another nightmare--scares me because they come true

I had another nightmare last night about me having the reverse Midas touch: Instead of everything turning to gold, it all fell apart when I touched it. This woke me early and made a big impact on me.

Now for those of you who are not familiar with my dreams, a few months ago I dreamed that J. was never going to speak to me again. At the time, he said, "I can never imagine a circumstance underwhich that would happen." I made him promise that he would talk to me, and he did. And then a few months later, his wife intercepted his abity to chat with me by phone or by email. At one point, he said he would never doubt my dreams again.

I also dreamed, about 3 days before, about 9/11 happening in the first tower. I dreamed the exact floor number, the total number of floors, the fire happening and people having to rush to the roof, and the helicopters not being able to land. I told my then husband about it and some other people. So when 9/11 happened it was really spooky. My husband's friends said that they didn't want me dreaming about them. There was a lot of shock and surprise about my dream.

And I dreamed for years that my first husband would leave me for another woman, and not just leave me, but be smug about it, and it happened. Those dreams I told many, many people including therapists.

So when I wake up with a nightmare it shakes me up a little more than the average person. Not all of my nightmares come true, but a lot of them do. I say this and I DO NOT believe in the paranormal at all.

When I wake up with a nightmare like this one, the first thing I want is to tell someone and to find someone to comfort me. But there is no one to wake up to, to tell it to. So I blog it. I am afraid that I am not going to be successful despite going to graduate school and getting a 4.0 GPA. I have been unhirable because of my BPD and severe major depression in the past. But I can't just tell any one about my nightmares, because they either don't know my history with them, or just write them off as common nightmares. This one woke me after less than 5 hours sleep, and I usually sleep 7-10 hours, depending on the insomnia and how effective the sleeping pills are (not very, usually).

I tried calling J. at his office, because I know he'll take me seriously. But he wasn't there and I didn't leave a message.

I've had similar dreams to this one, that despite my best effort, everything falls apart and I am destitute. It could happen. Ask Polar Bear about my dreams. I don't claim to have anything special going on. I just have these dreams that come true, nightmares really, not good dreams.

And so I have to silently comfort myself, yet knowing it is dreams like this one which do come true. I have no references other than personal. I don't know what I'd say to a potential employer other than I have been going to graduate school, working part time, and writing a book. But that isn't very competitive in this market place.

I am sad and scared.

I talked to J.

I talked to J. on Friday night. Just to hear his voice, despite his depression and dark mood, was thrilling to me. I have (knock on wood) not had any severe mood swings since talking with him. I found out that his wife is painting me as the evil temptress, but J. doesn't see me that way. I told him I wanted him to be happy. He said I always say that. But I quickly added that I want him to laugh, play his music, be a professor like he wants, do his research and write his book. He was quiet, and then said that it might be a long time before those come down the pike. I didn't tell him that I have been having severe mood swings. When I asked him how he was, he compared it to going through chemotherapy (which he has). When he asked me how I was, I was so happy to hear from him that I automatically said I was fine. It probably will be better on him not knowing how deep my despair has been. He said he hadn't given me a "swan song" and I replied, "does there have to be one?" In the end, he agreed to continue to get in touch with me, although it might be a "long time." Whatever that means.

A friend suggested that I was addicted to him. I find that a bit harsh. I think I am in love with him, but in a respectful way. The same friend suggested that I start dating on eHarmony, which I have done in the past, but with school, writing and now work coming up, I don't think I'll have the time. And my heart wouldn't really be into it any way. Seems like a waste of money right now.

I found out some good news in school. I've been struggling, and not doing good quality work, but the professsor said that if I quit now, the lowest I'd get is a B, and if I do my research paper, I could get an A. That's so hard to believe. This has been a tough semester for me. I don't feel like I deserve a B or an A. I've really been doing just minimal work--a C at best. I'm just lucky that I have an incredibly generous professor. This means that I might be able to continue to keep my 4.0 GPA. I could certainly use it when it comes to looking for jobs, because I haven't been working in my field, and so don't have the references.

