Clark's Project

• She can be moody.
• She is inconsistent with her kids (and mine). I mean that she can roar if she has to, but I think that she lacks the backbone to be quietly strong in the face of their demands/request/cajolery.
• She can be dishonest even as she must know that I know she is dishonest.
• She can lie to herself quite easily.

I'm getting there. Just six to go, according to Clark, and I am done with her.

Too long

I haven't really done anything I said I would. Let me catch you up from the last several days. I have...

• delved deeply into some fantasies that we would be together
• spent a least twenty minutes of each day thinking about her
• realized that the anger thing isn't getting that far off the ground
• indulged myself once to her mental image -- for which I felt a tremendous sense of guilt

This has gone on too long. Yes, its not as pronounced as it was earlier this month, but it is still there. When I see her I am generally fucked up for two or three days following.

On another note, she's been dating someone else... ugh.

Mopey bastard

I haven't posted in a long while. I feel bad, but worse than that I feel bad about feeling bad. I am disgusted by the things I have written so far. It is entirely too self-absorbed, too look-at-me-I'm-hurting.

I mean, big fucking deal, right? I'm not the first person to break up with someone that they love. I figure that most of the time, a relationship that ends is uneven. Isn't there always one half that wants to remain status quo? What makes my pain unique? Not a damn thing, I can tell you that.

Every so often my eyes get wet. I have this feeling that if I would just cry it would be all better. Except that the feelings don't come that strong and my eyes just leak for a second instead.

Maybe getting to anger

Thanks for the comments. I try to write back but I don't really know what to say on the subject. The truth is that I whirl about this so much that by the time I leave for work at eleven, I just don't want to deal with it anymore. But, thanks again for caring. I do read them in my mailbox and they have made me think.

I am in a terrible mood today. I found the five stages of catastrophic news: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. According to some shrinks, catastrophic news is basically any change of condition from the status quo.

• A change of circumstance of any kind (a change from one state to another) produces a loss of some kind (the stage changed from) which will produce a grief reaction.
  
• The intensity of the grief reaction is a function of how the change-produced loss is perceived. If the loss is not perceived as significant, the grief reaction will be minimal or barely felt.
  
• Significant grief responses which go unresolved can lead to mental, physical, and sociological problems and contribute to family dysfunction across generations.

Excellent. At least I have some battle plan that tells me how this stuff is going to shake down. I think I am done with denial and have only a bit of bargaining left in me, if anything. Because both of those sorts of behavior on my part are producing a great deal of anger which is largely directed at me, but is also spilling over into other folks that I know.

See, this stuff doesn't last forever. There will be an end. A definite end. I just have to let it run its course. A few sleepless nights and I will be fine. Before I sign off for today, I have two projects to do, yet.

A) Daily Self Hypnosis

1. I don't love her.
2. I don't love her.
3. I don't love her.
4. I don't love her.
5. I don't love her.
6. I don't love her.
7. I don't love her.
8. I don't love her.
9. I don't love her.
10. I don't love her.

B) Clark's Project (The list of Ten things I don't like about Annie.)

1. She can be moody.
2. She is inconsistent with her kids (and mine). I mean that she can roar if she has to, but I think that she lacks the backbone to be quietly strong in the face of their demands/request/cajolery.
3. ...Ugh.

Okay I have two real items now. Clark would say that I am getting closer to the reality that is Annie, instead of the fantasy I have concoted around her.

Everything is not Jake

Woke up at midnight. I've been up ever since. I can't sleep. The kids are spending the night there. How can I be jealous of them? This whole thing is bringing out elements of my character that I am not real proud of. I need a cleaner break than this. It has to be cold turkey. No contact. Just no friggin' contact. That is the only way this stuff is going to end.

Its the hope that kills

It is my inexhaustible hope that hurts me. We all had dinner together. I can't think of her as I'd like to. That's hard.

But then I want to go home and crawl into bed and throw myself a pity party. Normally, when something huge is happening in my life, I call Annie.

Now I don't. Now I can't. What do I do, whine to her about her?

I lasted a good day yesterday. Today I am deeper in the funk that before.

I hate that I love her. I hate that some little wormy thing that lives in me wants to keep investing everything with hope that it will turn around. Denial. Denial. Denial.

O. V. E. R.

It is so simple. I just have to say it. It's over. The emotions don't mean anything. They aren't even real things. They are just little illusions.

My new theory is Self hypnosis. I'm going to do this 10x a day.

