The story of fireweed

I have a fireweed stalk tattooed on my arm-in a pretty conspicuous location.

I was a musician and performed quite a bit, and the fireweed would be visible while I played guitar. When I went back to Alaska a few years ago, I had an award winning female artist expand the design, stretching it around to the back of my arm. I have never regretted it, as this flower means a lot to me.

I have lost sight of this part of myself lately, consumed with pain and anger.

Fireweed blooms in places where most other plants will not grow. It can be found in culverts, on rocky hillsides, in areas ravaged by fire. When traveling Alaska in the summer, the meadows and tundra often look like a blanket of lavender. In the autumn, the leaves turn bright orange, with the tops of the plants a wispy white...and in a field when the wind blows the effect looks like a fire on the tundra. It is beautiful.

Alaska Native legend has it that when the flowers have bloomed to the top of the stalk, winter has arrived. So, this flower serves as a kind of timepiece. On my arm, I try to remember it as my own prompting to carpe diem...seize the day...

I haven't done that in a long time. It is no one's fault, including Nicole's. My rage at being treated badly (and there is no doubt about that), and the unfairness of what occurred, has blinded me to the best parts of myself.

The bottom line is, I loved her and I still do. I doubt I will ever understand what darkness in her (or weakness) allowed her to take the steps that she did, to break her own promises with little apparent remorse, and to make choices that left me in agony with no choices at all. I really had no idea she had lost that much faith, and had completely forgotten who I am-because she didn't share that (or anything) with me.. She must have known it would destroy me, and it is SO hard to reconcile that she didn't care enough about me to be more careful with my heart. Given our history together, and how many times I have put her goals, comfort, happiness before my own-how hard I tried to be there for her-I deserved more (any) respect, and for her to at least allow a break-up to occur within the context of an effort.

 I sit in our "this can be a new start" beach house, with a rent I cannot afford, due to her requests to move here."Please get me that beach house! I'll be in the yard all the time. I'll come home. You'll see." I wanted her to be happy. But, I was not happy. Not because of her (I loved her completely)-but because I was not being who I am. I let our chances slip away in the easy distractions, the illusions that belay the pain of unresolved memories, relationships, regrets, failures, a lack of joy in the living of life...and I let her get away with anything. Including giving up on us.

The more I find out about things, the more I realize there are more lies than have been confessed to. Some of the stuff is just heartwrenching. I know she has a conscience, and it must have eaten her alive to come home to me and play the game she did. She still hasn't even told me the whole truth, and I'm not sure if it even matters now.

I am using the court to make some of it right-or at least try. But, I think I may have already settled the score in a pretty decisive way. I haven't drawn anything more than what has been taken from me, I guarantee...and yet, as I knew already, "balancing" things has not given me the peace I had hoped it would. I am not remorseful at this point, but I am also not feeling good about hurting her.

I have a few more decisions to make about things that I know matter to her. I am not sure where my path is leading yet-but I am going to try to remember who I am. I still cry every single day over her, but I also can push her from my thoughts. She is still the first thing I think of in the morning, and the last thing I think about at night-but I am not always sobbing when sleep comes. If I really think about what she did to me, I can become both angered and crushed in an instant-and then I am impulsive.

I am trying to find the wisdom in enduring without retribution, and letting her reap superficial benefits while my whole life and heart came apart.
 It is a struggle, and she continues to make mistakes with me, and my heart. She hurts my spirit. I can't believe she forgot my eyebrow, and the dream .

But I am who I am regardless of which Nicole wins the struggle inside of her. If there is not more than I see now, then she will eventually be caught by the same sad characteristics that have hurt me. Even that thought doesn't make me happy...because.I love her. I know her. I know her bark and her bite, and I know what pains they really cover. I know her shames, her weaknesses, her hopes, her vulnerabilities..I know what she is most afraid of....and I love her for exactly those things and more.

..and so fireweed inspires me again...blooming in areas ravaged by fire, on rocky hillsides, in forgotten places...

"Just Get Over It"

Oh look!

That is Coley putting a ring on my finger, and then signing her promise to me. You know...The "For Better or For Worse" one.

The marriage one.

Apparently my having reactions to being lied to and tossed aside has really caused her hair to split, or for her to miss a tanning appointment (or something). She is angry that I did the thing I have stated directly I would do for weeks now. I have been told , "people get new girlfriends all the time. Get over it."