But the best news is that the mood swings have dissapated. I felt SU on Friday before I talked to J. I'm trying to take my relationship with him as it is, which is that of a good friend to a good friend. It can't be more because he is married. I have to overcome my attachments to him and just let him be who he is, which may be married unhappily for the rest of his life. And that choice of his needs to be ok with me--not that it is ok that he is miserable, but ok that it is his choice as an adult to stay in the situation or not.

I'm pissed at my therapist because i tried to call her all day on Thursday and on Friday. Called and left messages when I was feeling SU, but ended up talking to the hotline staff. I even told them not to let her go without talking to me, but she left anyway. It was the first time I've felt like killing myself in a very, very long time. I think she should have been there for me. But circumstances worked out (talking with J.), and it's hard to hold a grudge, at least for me. I don't know if I surpress my anger, or if I just get tired and bored of being angry. I don't have a very good shortterm memory, so it's just hard for me to remember the circumstances which surrounded the incident. And if I can't remember the circumstances, it's hard to stay angry.

J. once talked to an older man about what the secret was to staying happily married, and the man replied, "A bad memory." I certainly think I have that. I just would like to find someone special to be with and to share things with. Hard to do since I'm a hermit. But maybe I will meet someone in this next job. I met someone in my last job, a professor of philosophy, but he has two bad hips and walks with a cane. I can't help but think that would not be a benefit in bed! Plus we share different racial heritages, and I've never dated anyone outside of my own heritage. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I just think that as many likenesses as possible would be more likely to make a good relationship. Plus he's kind of formal.

Oh well. Now I need to work on my paper for school. Yuk. I really don't want to. But I suppose I'll try.

Fuck broken hearts

It's very late. I can't sleep. I'm fixated on cutting, so instead I've taken one of one kind of sleeping pill and two of another (which is really an anti-anxiety med to relax me). Once I get to sleep, it will be hard to wake up, and I'll need plenty of coffee in the morning.

But what survival mechanism does grief play? It is painful as hell. That's why I'm thinking about cutting, as a way out of this emotional agony. What great benefit did our ancestors get from feeling the seering jagged knife that is burning and ripping through my heart? Is it so I won't ever care again about anyone else? I don't see how that would benefit the survival of the species.

The pills are starting to kick in, so I guess I'll go to bed. But a broken heart sucks, you know? I wrote a poem about this, and i feel worse.

a poem

Unrequited Love

A black hole in my heart
Sucks the life blood out of me
I grow drowsy as it drains.
To sleep perchance to dream
Of messages from the gods
Foretelling this slow death
Months before the vortex formed.
The star shone brightest
Just before it collapsed in on itself
Taking his balls
As a first ritual sacrifice
To the snake that lives within his heart
Filling it with the venom of her lies.
I dreamed a lovely dream of you;
Oh how I wish it had come true.
To cut or not to cut:
That is the question now.

PTSD or Unrequited Love?

They are calling my mood swings PTSD, because of the link between J. and his spousal/family abuse, my first marriage with the abuse my ex spewed on me and then separately on my son, and the abuse I suffered through as a child. They think that now, at my age, I am finally grieving over these things.

Ok. Fair enough. I see the links.

But what about this--unrequited love. I stayed with my mother and abusive step-father instead of living with my grandparents because I wanted her love, which was not to be. I fell in love with an abusive man because his love was distant and hard to attain. And now there is a man whom I haven't seen in 25 years, who lives in a completely different state, who is married, albeit very unhappily and abusively: and I fall for him.

So I look up on the Internet about Unrequited Love and find out that there has been very little study of it by psychologists. Great. Shakespeare and Keats and other poets can write about it as a great theme, but psychologists don't find it important enough to study? So am I supposed to read the great books and watch DVDs about love until I get it? Maybe I just never had a model of what love is supposed to look like.

