this guy I thought "maybe this is the real thing". It was not that passionate "I can't live without you" love so I thought maybe that this was what real love, adjusted adult love, was supposed to feel like.
So when he asked, I said that I would marry him.
I had a lot of shit that I hadn't dealt with. The largest of which was a hidden memory of being molested by my Grandfather. When that reared it's ugly head, I told him about it. Never having dealt with anything like this, being the young uninformed man that he was, he couldn't understand how something that had happened so long ago could possibly effect me now.
That was when the traces of fairytale endings that I had a tenuous grasp on completely dissipated. One of the few times in my life up to that point that I needed to be "rescued" by my prince, blew up in my face. He was not harsh, he tried to understand within his limited experience/knowledge. He had sympathy for what had happened to me. But that reaction of trusting that when I told him I had issues because of this, just didn't happen. No suggestion of therapy. No, "no matter what we will get thru this".
I was an adult, I could have pursued therapy or support on my own, but my lack of self-esteem or whatever it was, just agreed with him that this should not continue to bother me.
I put on a tremendous amount of weight. I was no longer interested in sex. I just walked thru the days pretending to be "normal" for everyone around me.
I knew on some level that my marriage was over. One night, just as we turned off the lights to go to bed, he said, "I'm not happy and I think I want a divorce."
He had come from a severely fucked up family. No communication, no support. So I told myself that he just didn't know how to "be married". He was pretty much an emotional mute.
I went to pieces and begged him to stay. He did. He stayed for a year. At first I made every pathetic attempt I could to be a wife that he found worthy of keeping. I dove in to sex with a ferver. Every time, on some level, even though I was the one to instigate it, it felt like rape. I was going thru the motions. I became even more damaged.
After a year, he broached the subject again and this time I let him go.
I found out after the divorce that he had met someone a year earlier. She is the one that had motivated him to ask for a divorce the first time. I never talked to him about this, I found out thru outside parties.
He had never been a misogynist. He was not a player or hard hearted, but I labeled him as a cheater.
I became the bitter divorce'. I had been wronged by my man.
I would jokingly tell people that I finally let my husband marry the woman that he had been sleeping with the last year of our marriage. I am good at masking my pain with humor. I am also just funny, so even I have a hard time discerning sometimes my own motivation.
It took years for me to move on in any emotional way.
I had never been very promiscuous. The only times I had ever had sexual contact with someone that I didn't genuinely care about was when I would get a little too tipsy and my inhibitions would lapse.
After about 8 years or so I could look back more clearly and take responsibility for my part in the whole debacle. The first mistake had been saying "I do" to begin with.
After 10 years (and their second child together) I was able to think about them and genuinely feel happy that he had found the person that he was supposed to be with. He was emotionally stunted but I could never call that kettle black!
Once I crossed that hurtle I started feeling due some attention. I had pretty much behaved in a way that made me "the friend" of every guy I met. Never entertained relationship fantasies.
I decided that I would not be willing to risk being hurt again but I did want male companionship and sex. So I went on the internet and purposely sought out a guy that would work well with my schedule (I traveled every week in my job) and was just obnoxious enough that there was no chance that I would fall for him. But he also was courteous and respectful.
I have never been a stupid or reckless person so I took great care in insuring my safety.
I met up with him and more or less interviewed him. I explained, in limited words, my situation and that I was looking for someone to date when I was in town (not my town but one I was in at least a couple of times a month). No strings, no emotions, just go out have a good time and have sex when the mood hit us. Sounds like any man's dream right?
This is going to sound so conceited but there is something about the people in our family. We draw people. People want to be around us, they want to join our family, they get attached very quickly and feel like they have known you for years just after a few conversations. It is all of us, not just me. As a result we often run from those people lol because on some level they become emotional vampires.
Well, I thought I could overcome all of this by laying down the "ground rules". He would never meet my family or come to my hometown. It was just me and him when we wanted to be together. I didn't care what he did when I wasn't around and he was not allowed to care or ask what I did.