Really? Even if they were married?

Wouldn't a shocked, hurt, angry, desperate reaction be a normal response to abruptly being betrayed by an intimate? Believing the vows, and then making emotional and financial investments as a result might create additional anger, right?

I revealed our secrets. Finally. I did not have to make a thing up.

Coley showed up at my door at 10:00 pm on a Sunday night following my trip to Sacramento. We argued.

She filed a restraining order the next morning at 9am. After she showed up at MY door unannounced.

It compromises my ability to work as a social worker, and I have NOT been violent or threatened violence towards her a single time. In Oregon all you have to do to get an ex-parte restraining order is claim fear-and it will be issued as a precautionary measure.

Yep. I yell pretty loud. Scary.

I texted her with pleas and tried to coerce her into returning to try. Pretty normal stuff for someone who is in love (after being told she was safe and loved in return) and then has to abruptly deal with her wife in someone else's bed...all without warning...lost best friend, partner, lover, advocate...and it was done by the very person I most trusted to defend me.

Yep. I flipped right the hell out.

I was SO WRONG about her.

So, now I am bad for doing what I said I would. She cried over it. Cried over the TRUTH getting out there.

I think she should write a whole blues album. Boo Hoo.Hoo. (insert brass horns and extended bass line here).

It was the truth, and SHE made the choice. She made the choice first by doing what she did to him. She made the choice again when she repeatedly told tales about me to justify her unwillingness to work on her marriage-and for obviously lying to me and cheating. She added insult to injury. I defended myself in a big way.

I am so FAR from being in love with this person now, it is amazing. I feel disrespect and pity for her. I feel she fully deserves the consequences of her actions. At first I felt that little pull...that regret that I did not keep my promise to shoulder the burden alone, and let her return the hero to her brother. It is sad after all.

He deserves to know just how self involved and untrustworthy she can be. Maybe he will forgive his big sister..I actually encouraged him to, and let him know that she loves him more than anything else on earth. I told him she has never forgiven herself for her anger, or forgiven  me for allowing it to happen.
But she screwed me without lubricant, and then wanted me to shut up and go away when I complained of  redness and chafing. My reactions have been too noisy and irritating. She might get a frown line. She literally THREW me to the wolves so she could save herself.


Dumping me like trash didn't go quite as smoothly as she had planned..

The truth of what she did is NOT MY FAULT. THE WEIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHO SHE IS, OR FAILS TO BE, IS NOT MY FAULT.

I told Nicole this was coming, that I was done with shielding her, and that I was intending to defend myself if she didn't knock it off.

She tried to claim that sharing information about Clint (her family) was too private and intimate. I suggested that I was also supposed to be her family, and that claiming to love me while publically flaunting an affair might be considered by some to be an intimate violation of the most "private" kind.

I told her I felt emotionally RAPED.

Then she said that coming over "was a mistake" and sped off in a spray of gravel at about 10:10pm.

She filed the order as retribution-and now my my career is at risk.

That is the LAST time I felt even an ounce of compassion for her, or her ongoing sob stories. I could care less.

I'd send it again if I could. And again. And again.

That woman is NOTHING that I admire.

.I used to think she was SO beautiful, even when she had bed head, bad breath, and morning eye boogers.

She literally grosses me out. I'm not kidding. I wouldn't accept money to be with her now...and it has little to do with her outside appearance...although that looks completely different (an very unappealing) to me now.

She will age into emptiness, surrounded by nothing real-with no one looking anymore. Truth rises. It will find her. It is already creeping up.

It is people like Coley who make our world a darker place to be......selfish and unkind, cold and rigid, moody and irresponsible, arrogant and shallow, dishonest and lacking moral compass in social relationships (not just mine).

They call her "Sybil" behind her back. There was a time I would have defended her. "Don't speak about my wife that way."

This person isn't even my friend at this point. I want to erase her nasty presence from my life.

Sand, surf, and sleighbells

If anyone locally is renting an apartment and paying $700.00 to $800.00 per month-you should seriously consider this place. It is $1,000 per month, but it is worth so much more. It has three bedrooms, an giant office, 2 bathrooms, an entertainment room, an upper and lower deck with views right off the cliffside backyard to the Pacific Ocean below, a backyard that is fenced and huge, a front yard with fruit trees and rose bushes (also huge), a hedged drive that sets the house back from the road with lots of privacy, a private beach trail and access to a gorgeous secluded beach with tidepools, rock arch formations, driftwood, shells, etc. The seals can be seen regularly sunning themselves on the seastacks below. It would be great for two people wanting to split rent, or for a family wanting to make the additional investment for this unique place. I need to get out from under this lease and move on...and I can't do it until I locate someone to take this place. It has been a real dream, but I didn't anticipate the abrupt changes. My life took a left turn at Albuquerque.