Maybe that's what I'm grieving. The fact that I fell in love with and married an abusive man who didn't love me in a truly loving way, the fact that my mother (and father) never offered me unconditional love, the fact that this man now is incapable of returning my love because he still hopes that his abusive wife will love and accept him for who he is. And what an irony. I used to fall for the "strong silent type," the loner (someone independent, I thought, of society's rules), and now I am falling for the victim/martyr. Like my mother. Like me. How sick is that?

Maybe I want to "fix" myself virtually by fixing a man who is very compassionate but who can't return my love. But can I really fix myself, or can I only grieve about spending so much of life without a loving partner. I made sure that in my second marriage he loved me, even though I didn't love him. I loved him, but I wasn't "in love" with him. And that marriage disintegrated, in friendly fashion, but with me loving him and him not loving me. Once again, unrequited.

Is this my fate? Or can I learn to fall in love with someone who is mutually loving? Am I getting too old to find a partner who will fall for me? I've loved someone much older, and married someone much younger. I really want someone my age who I can relate with. Do I get on the internet dating sites again and see if I can find someone to love? I am too busy with school, and work coming up, and my novel. But I am lonely. I need to come out of my hermit hole and meet people. At this work opportunity, which employs only those with at least Bachelor's degrees, maybe I'll find somebody. I found somebody at the last time I worked for these people, but I never got in touch with him. He was a philosophy professor. He wanted to go flying kites with me. He wanted to introduce me to a Buddhist friend of his. But he was crippled with arthritis in each hip. Now I am suffering from a 10 week old pain in my right hip that just won't go away, and hurts "only when I use it." Which is an improvement: it also used to hurt when I was just sitting. I figure that I sprained my hip. Sprains take a long time to recover from, much longer than a broken bone. But a friend of mine wondered if it was arthritis. At my age??? I'm ruling that out for now. At any rate, I don't think it would be too late to contact this philosophy professor. We're into different music. He's into jazz, and I'm in to rock (and classical). He lives in the heart of the city, and I live in the country. He and I are of different races, and that only bothers me because of the additional cultural differences that would play into a relationship. I am more concerned with his hip problems and the potential lack of physical intimacy that might pose.

But maybe I should give him a call. A real live, single, intelligent, fun man. He was in Viet Nam, and no, he doesn't want to talk about it. So I called him my philosopher/soldier.

Back to Unrequited Love: Am I going to have to grieve this as a loss in my life so that I can heal and go on, or am I grieving the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of abuse?

My mood swings are quieting down. I was depressed last night, but not in the painful grieving state that I was in. I just wish that I would learn what I need to learn and move on, grow, get to a place where I am selecting someone with whom I have more in common and can love and be loved. At least with the philosopher I have a real human being. And he has balls, unlike my other professor/martyr.

So I just now put in a call to him to see if he wants to go fly kites. We'll see if I get a response.

We shall see what we shall see. I am willing to learn about Jazz, the truly American artform.

I don't want to abandon my friend, the statistics professor. I promised to be his forever friend. But until he comes out of the marriage, my efforts are wasted, aren't they?

So is it PTSD, or Unrequited Love? What do you think?

 

grief, loneliness, and an ulcer

I haven't heard from my friend, and I am depressed. I used to hear from him several times a day each day, and now nothing. Plus my ulcer has flared up again. I can drink max one cup of coffee per day, and that is painful.

But not as painful as not hearing from my friend. Is the impulsivity in Borderline Personality Disorder at play here? Or perhaps feeling abandoned? I hate it that I can't talk with him. We got so close. I don't want to stalk him. I just miss him, and feel the loss of the relationship.

I created another anonymous way for him to get in touch with me, and left a quick message on his machine at work with its location. But that was only last night, and he still hasn't gotten in touch with me.

I am lonely, sad, depressed, and full of anxiety, despite taking Xanax. I want to DO something to help the relationship get back on course, but there is nothing to do except wait, and I am terrible at waiting, especially when I don't know how long it will be that I will have to wait. I find it so difficult to concentrate on other things that I need to, like school and writing.

