I have been reading a lot about gratitude.  Gratitude is probably saving my ass right now.  Every morning I think about how incredibly lucky I am.  I have a job that pays me well.  I have a beautiful home with a wonderful friend.  I have a dog who adores me and is a wonderful companion.  I don’t have any serious health issues.  I have friends and family that I love and who love me.  My frustration comes from this deep seated fear I have of losing all of this.  The moment things are good for me I get scared and when I am scared I don’t enjoy things I just try to hold onto it like the figure in the four of pentacles.

It is probably why relationships are such a bad idea for me.  The few times I have let go and decided I would just go with the flow in a relationship it has always blown up in my face.  It is like I expect that when I let out a sigh of contentment the universe will jump out from behind a chair and say “hahahaha, got you again Rauncie!  That person never loved you.  Why did you ever think anyone would?”  It has happened before.  I can remember standing on my balcony years ago thinking how lucky I was and within a matter of days I lost everything.  I don’t just think this about intimate relationships.  I think this about every relationship.  It is why  in the past I have worked myself to death trying to please people. Nothing was too much.  I would spend my last dollar if they needed something even if it meant I had nothing.  In the past I was afraid to have boundaries or ask for anything because I was terrified of being abandoned and I would find out later that even when someone agrees to what I ask for they resent me for asking and end up breaking the agreement anyway.   I am not talking about major asks either.  I am talking about things like “Don’t pursue other women in front of me.”  “Communicate with me if there is an issue.”  “Keep a commitment with me even if something more interesting comes up or at least let’s see if we can compromise on it.”  I am so frustrated with relationships in general because how can I ever know for sure that someone is doing something because they want to or not if they are not honest.   It makes me crazy.   Well, maybe the problem is not just me which is where I was going with this right at this moment.  Once again I was taking on the blame.  The squirrels were chanting “It must have been something you did”  The squirrels never think it could have been the person who was acting like an immature child who wanted to keep the cake and eat all the other cakes too…in front of me.   It is no wonder I literally get physically ill when I think about certain memories, places or people.  It is hard to explain to people how PTSD manifests in physical reactions like this.  I have had nights in the past months where I could not leave the bathroom because I knew if I did I would just throw up again.  I would just lay on the floor feeling like I could not breath and reciting mantras to try to stop it.

So….fuck you universe.  I am not letting you get me again.  I don’t believe in the future anymore.  Everything is temporal.  Everything is just right now.  There is no future.  There is no tomorrow.  The only thing I can count on is the breath I am taking right this moment.  I can only trust myself.   Hmmm It seems like I have heard all this before.  I have heard it may be the answer to peace.  Let go…

This is a hard entry for me to make.  I started this blog because I want to be totally open about my struggles and revelations I have about myself.  Some of my revelations just floor me.  I had one this past week.  I had someone try to explain this to me once but I could not quite understand what he was saying.  Sometimes you have to experience it in a way that is slaps you in the face.  That is what happened.  I am thankful he tried to explain it and I wish I could have understood it then rather than have this humiliating way of learning a lesson.  I don’t think I have had many lessons that were not the universe hitting me with a 2 x 4 because sometimes I don’t see my faults.

I have been told I have a charismatic energy that attracts people in many situations.  I am bigger than life.  I dress in costumes sometimes and draw attention and can hold attention if I choose to or keep myself untouchable and distant.     There are people who adore me and people who hate me.  I realize that is true for all of us.  But I know there is a responsibility that comes with being a person that others look up to or admire.  If you are a person who is a mentor, leader or a charismatic personality people will follow your lead and they will believe you when you say something (at least some of the time).  I say all this to lead into my story of the hat and what really happened.