I'll bet that is not how you spell that.

If anyone would like to come take a look I might even make tea. Give Jo a call...509-990-6713.

Have a very Merry Christmas! Happy Newt Deer!

The Spell

Being "in love" is like a spell. It can be broken-but many things are just illusions. We did not have a chance to recast it. That is why counseling was so important-and why the commitment of marriage demanded it. It was a chance. Circumstance, and the insertion of another into a difficult situation-who served to confuse feeliings-have destroyed what was powerful and important to both of us.

Please check out http://coleyzzz.blogspot.com/2005/10/in-sickness-and-in-health.html

Keep scrolling and start reading about halfway through the post.

Amazing how things turn, and life gets in the way.

Gay people have been fighting for the "right" to legal marriage. Not taking it seriously is an affront to their efforts and their risks.

I meant my vows. I just don't understand how they were released so easily by her.

Painful Ending

I guess given the nature of emotions, people generally do what they need to do-and sometimes our emotions pull us in directions that we can only analyze when far away from the triggers that set them off.

I was completely in love with my wife, and very devoted to her. I craved time with her that never came. I was starved for affection, and touch. I was at a low point in my own self-esteem and destructive patterns (as was she)-I think after over a year of pleading and hoping that our path would soon change. She gave up long before I did. I just didn't know it.

I didn't know it, partially because I think she wasn't entirely clear on it....and partially because she took steps to say the things that would belay my fears. She would become angry if I accused her of cheating. She would remind me that she married me-and no one else. She would say, "I love YOU Jo, and you KNOW me. You are my best friend." She woiuld tell me that cheating is nothing she has ever done, and she could not hurt me that way-it wasn't in her to do that. She would have excuses for coming home after her shift later and later. I would say, "Do you not want to be around me?" She would deny that-and offer excuses about her friends visiting, someone on crisis needing her help, losing track of time. She would say, "What? Am I not supposed to have any friends? Jo. Look at me. I love you."

There are times she would come home and go out of her way to be with me-big smiles and very "mushy"...and in those times I could tell that she meant it when she said, "I'm in love with you Jo. You are the best thing that's ever happened to me. I really love you." When I would brush her off or be distracted she would say, "No Jo. Look at me. I REALLY love you." It was what I needed to hear.

I thought I was being unreasonable to ask questions or be intrusive about her schedule. Ultimately, I really trusted her and her love for me. Mine was complete and never in doubt. I think she knew that, because I made sure I told her a lot.

She allowed someone in the gate, past the guard that married people put up when thay are attracted to someone. She probably became thrilled with the electricity of interaction-that alive feeling that accompanies mutual attraction and discovery. She started lying about where she was. I didn't have a clue. She was cultivating a tension, a flirtation, an interaction that led to an affair.

Life in a bar (she is a bartender) includes alcohol obviously. That doesn't help in the maintenance of boundaries. The fact that we had been growing increasingly disappointed in ourselves, stagnant, felt trapped in a pattern without hope or passion, were without any real intimacy or communication for a long while....why in the world would someone pull away from the new and exciting-a hope for a dramatic change and leaving the pain behind?

Because we vowed "for better or for worse." That is why-and the fact that we did feel excitement, passion and admiration towards each other at one time, and HAD been happy...that we PROMISED counseling would occur before a final parting...counseling having the ability to change patterns through awareness, to offer insight where none was, open communication again, provide pathways to rebuilding and reconnecting, leading to potential for redescovery of each other, and the chance to feel hope again...THAT IS WHY.

That "in love" feeling often fluctuates in a marriage. Passionate love can change to companionate love. BUT...sparks that were there can re-ignite. A friendship on fire. We had that. But why would anyone go backwards into tough, grueling work when a quick fix and grasp for instant gratification are right there? The only thing that would bind is a promise. That is what marriage is. THAT is what separates "marriage" from any other romantic relationship. The VOWS and promises to exhaust all options beofre giving up on each other.