And I am going to start a temporary job April 7, so I don't have much time to write. I will simultaneously be taking another grad course. I don't think I'll have time to write. The job runs for almost 4 months. I need the money. And it will get me out and with other people, which will be nice. It's a very, very long way away. Probably an hour to and hour and a half commute. I am going to check into the bus service and see if I can commute by bus, providing I don't have to depart at 4:30 am for an 8 am job. Commuting by mass transit would give me a chance to write, or study, and would relieve wear and tear on my Jeep, which is getting older now.

I am using the Meditation Bell program to periodically briefly meditate throughout the day when the bell chimes on the computer. That seems to be helping some. But I'm lonely. I have been thinking about calling a guy I met the last time I worked at this place. He would like to go kite flying with me, which would be fun. The only problem is that he has such severe hip problems that he is going to have to have replacement surgery, which he is putting off until the surgical technique is simplified and has less recovery.

I guess loneliness by yourself is easier than loneliness in a relationship. Now THAT really hurts. But loneliness isn't fun any way you look at it. I do feel abandoned I guess. And yet it was a forced abandonment by somebody else. I'm not taking it very well today as I have on other days. I'm tired of living by myself as a hermit. I won't finish school probably until next March. Then with some luck, I will be able to get a professional job.

So why this depression when there is so much to look forward to? The abrupt end of a relationship for any reason is painful. I guess I am shifting back and forth between grieving and accepting. I wish grief weren't so complicated. And it is made worse by knowing that he is probably much more miserable and lonely than I am. I just wish I could help. It's so hard to "help" by just biding time as necessary.

aurora borealis and perseid meteor shower

 

I would like to return to my Buddhist roots.... 

wrote a letter of forgiveness

I just can't stay angry, even if he did give his wife my phone number. He was doing the best he could under the circumstances. Maybe it wasn't very good, but I accept that, and I accept him. So I wrote him an email via his mom telling him that I forgave him, but more importantly, he needed to forgive himself. I'm sure he is being much harder on himself than anyone else is, including his wife.

And I talked about his good qualities which he seems to forget: he's kind, loving, brilliant, a great musician, sensitive, intuitive, a good human being, a great father, and so much more that his wife tells him that he's not.

I wrote to his mother, too. She wrote back that she understood how because he and I became so close that I developed feelings for him, and that what mattered was that I treated him like a human being. She's worried sick over him, as I have been. Probably will be later on today. But right now, I am at peace. I'll stick by my promise to be his forever friend, even if he decides to stay in an abusive marriage. So I put my feelings aside and think about what is good for him, how can I be compassionate to him... I put a message on his machine at work that I forgave him and that he needed to forgive himself and be good to himself. That's about all I can do for now. I told him that there were 3 emails waiting for him at his mother's house. Spring break is coming up soon, and his wife will go to London with the kids, and perhaps he will go over to his mother's house and pick up the emails. But even if he doesn't, he knows that someone cares for him.

There isn't enough caring and compassion in this world. So what if nothing can ever happen between us. He's a person with real feelings and in a bad situation, and a good friend would not abandon him. So I won't.

As several of you commented, I need to be focusing on myself, especially my school work, which I am way behind in. I'm just hoping I pass the course. It's just hard to focus when your heart is breaking for a friend who is in trouble. I have to accept that as reality, too.

Watched Elizabethtown last night. It was ok. I'm watching love stories. I happen to like Orlando Bloom, and he did a great job with his American accent. But the story wasn't a strong falling in love sort of movie which I need to watch in order to remember falling in love. It's been so long...

Maybe I am just afraid of feeling the feelings of falling in love because of my bad experience. Maybe I am avoiding them, even by watching these movies instead of writing.

I have this wonderful program that I got from James that strikes a meditation bell periodically--I have mine set to every hour, so that it brings me back to myself and I do a short meditation. Really cool. Check out his The Buddhist Blog.