On Friday I thought someone had taken my hat.  I was positive I had walked in with my hat and had it with my coat.  I could see in my mind walking in with it on my head and someone saying “your hat is so cute”.  I remembered talking to people about my hat and having it with my coat.  When I told people it was missing they said “omg I saw you with it on this morning”  “Noooo I remember you telling us about it”  I just knew I had the hat that morning and now it was gone.  I was heartbroken and others were sad for me and they were trying to find the hat too.  I spoke with someone through text about the hat and she said she would ask around and try to find out who had the hat.  I told my roommate about it and we both cursed about the fact that someone would take my beloved hat.  When I went to walk my dog I went to where I kept my hats and took another hat down and put it on and sighed to myself “I wish my hat was here”  and went out for a walk with my dog.  I looked up at the moon and made a wish that the person who had it would be as happy with it as I was.    When I returned from the walk I stood in amazement because my hat was hanging on the hook I had just taken the hat I was wearing from.  I had looked at that exact spot and had not seen it when I went out.  I was confused and thought I must be crazy.  I called my roommate over and told him and we both felt confused and also guilty that we had been cursing someone for stealing a hat that had never left the house.

So what really happened?  I started googling things about false memories.  Then I started tracing my steps in my mind again.  I suddenly remembered that I had in fact taken my ear muffs instead because I had my hair pulled up with a clip and my hat would not fit over it.  Everything I imagined in my mind about the hat and that day was all my imagination and not only had I believed it wholeheartedly everyone else had memories that were not true as well.   I was blown away.  I remembered what this person had said to me about how I had this ability to make people believe what I said and to persuade people easily.   I realize that in some cases this can be a good thing if you are using it in a positive way but this just felt awful to me.  I did not do it on purpose but I stopped and thought hard about how I must be extra careful about things I think are true.  I have done this same thing in regards to judging a person thinking I knew for certain their motives or how they are when in fact my judgement was based on past experience and not on them at all.  I immediately wrote an apology to someone I felt I had done that too recently.   I felt heartbroken over it.  I felt angry at myself that I did not see this before or understand.  I remember he said that I must know I am doing it… but I know that when I have done it that it was a learned behavior that at one time may have saved my life.  Being able to persuade someone in whatever way I could to not hurt me was a skill I learned and used for several years.  When I am afraid, when I am hurt, when I am focused on thinking everyone wants to use, leave or hurt me…..this defensive skill is my fall back.  He was right.  I did know on some level what I was doing but it was not out of malice it was out of self preservation.  I must be vigilant and examine myself more thoroughly when I am afraid before I speak and cause hurt and embarrassment to myself and others.

I am not sure what I am going to do with this.  I feel like I have been laid bare and open and I am ashamed.   I want to grow.  I want to continue to be a better person.  I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore and I don’t want to continue to hurt myself by pushing away people who care about me.  I will continue to write about this as I process it.  If this has made sense to you in anyway I would like to hear your feedback.  If you do not want to write it here you can email me at goddessphoenixmedusa at gmail.  I would love to hear from you.

Adding on after posting:

I felt right away I needed to add something.  I am taking full responsibility for my actions.  I am not in anyway trying to excuse myself because of my issues.  I am working on making changes not making excuses.  After rereading it I thought someone may think I was making excuses.  I am extremely hard on myself internally.   I feel I have been in the wrong in many situations that I cannot change now but I can do my best to make amends.

I spent this last week making a film with a small group of people.  I knew some of them beforehand but most of them I had never met.  It got to be stressful after a week being in small spaces waiting to be called to set.  I did enjoy it.  I learned so much about what really goes into being in a film and how long you have to wait sometimes.  At least one of the days I was on set for 10 hours for 30 minutes of filming.  It was totally worth it and I cannot wait to see the product at the end of April.

Today was the last day.  I was tired and looking forward to saying goodbye to the people I had worked with all week and head to the gym.  I returned to the room we had been in all day today and the first thing I noticed was my hat was missing.  This is not just any hat.  This is my black and pink furry hat with ears that I have guarded like a hawk for 7 years because I loved that hat.  It had been on the back of my chair with my coat and I knew the minute I walked in it was gone.  Someone had taken it.  It had not been lost because it was on the chair when I went for my last call.  I was so heartbroken.  I had shared in the morning how much it meant to me because several people commented on how much they liked it.    This is one of the reasons I am so diligent about keeping my things together and constantly keep track of where things are.  Especially when I really like something.  So, my hat is gone.  I cannot do anything about it.  I just hate that this kept me from spending the time I wanted to spend saying goodbye to the people I had spent a week with.  I was so upset I went to my car and cried.   I am glad I will see them again in April when we have our opening.  As for the person who took my hat.  I feel sorry for them that they felt they had to steal something from someone.

