to let go of the past, we first have to accept it

just one of the cars, just one of the hotels

For more than five years I was in a dysfunctional relationship with a woman I believed I cared for very deeply.  Just about everything you can imagine being wrong, was wrong with that friendship ~ if that was what it was.  And I was too willfully blind to see it.  Call it lying to myself, or ignoring the obvious facts, or just call it denial.  The plain truth was that because of my own unrealistic expectations, I was on a down-bound train to some very personal hell, and my conscious mind did not want to know.

My subconscious mind, my inner child knew all right.  I spent years being miserable, torturing myself, and looking for some easy escape from my pain.  I started to write this blog….  No that is not true, she found me through this blog, in March 2014, (or maybe earlier).  What happened was that the things I started to write here changed.  My posts became darker, filled with pain and angst as I tried to find some relief from my feelings.  I went back to drinking, and every time my feelings got the better of me I would get the better of a few bottles of booze.  I even tried therapy ~  although I never told my therapist the truth of it.

The worst thing I did was to invest more and more of myself in that one-sided relationship.  I visited California often, and took my friend on great road trips, including to Wyoming to see the total eclipse of the sun.  We went to some very expensive new-age seminars in Sedona AZ and Albuquerque NM.  We found some great restaurants in Orange County, and breakfasted on the Queen Mary in Long Beach.  I would send flowers and gifts on every possible occasion.  And. I couldn’t see that everything I did made it worse.

Perhaps because I was going crazy during the coronavirus lockdown, but a couple of weeks ago I admitted to myself and others that I was in deep, deep trouble.  Then I finally admitted why, and found the sense to tell my Californian friend that we needed to say goodbye.

I know that she is still in my mind, and will be for a while.  But I have an Angel at my shoulder, and as long as she is watching over me I will stay free of the chains that once bound me.

~

jack collier

jackcollier7@talktalk.net

alone again, naturally