I don't love her anymore.
I don't love her anymore.
I don't love her anymore.
I don't love her anymore.
I don't love her anymore.
I don't love her anymore.
I don't love her anymore.
I don't love her anymore.
I don't love her anymore.

By the way, is there anything more disgusting than a man crying about some woman he lost, or never had, or whatever?

Honestly? I wish I could cry. I feel like I want to. I don't even know how.

I think about her with someone else. That's stupid. It's counterproductive. And, it shows how immature I really am. I don't own her. We aren't together. We don't have any committment. I have no right to expect fidelity to me for any reason. She can be with whoever she wants. I can be with whoever I want... except Annie. But that is because she doesn't want me anymore.

Maybe I'm not that good. Maybe she finally figured that out. Maybe she knew and she sat on it for a while.

So maybe this is grief. Maybe that hope worm thing is the denial. Then I still have bargaining and anger and grief to go, I think. There are stages to this business. I know that. I just don't remember what the stages are.

So let's call it grief. Let's call it grieving over loss. Not life, not anything like that. Just loss of the relationship. Is that feasible? So I am bargaining and denying now. Perhaps I will get to acceptance eventually.

I don't love Annie anymore.

Does God answer prayer

Last night I lay in bed and begged God to rip her from my heart and mind. This morning I feel a strange peace... can he have done that for me? It was so pronounced last night and this morning -- nothing.

The cynic in me laughs and waits for noon.

Temptation to sleep

Its not 10 you say? Its gotta be 10 somewhere, Bucko.

I don't want to feel this anymore. The only way I know not to feel is to sleep. Its only 7:30 and I am thinking about going to bed for the day.

I hate this.

Look, it is very unreasonable to feel this discomfort. I have nothing to offer her anyway. We are not going to be. Period. End of story. I have to quit holding out some little hope that maybe its not over, or maybe it will be something more... later.

This is bullshit. I am tired of being like this. Why can't I just shut this stuff off. I feel weak and emasculated.

Entanglements

To break clean or not, that is the question.

To recap... I love Annie. She doesn't love me. Seems like a no brainer, right?

It never is with me. I allowed myself to become emotionally enmeshed with her children. My children were allowed to become emotionally enmeshed with her. There is no use telling me it shouldn't have happened. It did happen. We started as friends, remember? Now do we continue as "friends"? Look, I don't disagree that the kids would benefit. Hell, I would benefit. I like her kids. I like hanging out and laughing. But is such a thing possible?

Her children love me, she has said. I can see that they do. I seem to have filled a void for them. My youngest certainly seems to love Annie. He speaks of her fondly and often.

A mature person might be able to handle a Just Friends Reversal (JFR) but can I? How do I get past her if I still see her? How can I not love her when the sight of her does strange things inside of me? It makes part of me ache not to be able to put my arms around her when I see her. I am filled with the most awful envy when I think of someone else being able to put his arms around her.

Isn't this asking too much?

The JFR is impossible. Has it ever been done?

Its all about me, right?

Even the name of this blog tells the whole story. The whole thing is about me. Me, me, me, right?

Well, what if it is not?

I mean that she is a person with valid feelings that may or may not be bruised or uncomfortable or whatever. Lets talk frankly. If she is hurt by us, then I don't want there to be an us. I want her to be happy and to be at peace. I want good things for her.

All I am saying is that at some point this has to get beyond me.

Right?

Painful?

Its not pain, really.

Pain is when someone punches you in the stomach or when a box falls on your foot. It's usually sharp and makes you wince. This definitely isn't that.

This is more like being hungry and not having any food. No, I take that back. It's more like not being able to get a good lungful of oxygen. I don't mean that I can't breathe, or anything stupid like that. I just mean to say that my lungs just don't seem to get up to full capacity.

Oh yeah, don't forget about the Mind Swirlies! The Mind Swirlies are when you find your thoughts going around her and around her until you just force yourself to let them get flushed away. The problem is that some of the thoughts are unflushable. I mean that when they go down and disappear from sight and you expect not to see them anymore, suddenly they pop up and sit in the water smiling at you as if to say, "Hey remember me?"

So, no. There is no pain here. Just breathing problems and unflushable thoughts and images that parade through my head.

What are we now?

Now we are just friends. After the March Talk of Doom we are just friends. Just. Friends.

That is absolutely her right. I am not disputing that, at all. When we first met we talked about each of us having marriages behind us and each of us having kids around us. We agreed we were going to be friends. No more.