We spend so much of our lives afraid of endings.  The truth is everything ends.  The lesson of the death card is that there must be death for a new beginning to happen.  This is not just about physical death of our bodies.   This can be the ending of a job, a relationship, the death of a beloved pet, the death of a lifestyle and many other things.  But after death comes rebirth and the fool who is the zero card …the beginning and the end who walks through the whole story of life.

I was musing on this during my workout this morning.  Many times I have held onto something or someone until it was like dragging around a stinking dead corpse.  I was determined to make it work because the letting go always seemed like the end of the world.  But every time I have let go and trusted, wonderful things happened for me and for others involved that would not have happened if it had continued.   I am not a person who thinks everything is roses and singing birds.  Life is full of things that happen.  No one is promised a drama free, no bad things happening life.  If you think you deserve that you are going to be disappointed for your whole life.  The universe is not out to get you, you don’t have bad luck and you are not cursed.  Shit just happens, even to really good people.  I have experienced the death of a relationship and I am standing on the cliff with my flute and my dog and I am not looking back anymore.  I am already seeing some positive outcomes of this change in my life and the positive has not only happened to me.  That is a good sign that this was the right thing.

Time to take the jump off the cliff…..  see you later 🙂

I am done counting days.  I have come to the conclusion that counting days and reading things about how to deal with a break up first thing in the morning only helps for a short period.  The first few weeks it helped a lot.  I felt like I was not alone.  I was able to chat with people who were also struggling and I was proud that for the first time in my life I was able to stick to a no contact agreement I made with my ex.  It was a good choice…for the time.  Then something starting happening.  I was getting depressed.  I was crying out of the blue and felt myself sinking.  Some of the stories were making me worse not better.  The counting of the days was making me anxious.  I was focused on what would happen the first time I had any contact with him and could not stop thinking about how it may be terrible.  I was afraid to go places because I might run into him.  I was on constant alert and I was so tense I was starting having trouble sleeping.  I woke up thinking about the breakup because I got a reminder first thing to do my mending assignment and I thought about it right before bed when I did my check in.  So I made the decision after reading about the pros and cons of counting the days to stop.  I had made the 30 days we agreed on and I had started to heal.  I was ready to move on.  So I made the choice to send him a message we talked about when we made the agreement.  It was simple “I wanted to say hello and see how you are doing.”  I had been warned by my friends in the chat room that this would only make matters worse…what if he doesn’t respond …what if he says never contact me again… but the thing is those things did not matter because I was not sending the message because I wanted to open something up I was sending the message because I needed to move on.  He responded with a similar message and said he was doing OK and asked how I was.  I told him I am doing good and it was nice to hear from him.  That was it.  There was no discussion, no drawn out conversation.  I felt like a million pounds had been lifted off my shoulders and all that tension was just gone.  Yesterday I was able to focus and not think about him or the breakup for almost the whole day.  This morning I woke up feeling lighter and not burdened by being focused on mine and others pain.  I felt like I was finally moving again…I was not anxious or afraid anymore.  I felt strong and I had made choices that for me were the right ones.  I want to stress that this may not have worked for someone else.  Everyone is different and every relationship that ends is different.  I did the very best I could, I compromised and communicated but in the end it was just not a good fit.  That does not make either of us bad people.  It was time to let go of any resentment and just move on.  I want to live in today.  I don’t want to constantly look back on the past and what could have been different or focus on what I could have had in the future.  I have learned some valuable lessons and this relationship brought me closer to where I need to be in my life.  I am learning to love myself more and more.

