2 years later

Oh, what can happen in two short years!

I am happy to report that I most certainly changed my life, but I did not accomplish the changes I was attempting to make that I detailed in this blog.

The bad news:  I went back to smoking, started drinking heavily again, and went back to eating stuff that wasn't good for me.

I had reason - perhaps not a valid reason for backsliding where my health is concerned, but a reason all the same. As I was making all of these positive changes in my life I realized that I needed to dig deeper and really change another thing that was adversely affecting my life, and that meant ending a 6 year long-distance relationship.

It wasn't an easy decision, but it was the right one.


I'm not proud to admit that I knew he was married when our relationship started, but a year into it I started to assert that we needed to end things or change things.  I think because of the aforementioned SSJ (soul-sucking job, remember?) it suited me to have a sometime boyfriend, especially because he liked to spoil me with gifts and trips.  There came a point, however, that I realized I more wanted the day to day companionship of a real relationship.  He kept distracting me with sparkly things.  The combination of not enough time and pretty shiny things certainly kept me from making a move for quite a while.

When the SSJ moved me South, I thought that would be the perfect time to fish or cut bait - and I wasn't really the fisherman.  He had to choose, and he swore he had and would move down shortly.  I bought a 3 bedroom home with the promises he would be sharing it with me, and his son would visit us.  I still let him distract me with sparkles and promises for another 3 years.  Thanksgiving of 2010, when he promised he would be here to share it with me and claimed car trouble, then suddenly HAD to go on a cruise with his son and mother at Christmas, I had really had enough and my suspicions grew.  He'd told me for the previous 2 years that even though he wasn't with me, he had also separated from his wife.  I don't believe that was true, and I think he was just carefully balancing both of his lives - one with me and one with his wife and son.

Early in 2011 we argued when yet again he made excuses as to why I couldn't meet his son if he was indeed separated.  He promised that he would have a plan by the time we took our next trip in May.  We met up for the trip and every time I tried to broach the subject of his plan, he sidestepped and avoided it.  The trip ended without him giving me any inkling of a plan and I was done.  I called him just before my birthday, just a week or two later, and told him I just couldn't face another birthday stuck in the same situation, and that I wanted to end things.  He asked me to think about it.  I told him I would but that I needed him to just back off while I did, which included a birthday trip to Savannah with a girlfriend.

He promised he would not call, text or contact me the whole weekend.  Instead he pushed the boundaries by liking and commenting on Facebook, texting and calling my friend, then finally emailing me on Sunday.  What he emailed me really sent me over the edge - he had contacted my boss to try to make some sort of plans (another sparkly, shiny trip or something) and my boss had told him he'd need to arrange it with me.  He couldn't go 3 days without contact, and he couldn't keep himself from contacting my boss when I'd recently expressly told him where the line was drawn when it came to 'surprising' me as his idea of surprising me would sometimes include showing up on my doorstep unannounced - unnerving when he lives 750 miles away.

I was so angry I sent him a letter telling him not to contact me in any way, shape or form until such time as I contacted him because he had overstepped his bounds and not kept his word.  I then blocked his phone number, email, facebook account, etc.  I. WAS. DONE.

So, on that birthday weekend in 2011, I started drinking heavily.  I ate some things I shouldn't have.  I started smoking again.  I swore to myself it was a momentary lapse and that I would get back on track once I got home, but that was before I broke and seriously sliced this man out of my life.  The next few months were some of the most stressful of my life and I'm honestly surprised that I didn't do more damage to myself in an effort to seek comfort and safety.

More tomorrow...