It has been 21 days of no contact.  I am still so grateful I chose this route. The insights I am experiencing are causing growth spurts that are amazing but just like when you are a teen and you are growing fast, they hurt sometimes.   As I have stated before I have never gone no contact and I never believed it was the way to go.  I have always wanted to hold on to the friendship that I had in the beginning of the relationship.  I realize today that I never had that with this relationship.  This person never cared about me as a friend.  I was always supply for one thing or another, sex, a place to stay, a car, clothes, food and a gateway to communities that he was not a part of.  Once I set some boundaries I was no longer of interest because a boundary for a narcissist is not acceptable.  You must belong to them completely and be a willing victim that they can drain on a regular basis on their time and when you need them they are usually nowhere to be found.  To be friends with this person and go to them for anything would be like asking to be poisoned again and again “please sir may I have some more??”  It makes me sick thinking about it but it has been my pattern in the past.  The first person I thought of to call when I was in severe pain was the very person who tore my heart out and left me bleeding out.  It also gave me that love addict hit I was looking for and would still my heart for a very short time.  That person was my dealer and I was the shaking, sick junkie looking to make a score.  Any contact helped me in that moment because I was jonesing for that feeling of acceptance, any acceptance.  But in the long run it was bankrupting me emotionally.  Every single contact only prolonged the withdrawal that I needed to experience.  In order to be born again as the phoenix I must allow myself to withstand the flames of purification.  I was always afraid of those flames so I never allowed myself to ever face them fully without keeping a hand on the past and that person.  It felt safer to have someone until I could find someone else.  It made the withdrawal seem less painful when in fact it made it last even longer.

It is a new day and a new experience to go no contact.  I am three weeks out and I have good days and bad days.  I never have thoughts of wanting to be with this person again.  I do have thoughts of deep hatred and anger sometimes that someone could treat me so wretchedly and smile about it.  I do have thoughts of how I wish it would have ended earlier and in a different way.  I cannot dwell on those thoughts.  I have to let them go because I cannot change anyone but myself  and the past is over and I must live in today.  There are things I do everyday to help me to focus on myself and not get caught in negative thinking.  I have to be careful about the music I listen to.  This morning I was trying to find songs for my drag king act.  I picked one and started to listen to it and about three lines in I felt that familiar sickness in my chest and I had to stop the music.  I don’t listen to the music we listened to together and I cannot return to the club I once loved because of the music.  I know that this will pass but it will take time. It brings on PTSD symptoms and nightmares that give me sleepless nights.  I dreamed about him two nights ago.  I did not wake up crying.  I woke up puzzled that I had such a pleasant dream about him.  I never dream about people who I leave, who leave me or who die.  I have only dreamed of my father 3 times since his death 13 years ago and the first dream did not come for years.  But as one of my friends pointed out it is a way for my brain to purge.  If this is what it takes to get all this poison out of me then I am ready to face the fire.  Burn Baby Burn….let the purifying flames cleanse my heart and make me stronger. This morning I kept asking Alexa to play the same song over and over again.  It is a song that has a wonderful memory attached to it and I love the words.   This is my favorite part and what I will repeat to myself anytime someone tries to bring negativity from this most recent past into my shining future.

Here comes bad news, talking this and that (Yeah!)
Well, give me all you got, don’t hold it back (Yeah!)
Well, I should probably warn ya, I’ll be just fine (Yeah!)
No offense to you, don’t waste your time
Here’s why…

(Because I’m happy)
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
(Because I’m happy)
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
(Because I’m happy)
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
(Because I’m happy)
Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do