This morning as I was unloading the dishwasher I picked up one of the spoons that a friend and I had nicknamed the exile spoons.  They were spoons I had loved because they are small and flatter and I need to eat slower and take in less food so they were perfect for me.  But the person I lived with at the time hated them.  I had to put them in another drawer, in exile, because they did not want to even get one by accident.  It made me realize that I had been doing the same thing.  I had put a person in exile in my mind.  I made sure I would never even accidentally  run into them which  made me think about them more.   I refused to hang out with or talk to anyone who was around them because I did not want to hear even one thing that might upset me.  I was not living my life fully because just like those exile spoons it was constantly on my mind.  It made me feel sorry for the person I had lived with who must have always been afraid one of those spoons would jump out of the drawer and into their mouth at anytime and it made me realize that I had made the right choice in ending the exile.  I don’t want to hang out with the exile spoon but I don’t want to be afraid either.  I no longer want to limit where I go and who I talk to.  I’m done being afraid.  I can make boundaries and decide when I am ready to go places and talk to people.  I am a strong amazing woman with an amazing life.  I can handle what the universe brings me.  There is evidence in that because of the things I have already lived through in this life.  So thank you universe for another lesson and another teacher who I walked with for awhile.

Now I am off to spend a day on set for a movie I am doing.  I can’t talk about it right now but I will post about the opening when we are allowed to.   🙂  My life just keeps getting better.

Mondays are hard for me.  They have always been hard but right now they are even worse.

I can’t talk about it anymore.  I have to take a break from this.  I sometimes wish I had something to make me forget but those things just bury what I need to face.

This morning I got up and decided it was time to go to the gym and try a water class.  I chose this gym because of the pool and I had not stepped foot in it since I joined.  The class started at 9 a.m..  As soon as the music started I had some anxiety that somewhere in that play list may be a song that would make me emotional and wished for ear plugs.  It turned out really good.  The play list was empowering songs that I knew all the words too and it felt great to move my body.  When it came time for the cool down and the stretching this song began to play.

As soon as I heard the first few notes my tears started flowing.  I was not sobbing.  This was a different kind of crying.  It came from deep in my spirit.  I was feeling myself opening up again.  I had been so afraid to feel anything.  Parts of me have been closed off for months.  The rest of me shut down almost completely on December 15th.  It was like pulling up the drawbridge and acting like no one was home when anyone came knocking.   But this morning in the water, looking out into the sky with birds flying by and a tree waving in the wind I felt a stirring inside of me that I had not felt in a long time.

I am coming back home to myself.

The last 30 days have been up and down for me.  My feelings were all over the place.  I felt sad, angry, humiliated, betrayed, hurt and numbness.  I wrote letters and deleted them.  I wished horrible things on someone I once loved and everyone involved in the situation.  At times I felt like hurting myself.  Not because I wanted him back, because I wanted the pain to stop.  I thought about just driving my car somewhere and disappearing at times.  I was feeling so sorry for myself that I actually thought no one would even miss me.  This is a pattern that began way back when I was a child.  Being left behind or rejected in anyway sets off this pattern.  Even though I was the one who broke up with him his behavior is what forced my hand.  It was the best thing that could have happened to me because I am finally free of a relationship that was not good for either of us.  So what now?

It is day 31.  This morning I got up and walked B and in the middle of the street I started to cry.  I was not thinking about anything when the crying started.  I was just feeling lonely out there in the street, a street we had walked on together.  I came into the house and went to my healing room.  I lay on the floor and cried for awhile and what came out of that is knowing it is time to forgive and let go.  It is the only way I will be able to heal and move one.   When I say forgive I do not mean I am ok with the way I was treated.  I have learned a lot from what I went through.  I seem to have the same lessons presented to me over and over.  This lesson about boundaries and not doing things to please someone else when it is not something I really want to do…I have been a reluctant and terrified student.  I have always been afraid to stand up for myself.  The times I stood up for myself as a young woman brought physical abuse on me that was not something you forget easily.  There is trauma in my body and I go into yes mode when I feel scared.  It is part of my PTSD.   I am not in anyway dismissing the way I was treated.  I will not forget that.  I will never look at this person in the same way again or the people who were involved.  However, I can look closer and realize that each of us has a road to travel and we all have wounds that we are dealing with.  We are all human.  There is no monster in this story only other people who also have things they need to work on.  How can I a person who has done many regretful things in my life point my finger and continue to  seethe inside over all that has transpired.  I cannot.  I have been forgiven many things.  I am grateful for that.  So today I work on forgiveness.  When my tears were falling this morning I felt like poison was leaving my body as I said over and over “I forgive you and let you go.”  Then it turned into “Rauncie you are forgiven”  I needed to forgive myself and stop beating myself up over the fact that I had broken my own boundaries to try to keep someone in my life.   I am not sure how long I was there on the floor but when I got up I wrote a very short letter in my journal to him that said I forgive you and I hope your life is good.  I also asked for forgiveness for some things that I did.  Nothing is ever black and white and I am not completely innocent.  It is not something I will ever send to him but I needed to get that out.  I do realize that a part of my life is ending and I am moving on to other things.  Right now I do not see myself going back to that lifestyle.  I want to focus on spiritual things and my plan to travel the world with my friend Keith.   Forgiveness and mindfulness is what I will focus on now.  When my mind goes to the past two years I will focus on what I learned and not on what I wish I could change.