This worked great at first. Although after our third or fourth "date" he did predict that I would fall madly in love with him and want to have his children. I laughed because, as I had wanted, he knew me so little that he was way off base. As I mentioned I picked a man who was just obnoxious enough that there was no chance of that....but not so obnoxious that I didn't enjoy being around him.
He filled a need for me and we did have some good times together. But as all good things must end, he crossed the line.
My mother and sister knew all the details of our relationship. My mother loved him because he lived down in south Louisiana and was always sending her local goodies like spices, syrups and such. When he would call her to find out what city I was in at the moment they would have great conversations. If you are not acquainted with "coon-asses", they are a fun bunch.
However, my extended family only knew that I was seeing someone who lived out of town. When they would mention meeting him I would just divert the conversation.
I was conducting a store opening and working long hours and didn't get a chance to return his call for a few days. He was wanting to travel and catch up with me to go out of town for the weekend. When he didn't hear from me, he started doing research.
I had mentioned a cousin who was newly married and that they were in the process of posting their wedding album online. He remembered the name, searched them out and started chatting with my cousin's new wife.
My family was very curious about my "mystery man" so she jumped on the opportunity to invite him to visit the next weekend.
When I returned his call he told me the good news. I was furious. I reminded him of the "agreement" we'd made about 6 months earlier. He was flabbergasted! He could not imagine that I still felt that way. We did get together and take the trip that weekend that he'd been trying to reach me to plan. On that trip I told him that I would not be seeing him again.
He was not so emotionally invested that it hurt him, I think. But I left in his stunned silence.
It was not a fight. It was just the passing of a fun time. The fun was over.
I have fond memories of that time.
I had had an adult relationship on MY terms.
My need for male companionship was sated for a while. I got my social life on line. I went out with a couple of random guys but never twice with the same guy.
Then I met HIM. It started off as an online long distance friendship and grew into much more.
By the time I was all in, I found out that he was in an unhappy marriage....wait, it gets better.
Now this has been 10 years ago and I can look back on it much more objectively.
I was crushed when I found out he was married. It has just never come up. I had never asked and the subject was never even broached. I had married friends who were chat buddies that I befriended the man then the wife. I was always "safe" to be a friend of any woman's husband because that was not a line that I would cross.
By the time I found out about him, I was in love. He explained his situation and it was a real motherfucker!
Married-9 kids (three still at home)-third generation Mormon and lived 9 hours away and had never had an affair.
He explained that his plan before meeting me was to leave when the kids were out of the house. I didn't talk to him for a week. I agonized over my decision.
Against everything that I believe in, I decided that I could not drop him. It had been 13 years since I had had any real feelings for a man, much less had them reciprocated.
I laid down the ground rules, again. If we were going to pursue this, he MUST tell her.
He did and at one point she asked to meet me. I agreed but with one thing and another, it never happened. She fought for him in her own way. I could understand her desperation. She was in a very similar situation with him that I had been in my marriage. The difference was that she assumed that their very controlling religion would stop him from leaving her. And for a long time it had.
We were so happy together. I have never felt that way about any man in my life and I could see this working.
I underestimated the deeply ingrained religious training. He was kicked out of his position in his church. That devastated him.
I have unorthodox beliefs when it comes to religion. I love God and he loves me but I have never believed in any "man" being a go-between between me and my God. However, I have never been one to stand in the way of other's beliefs. I supported his need for his church. I thought that we would find a way to co-exist with my belief's and his. That whole fairy tale of "love will conquer all" had raised it's fucking head again.
He started changing. Without that church support that he had enjoyed his whole life, he started to fall apart.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, so to speak, my life was crumbling. Nothing to do with my relationship I had some major life traumas happen. For the first time in my life I was experiencing clinical depression. I had always been a trooper. Hell, part of my job was being a motivational speaker!
Within the span of a few months, I lost my career, my financial security, my best friend (my mother, due to trivial medical malpractice) and could see losing him too.
I went to the Dr. and got on anti-depressants. No one knew. I kept telling the Dr that I didn't feel right. I had no drive, I couldn't experience any emotion. He just kept telling me to give the meds time to work.
After a few months I planned my suicide. He had gone AWOL. Later I learned he had checked himself into a psychiatric hospital.