I admit that I broke the agreement. I fell in love with her. I didn't want to, but I could feel myself doing it anyway. Its hard to spend that kind of time with someone like her and not begin to develop something more than "friends" feelings. Its hard to do the things we've done and not feel some deeper level of attachment to her.

But a relationship is a two-way street. She gets to call shots. I get to call shots. That's what adults do. She makes choices about what she wants and I make choices about what I want. Then we compare choices and if they fit -- well and good. If they don't fit, folks move on. That is the way the world works. I know. I get it.

She wants to be friends. I want to be friends, but now I also want more than that. She doesn't want to give that. There really is nothing more to do then, except say that our plans were not the same and go away.

The problem with that is that I think that I love her. I don't want to go away. I would rather spend a few friends hours with her than nothing at all.

Ugh. Stick a knife in my gut right now. I sound like that Jerry Maguire chump. Not Jerry himself, but the friend of the girl he likes -- the one who offered the Jazz CD to Jerry. The "friend" who has a crush on the girl that is unrequited.

Oh fuck me! I do NOT want to be that friggin' dude. I should bail now. I should just cut out and run away. I should tell her that I can't be friends and that I have got to go. Ugh. I think I am going to vomit. I am officially gone now. I am not going to be the Jerry Maguire friend. No Fucking Way.

Us

I told you who I am. I told you who Annie is. Now I am going to talk about "Us". In other words, who am I to Annie and who is Annie to me?

Well, we aren't dating. Though I think we have dated (she might argue otherwise). I'm not sure. It is far more complicated that I thought.

Annie believes in being "friends". Its a chick thing. So I guess we have been friends together. We have also hung out together. When my kids are over, her kids and my kids have hung out together. All of us have hung out together.

We've also been more than friends. Annie and I have held hands, kissed, hugged, spent the night, had sex a few times, gone places alone and with others. That's friends to her. Except she might say the sex and other intimacies were bad ideas that went too far. I see them as a part of the whole deal.

In my mind we were friends who became more.

Perhaps in her mind we have only just been friends all along with some unfortunate boundary crossings that slipped in there.

So that is what we were. I hope it is clearer to you than it is to me. Because it isn't at all clear to me. I am confused as hell.

Annie

I might as well introduce you to her since this blog is going to be about putting her behind me.

Maybe if I give myself one last chance to get stupid about how great she is, it will work itself out of my system. My friend Clark (his actual name is Kent, but that started in High School) told me that I should make a list of all of the things that bother me about her. I feel like that is talking behind her back, but I am going to do it anyway. My friend is seldom wrong. Except he thinks I need therapy. I am quite sure he is nuttier than a squirrel, and at least twice as nutty as me. I'll take his advice after he's been going for about a year. Until then, I'll just blog it out of me.

Without further ado...

Annie is a brilliant single mother with kids the same age as mine. She is fun to be around and can make anyone laugh at any time. She is generally a very caring person with a lot of dedication to her kids and her career.

Annie is a professional. She sells sea shells by the sea shore. No, she doesn't -- it just came out that way. Annie sells computer applications to big companies. I don't understand a lot of it and I am not sure she does either. Suffice to say she works for a big corporation.

She is about five four, weighs about a hundred pounds, has blond hair and I think she is more beautiful without make up than with it.

This is the part Clark told me to do. I just want to remind you of that before I start. I am looking for bad things about her, remember? I don't want anyone to think that I am being nit picky as a habit. In this case I am looking for things to build the list, so it is going to be that way. Clark says I am not done until I have ten items and I am not allowed to use words like "sort of". I just have to declare this shit like it is.

1. She is moody.

Okay, this isn't going to work. I have one item and I question its validity. I am saying she is moody because she changed her mind about us. I am only assigning her that characteristic because I don't like that I am on the outs.

Clark's idea is a shitty one.

Me

I am divorced. I have two kids. I work in a museum in a metropolitan area in the midwest. It is not as interesting as it sounds, believe me. I do a lot of paperwork and I move things around when the people who know what they are talking about tell me to. I make enough to live on. Not bad for not having a degree.

Why am I here?

I started this blog because its cheaper than therapy. I hate telling real people about my problems and all of you are fake.

I meant to write something long and painful today, but I can't. I started to dump some things out, but I have some fear of letting the sluice gates open. So now I am staring at this keyboard and nothing is coming out. Maybe this was a stupid idea.

I am hoping that this lasts about a week. I think it may last three because I know me pretty well.