I was changed because of this past two years and I am growing.  For this I am grateful.   Someday I will say thank you for being one of my life teachers in person but for today I need to heal enough to say that with a pure heart.

Today marks 30 days of no contact.  I have not looked at his Facebook, called him, texted him or sent an email.  I have also heard nothing from him which is a good thing.   I think if I heard from him right now it would send me into a panic attack.  I am not ready to see him or hear his voice.  I don’t know if I ever will be ready.  I cannot even interact with people who are still in touch with him or hang out with him at Vertex.  I don’t want to have any chance of mingling with his energy even second hand.  That says so much about how much damage this relationship did to me.  I just keep repeating to myself when I start having euphoric recall “I am so grateful to no longer be in an emotionally abusive relationship.”  Some people may think I am being harsh calling it that but you have no idea the private hell I was living in.  I kept it quiet because I was ashamed that I was putting up with it.  I did not want people to know that the seemingly strong Rauncie was allowing a man to slowly torture her to feeling suicidal on a regular basis.  I did not want people to know that I was shutting down emotionally and withdrawing more and more every week.  I did not want people to know that my PTSD had been triggered and the anxiety I was experiencing was leading to black out drinking.  I did not want anyone to know that he was never there for me when I needed him emotionally.  I did not want people to know these things.  I seem so strong on the outside but on the inside I am soft and full of pain right now.

I was thinking this morning about our culture and hooking up with people.  My dog takes more time picking a place to take a shit than people do picking out someone to take home from the club.  It is all based on the chemicals in our body.  We pick people and then try to make them fit our expectations.  It leads to relationships that we spend more time thinking about getting out of than we do enjoying the relationship.  It leads to people being hurt because an attraction that someone cannot get out of their system becomes an obsession.   I am just done with this kind of life.  I loved dressing up and going to the club and dancing.  I miss it.  I will not be able to step foot in my beloved club for months and when I finally do, if I do, I am sure that I will have on my armor and a costume I can hide behind…because that is what I do.  The difference will be that the next time someone asks me out and I tell them I just want to be friends I will not cave because they have pretty eyes and can dance.  It is all just an allusion.  As soon as the lights are turned on and real life has to be faced it all falls apart.  I need to dance with myself because I am the only person I can trust to be there for me.  But I may never go back to that life.  There is a darkness, emptiness and sadness that permeates it and sucks you in so easily.  Now that I no longer drink and I have shed the relationship that was stealing my life I cannot imagine being there to watch it happen to other people.

I am learning so much about myself and I am changing in this cocoon.  It is still dark in here and the change hurts like hell but I am coming out of this with wings.   My wings were torn from me this past year but I will fly again and this time I won’t allow anyone close enough to ever take them from me again.

That numb part of the process is over and I feel like a walking wound

I keep hoping for reprieve

I keep wishing for something to make it stop

I know that I need to go through this to heal but I am not just healing from one relationship but for the last few that I never processed

It is like waves crashing and knocking me over again and again

At times I wish I could be one  of those unfeeling people like my x

I wish I could just walk away and into the arms of someone else without ever looking back or thinking of the person I was with again

But I wonder…how do people do that?

I don’t get it and honestly when I really think about it I would not want to be empty hearted and always looking for the next thrill

People are not disposable but I feel like I have been erased and forgotten even though I was the one who chose to end the pain I was suffering in the relationship

I know that it will get better….it has to