We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway
And I wonder if I’m really with you now
Or just chasing after some finer day

Anticipation- Carly Simon

That song keeps playing through my mind today as I wait to see what unfolds.
Something you don’t know about me is that I fell in love. I fell in love HARD!
I’ve been in love before and I have a beautiful son as a trophy of that love. Regretfully, he passed and my life has forever been changed. This love I talk about is a love like no other. It was a love with a narcissist.
For those of you whom haven’t had to deal with that. I applaud you. I will pray that you live each and every day as yourself and you’re filled with happiness and you stand strong knowing that nobody can take that away from you. I once was that way, until HE took everything.
I gave him everything that I’ve never given to anyone else. I always kept up my walls because it was safety. My emotional fortress was protected. This man purchased a grappling hook and climbed right over. At first, I fought it, but then I just let him stay on my side of the wall. For those who have been in a toxic relationship, I’m sure that may resonate.
My strong personality has always made me the “boss” of every relationship. I made all the decisions and I was even the breadwinner. I pretty much wore the pants and as happy as I was, it was exhausting. I wanted to just manage the household and know I had a man that would support his family. Even though I didn’t get what I want, when I was in this relationship actual gender roles existed. He made me believe we could move mountains together & I know that we could. Power Couple was an understatement in the beginning, His couple friends were jealous of us. The way he would speak about me when I wasn’t around came straight out of a Nicholas Sparks novel. He loved me. I loved him. I let him on my side of the fortress and he eventually became my Trojan Horse.
At first he was into everything I liked and loved. We would go to holiday events, he was apart of my routine life and as mundane as it was to others, I loved it. I taught him about “standup tacos”, Sunday Brunch…EVERYTHING that I loved, As a month passed, he would mention how much money I would spend at brunch and say it was ridiculous. Our first date was an NFL game because I had a row of seats. Over time, he mentioned I was wasting money and I agreed, so I downsized. He started to make me my favorite meal on Sundays but my friends stopped coming by. They liked Sunday Funday ,but after eating ,he never understood how my friends weren’t paying me for what he had cooked.😳😳 It was the exact same meal and tasted just as good, if not better and they would just leave. They would throw $12 on the table for a meal so the bill was paid with one card, so why not here? I explained because we invited them to my house…you don’t ask for someone to pay for their meal. He then started to talk about my friends like that on how they were using me and planted a few seeds in my head that flourished. Why was I always paying for brunch and drinks and why wouldn’t anyone pitch in for the footballs games, not full ticket price but a little something? As years went by and my friends were always doing it our way and it worked, so why change a good thing? In hindsight, I was being used but back then,,,,that thought never crossed my mind. When I made mention of money, they were horrified and blamed it on him. They started dropping off one by one,
More arguments would occur over this and how he was stepping too much into my life and then one day., I suspected of him on drugs and he spit in my face. I confided in a friend and after that, she was never my friend again. She couldn’t believe that I would have allowed that to happen, How I didn’t do anything, or pull a “Christina” and just flip out and kick him out and seeing me as this newly “weak” person, she stopped talking to me. All my friends did.
Once I was isolated, the verbal attacks started. How I raised my son was bad. My cooking was bad. Everything I said was stupid and I didn’t have any friends to talk to about it…but he did. He had all of his friends. He wouldn’t let me hang out with them so they were filled in their heads whatever narrative he gave. He then would tell me about other women and how he could have anyone and me asking him to not speak to other women so intimately was “my issue” & clearly a display of low self-esteem.

**This was in my drafts and I don’t believe I ever finished. I decided to post as is as an example of what happens.

You give up.

You quit

You stop doing the things you love

… and then you’re left with nothing more than unfinished thoughts, & feelings