I was completely unprepared. Apparently Coley had been uncoupling for quite some time. She was ready to give me the boot and run for something else. I was SHOCKED, humiliated, outraged, shamed, scared, on fire with jealousy, and in relentless AGONY. I was surrounded by memories that still meant everything to me, and stunned that in an instant my goals, memories, trust, sense of safety...all were assaulted. By the ONE person I thought was my defender and best friend...who was family to me.

The speed and disregard (as it seemed to me) by which I was brushed aside once the "secret" was out was akin to the thought you might give hauling a bag of trash to a curbside.

I have been desperate in my pain. After all, I am still in total love with this woman (my wife in my heart)-who instantly moved into the house and bed of the object of her affair. I have been burning alive at night-alone, missing her, consumed by total desperate sorrow and aching for her to come home...

In our small town, where both of us are public figures due to our professions, everyone knew she was having an affair before I did. She carelessly flaunted it in public places before coming home to me with lies. It is apparent she was passivley terminating us...wanting to be caught without directly telling me. It was probably much easier to leave someone who is enraged at you then it is to leave someone who is crying and pleading-having to witness their pain and break their heart. But it is cowardice...and it is a broken promise to a lover and best friend.

And now it is so far beyond repair that even friendship will never be possible. In pain and anger, reaction and miscommunication, my emotional outburst and her unwillingness to endure it-each of us has mis-stepped, moved to escalating actions, become defensive...and basically taken a baseball bat to our fragile relationship. It is shattered. It is now in the realm of the court system...court orders and soon to be lawsuits....invaded privacy and revealed secrets...ongoing disrespect...desperate action and reaction on both sides...divided friendships...it is just out of control and only getting worse.

After coming alone to my house at 10:00 pmt to ask me how I could reveal private things to people in our community, she filed a restraining order the next morning. I am a social worker working with vulnerable populations...and in Oregon all you have to do is state that you are "afraid for your safety" and give a rationale, and an ex parte order is granted. It shows up on any background check, and insinuates violence or threats of violence. I have no choice but to challenge it and request it be vacated for lack of cause. I have been less than graceful to be certain, but am NOT a violent person-nor have I had any desire to physically harm Coley or her new interest. I have raged and pleaded, threatened to reveal secrets if she didn't come back to me and try counseling, texted way too much (and often in response to accusatory texts from her or sexually explicit or challenging texts from her younger new partner). I have not driven by their house, gone into her work (with the exception of a time to deliver a baby book to the counter-top when it was raining heavily outside, and the day I found out she was cheating and screamed that she was a liar), stalked her, threatened to hurt her...I did throw her computer off the balcony on an extremely hopeless and angry day, which was unacceptable...and I am completely responsible for that...as I am left with a phone bill reflecting the 251 text messages sent between her and her now girlfriend that apparently stated things (often texted with me in the next room) such as "I want to f@#k you". I am left with a number of bills that were her responsibility...

But that isn't the point. Money is not the point for me. Pride, the ongoing disrespect shown to me, and the current dishonesty in representation of facts are important to me. The fact that I am in love with her as I was supposed to be (now I am not sure why...lingering memories of her unique 'Coleyisms', laughter, shared battles we fought together, intense experiences and happy times I guess) is the point to me.

I miss a thing that is not coming back. I miss our "boys" racing around-our tripod kitty...our Charlie face and paper Chase. I miss our team tackling of problems. I miss having that hope and purpose for our future-even though I knew we needed intervention. I miss her smile, her perfume, her 3,000 pairs of socks. I miss her looking at me when I did something dorky and saying, "why Jo?"

I miss her pulling my socks off when there was a hole in one. I miss her getting stuff from high places for me. I miss our inside jokes....Nut Bitch With Curlers, Hot Pocket, Freakshow, Becky's P., show them your dangle Charlie, Back to you Bob...etc. I miss the familiar issues with her past and other family. I miss the certainty that we would make love again...one never realizes when the "last time" is going to be the "last time." I miss her making fun of my cooking. I miss feeling loved by her. I miss feeling safe, and like I am whole.

So....moving on through this minefield. The bomb already went off in my life with seven simple words following her text response to my reminding her she had JUST asked me if I was having an affair. "Well are you?" she texted. "No. Of course not!" I responded. Then the seven words. "I am. I won't be home tonight."

And she hasn't been.

My marriage is over, and there is nothing I can do.