Well, off to do my homework and straighten the apartment a bit. I'm glad that I can come to peace with John's actions and reactions. He's hurting himself, and his children, but that must be his karma right now. He's got to be the one to reach out for help. Help is there. So many of his friends and family are ready to support him if he'll just take a single step on his own. But that will be what that will be, and I need to attend to my own stuff.

I wish him peace and contentment and happiness. And in the meantime, I will seek those for myself.

anger just won't work now

I found out that the married man I was interested in GAVE HIS WIFE my cell phone number. She didn't accidentally find it out, and he didn't forget to erase it from a screen. She badgered and cried and had a tantrum, and he gave it to her. When I found this from his mother I hit the roof (so did his mother). His mother says don't you know what to do with children who throw tantrums? You let them scream until they are hoarse and walk away. He gave his wife his password to his university email account, and doesn't have the balls to change it. He is completely giving in to her.

I'm no longer angry. I pity him. He is going to have to hit rock bottom before he can get to the place where he can ask for help, just like an alcoholic. If he would only make a single step on his own, there are tons of people there who are willing to help him out. He just won't or isn't able to make that step.

So another of my predictive dreams comes true. This one was that I'd never talk to him again. And now unless he gets out of his marriage and gets help, I won't talk to him again. It's too bad. He is such a sweet, funny, brilliant, intuitive, musical guy. And he is wasting it on a marriage where the wife is clearly and openly out for his money. She refuses to sleep in the same bedroom as he does. He wants to be a professor, and she wants him to make more money. But all that is neither here nor there now. I have never been a person to learn from others' mistakes. It always seems like I've got to make them for myself. Well I've learned about falling for married men the hard way.

It has broken my heart. And the ironic thing is that I didn't even get an affair out of it. (I'm just joking.) It was strictly jokes, and politics, and intellectual discussions, and discussions about family. That's it.


I have been in deep grief about the whole thing. I chose to get invested with him because he was an old friend who needed help, and I thought that the compassionate thing to do was to help him. He has a mental health Dx too, so we also had that in common. It was me who fell for him, not the other way around. So this is my doing here. I really thought that he was on his last leg in his marriage. But this shows you the power of marriage even when it is a classic abused/abuser relationship--with him as the abused this time around. I can relate to that too, but I got out of my abusive relationship. Oh did I mention we are friends from 30 years ago in high school and we have all that time to relate to.

It goes back to what my son said about the whole thing--if it works, it's ok, and if it doesn't work, it's ok (he's a Zen Buddhist). I just have to let the not working part be ok too.

I'm getting ready to be in love again after my revelation about my ex husband after watching The Notebook. The fear of falling in love with an abusive man has left me closed to falling in love. And then I'm writing my novel which has a love story in it, and I have to be able to access my feelings of falling in love all over again--minus the abuse. But now I see why I didn't "fall in love" with my second husband. I loved him, but I wasn't IN LOVE with him. And that marriage just disintegrated.

Maybe I'll try connecting with my faith again. I forgot the time, and wasn't able to go this evening. But I'll try again next week, and the week after, and so on, until I attend a meeting.

But in the meantime, I accept what John did (the phone number) as part of reality. He was probably doing the best he could do at the time. If I need to, I'll change my cell phone number. I don't think I'm going to need to, though.

I'll keep in touch with his mother. She'll tell me how things are going without hesitation. I hope she sticks to her guns and cuts off money from him and his family. Then the woman who is a financial whore will most likely get fed up on the lifestyle that they have to live on. At least that's what I hope happens for his sake. She really is poison for him. And that's regardless if anything happens between John and I in the future. Regardless, he needs to be in a healthier place with a healthier relationship, even if it's not me. I feel like saying "May he rest in peace" because it seems like he is almost dead. I do wish him well. Maybe my peace can come from that.

he contacted me--need a shoulder to cry on

My friend returned the anonymous email and praised me for my cleverness. Then he said that email would be monitored too. And then he closed with what I always said to him about his circumstances: I am so sorry.