The night he called and said that he just couldn't be with me, I cracked. I had a decision to make. I could take the supplies I had bought and kill myself. OR. I had been waiting on a large check to come in so that I could cash it and mail the money to my sister. I didn't want the money to be tied up and unavailable to her, she would need it to bury me. I knew the estate would eat it up since I had incurred a tremendous debt in caring for my ill mother.
The money had not arrived. It had been mailed but was not there yet.
I formed a plan. I would have to leave home, if I didn't I wouldn't survive the night. I decided that if I went to my sister, it would somehow cushion the blow. She would hospitalize me. If my depression was clinical and treatable I would receive treatment and get better. But if the treatment didn't work, I would convince everyone I was magically healed, leave the hospital and kill myself as I originally had planned.
The benefit would be that my death would not hit my sister from left field. The idea of losing me would have been introduced.
That is what depression does. It allows you to accept many situations and work them out in a way that feels perfectly sane.
I drove one hour to her house and it was just by God's grace that I made it there. I was crying so hard I couldn't see.
She checked me in the hospital and I spent a month there. I took meds out the ass. Meds to wake up, meds to deal with the day, meds for anxiety, meds to sleep. The side effect of one of the meds was a huge weight gain. I had lost 25 pounds in the three months since my mother's death and I gained 60 pounds in the three months that I was on the meds.
I got out of the hospital in February of 2001.
I am not the same person I was. I have since lost a brother to suicide. I have no life to speak of.
I exist. I am what I call passively suicidal.
It means, I will not kill myself but I pray a meteor will fall from the sky and take me out.
My brother took suicide away as an option. If you have ever survived someone who killed themselves you would have to be a monster or completely lost to do this to others.
After being on meds and seeing the madness that was my plan, you can never again talk yourself into a plan that will make it ok to hurt others that way. Or to think that they will just get over it.
They never get over it.
I got laid off in February of this year and have not even looked for work. I am off all my meds since they are upwards of $400 per month. I am depressed and my moods swing in the wind, changing from moment to moment.
I have always been a serious reader and movie watcher. It is my escape. I can get totally wrapped up in the world presented in a work of fiction if it is done well.
One of my great loves since I was 11 years old is vampire fiction. It always fascinated me.
When the Twilight series came out I avoided it since it was labeled young adult. I thought it would be too vampire-lite for me.
A friend's daughter, who loved the series laid out the story line for me and I thought, "Hmmn, I may just check that out." I read the series and when the movie came out I watched it.
I really liked it and turned my sister on to it. She went nuts over it.
After several months of watching her and a friend of hers who are in their 40's and 50's obsess over it I questioned what I had missed.
So I revisited it.
Something snapped inside me.
When I read the series again, I felt like I was falling in love like the lead character in the book. When she experienced her breakdown, I could completely go there with her.
Her feelings of always being the "responsible one" was a life I had led.
I became an addict. No different, I imagine than any alcoholic or drug user, when I was reading or watching anything revolving around this series it took away my pain. I rode the high.
I am still riding the high. I have fallen completely in lust with a 23 year old actor who portrays the male lead.
I am 43 years old! I have never been attracted to a younger man in my life!
I have found many others who share in this obsession. They make me laugh out loud when I read their accounts.
I have never written my story as I have here.
No one I know even knows about this blog.
I am trying to find light. Trying to find hope. Trying to capture that desire to live when I am not doing something twilight related.
The struggle goes on.
Hopefully this purging process will help.
God gave me a little nod today. I saw it for what it was and it did warm my heart. I miss my faith in better days ahead. I miss who I used to be.
I miss being in love. I miss being desired and loved.
I am a woman. I am overweight and I am totally fucked up. I will not subject anyone to my life as it is. I need to get out of this on my own.
But this fucking fairy tale shit makes me want to be rescued.
I know, logically that no one has the ability to salvage your happiness. I don't want to be that emotional vampire to anyone else.
The real conundrum: How does one who no longer wishes to live, dream of being turned into an immortal being by a pasty gorgeous monster?
Who knows? For the moment, I am using Twilight like crack. So I will leave you...my nonexistent reader to go get my fix.
Sweet dreams.