Now I don't know if he planned this, or if I'm being paranoid. Did he try to draw me into his dysfunctional world? Why can't he get out of the trap that he's in? He is so smart, surely somethings must have occurred to him. But I don't know if my friendship has just been rejected or not. I am sad. Wounds are being torn open again. My wound that I opened up about only truly being in love with my abusive ex-husband is being torn open yet again.

I'm feeling a little SU. A little SI. I hurt, I hurt, and I don't know what to do about it. By an indirect mailing route, I typed out my blog address, hoping that we could communicate that way. But there's no telling if he'll even try. And it could be a long time before he checks his PO Box to see if my note, not even a note, just my blog address, is there.

In the meantime, where does that leave me? Lost and alone and in pain. I can tell my therapist. She'd say move onto the next thing on my list of priorities. She'd say use DBT skills. But what I really want is a shoulder to cry on.

And in my lonely life, I don't even have that. I hurt so badly.

ethical dilemma--I secretly contacted my friend

I don't know whether I am SUPPOSED to or not, but I emailed by friend under an anonymous name. I quoted all sorts of quotes about dreams coming true. He should recognize the anonymous name, and will certainly recognize some of the quotes that I quoted as quotes that we had quoted each other as well. I did not address it to him, just his office mailbox, and did not sign it. He is very bright. Let's just see if he gets it and will start returning the quotes. Barring signing that it is his "forever friend," he'll just have to figure it out. He's a genius, so he should be able to put 2 and 2 together.

Now if he writes back using this secret email address is another story.

I got another call from one of his marital relatives yesterday, and she was lying throughout the whole call, I know because I have talked to my friend's family. His "relatives" are spreading malicious gossip about him, and humiliating him. I finally decided that since I have caller ID on my cell phone (where they call me), I just won't answer calls coming from that number any more. It is very upsetting to me, and according to my T and my Group, there is no reason for me to have to listen to the calls. So to protect myself, I will not answer the phone again from the relative in question.

I have been grieving. Not depressed, but grieving, that a wonderful friendship should end so abruptly that there wasn't even a goodbye, and that it was ended by others, not my friend and I. My grief is deep, almost as deep as if a person had died. Iam not sleeping, even with sleeping pills. So should I stand by my friend in his hour of need, or should I abandon him to his fate that he has surely had a hand in making? Some of my counselors say yes, leave him alone, you are stalking him now. Other counselors say, if you were to cut off contact from him now, it would be a deep tragedy that he might never get over. I don't want to stalk him, and if he tells me to go to hell, I'll leave him alone. But I don't want to abandon him in this time of crisis either.

A lot of my quotes I sent him were about dreams and how they come true--sometimes for the worse, just as my dream has. Another was about how with marriage comes disaster (needles and pins, needles and pins...). I left it short, because I didn't want someone else to get who was sending quoted text. I have left phone messages on his machine at work, again without saying my name or his. And now this is the first time in text that I have tried to communicate with him by email.


My fear is that he is so humiliated that he won't reach out and ask for a friendship. The lies about him are spread far and wide, and no doubt in his company. So where is he going to go for comfort? He's an adult, he can make his own decisions, but I have been where he is and have been so distraught that I didn't know what to do. I crawled within myself, as he is no doubt crawling within himself.

I feel better today than yesterday. I see my T this afternoon, and we will discuss the whole thing. I'm just in an ethical dilemma: do I keep my promise to a friend to remain friends forever, or do I follow my T's advice that I break off all communication with him? I know she is concerned about me stalking him, and I am very conscious of that too. If I felt I was, I would quit, because I definitely don't want to be contacting him against his wishes. But he is not even contacting his family (whom he's close to), so he's in trouble. And what sort of friend would I be to abandon a friend in trouble?

A friend in need is a friend indeed.