“You’ve got to cry one more tear before the pungent comedy will deliver its ultimate lesson and leave you in peace. You’ve got to make one further promise to yourself before you will be released from the twilight area where pain and pleasure became so tangled. You’ve got to navigate your way through one more small surrender before you will be cleared to hunt down your rebirth in earnest. But meanwhile, the catharses and epiphanies just keep on erupting. You’re growing more soulful and less subject to people’s delusions by the minute. Your rather unconventional attempts at healing are working—maybe not as rapidly as you’d like, but still, they are working.”

floating down the road, “flows like a river… pulls me around every bend,” every next curve a new surprise, wondering what’s next, enjoying what’s now. and i fell in love with another boy. it’s looking for more than a minute. a younger fella. a companion. and this little man, he’s changing my life. or perhaps he’s a reflection of the changes and choices i’m making. choosing to be open to what comes, choosing to follow the winding road, new paths, to let go, to watch it unfold, to let myself love and be loved, to stay awhile, to grow a little, to make commitments, to roll with it, to neither expect something nor expect nothing, simply to not expect, to see where it goes, to decide with intentionality whowhatwherewhenhow to roll, to live and breath and stride without fear, ready for anything as i shift within my existence. grasshopper meets ant. or rather, girl meets puppy. we can roll with it, playfully yet thoughtfully.
be open to what comes, with deliberate choice.

it’s been a month of lessons in love.
with myself, with others, with life.
walking fine lines and finding balance. relearning and remembering.
jump! run downhill! sing, dance, be silly! utilize the imperative! catalyze things!
it’s been a month of hope and love.
serendipity. happenstance. interaction. reflection. acceptance. intentionality. details. it’s all in the details. I’ve been reconnecting with the universe, finding lost faith, remembering to be joyous. and so i remind myself: hold onto these lessons in life and love and positivity. though i may often walk alone, it is not lonely, these connections are out there, each waiting to be enjoyed and appreciated for their moment, however long. give, receive, enjoy.  in its myriad forms. be open to love.

life is changing, it’s positive and powerful and full of potentiality. i am becoming. finding the middle in the swing, i look forward to the next bend, to jumping in and seeing whowhatwherewhenhow comes. it feels like good things. keeping in mind good advice given me as a child: live. love. laugh.

i fell in love with a boy. i fell in love with myself. i fell in love with life.
and ya know what? it’s fucking wonderful.

(and yes, aunt rene, and other straightforward folk, i’m sure it’s all a little esoteric and cryptic and tangental and whatnot, but hey, i’m sure you at least got out of all that that i’ve got a new puppy and a lust for life ;) (love y’all)

(oh yes, and remember, choices come with consequence. exempli gratia: poo.)

Be well and always remember you are loved.

a moment, lingering in memory, a pause, potentiality, tantalizingly erotic. just a moment, perhaps nothing to come, perhaps any hands would do, but the idea, leaves a hopeful smile on the lips, anticipation of what one would rather be doing tonight.

.

Lay your head on my arm baby girl
you’ve lived a good life, rest
The other side of love, here we are

Lay your cheek against mine, nose to nose
I’ll tell you stories of the places we’ve been
the rivers we swam, the roads we traveled
I’ll give you good lovin’ til the very end

It was a long drive back, didn’t know if
I could, Cradle your head in my hands
and watch you go, the other side of love

Broken inside, I broke shit.

It went down after I discovered Joe slept with Taffy Kehrwald – otherwise referred to as ‘that betty crocker cunt,’ since she more or less looks like a middle-aged morally-inept beer-gutted corner-store clerk. And yeah, it may be petty, but I can call names and be karmically accurate: he fucked around, but the twat knew he was doing it, sent messages to make sure I didn’t find out. Insert some old-world spitting on ground in contempt and disgust here. anyway. back to the point.

That BCC Taffy was my breaking point, the one time too many. I could listen to him, hear him pleading that he was trying, that he would find a way to regain my trust, and I could look at her photo and know that it clearly was a part of his compulsive sexual addiction – I mean really… that nasty bitch? – and my head could understand that slipping up and acting out happens, but… My heart couldn’t handle it. She was real, action taken. The inner doubts rallied, ‘really, that was what he chose over you?’

It was one time too many, the one too far over the line, beyond my ability to cope with the slips. Empathy, understanding and patience pushed too far. I wanted him to meet me halfway, reach out, show me he cared, was trying, give me something, anything. But nothing. Too little too late. The way he said he would try, that he’d find a way, was a step in the right direction, but I was tired of waiting for action to back up words.

That knowledge seeping in, that I had reached my limit, that things weren’t changing, that he just couldn’t or didn’t care, was like a blunt knife twisting around my heart. Despite it all, i loved the bastard, still wanted to hope we could find a way, be better, enjoy the good, and hated watching the last of that pathetic hope dying. Death throes of hope and love, sent me lashing out, like a wounded animal, in defense against the pain.

‘yeah, i hate myself for lovin you, can’t break free of the things that you do, i wanna walk but i run back to you, yeah i hate myself…’

We were hitting full on alpha couple, and though I knew I should just walk, I couldn’t quite do it. We kept falling back into comfortable – repress, suppress, denial, false hope, half-assed effort – til the next kaboom. I didn’t know how to cope with his illness, or mine, or what it was doing to me. Letting my pain, anger and frustration out in the ways I did probably wasn’t healthy, but what of any of it was? It felt like I could watch myself reacting, pushing him back, doing these things I didn’t really want to do, but was helpless to stop it. I couldn’t stop him from hurting me, I couldn’t stop loving him, I couldn’t stop from lashing out. Helpless.

It felt like it didn’t have anywhere else to go, didn’t know what else to do with my hurt. He’d pushed me to my breaking point. Desperately sad, mournfully futile, helpless reactions, wrong turns, my own acting out. A primal scream, you’ve pushed me so far, what did you expect?! A last desperate attempt to get through, or get away.

Push back til it fixed or broke or both.

and so I broke shit. Because I didn’t know anymore how to cope with what was happening, with what was wrong with him or me or us, or the fact that we just couldn’t seem to stop making the wrong choices, stop taking two steps back.

i feel with my heart, i feel with my head, i feel with my hands.

por ejemplo:
i can feel betrayed; i can feel your cock.

the abstract, emotional and mental, begs for physical expression.

and so i stand, in the kitchen, a stack of plates in my hands. they feel smooth, cold, heavy. four large, four small. they’re oversized, square, small a medium at minimum.
they feel wonderfully weighty and solid in my hands, the stack.

they feel ready to crash.

the neighbors, he says, don’t deserve to be woken, they didn’t do anything. appealing to my rationality, though i feel anything but. and why should i now? why think of that? why didn’t you consider the myriad unexpected consequences of your actions? why now must i take responsibility for something you catalyzed? for things you wouldn’t and won’t?

but despite my tendency to express beyond the bounds of social acceptability, despite his being the upright, responsible one, i’m the empathetic one, the one more thoughtful, the only one here who seems to think of how other people feel… or something like that, at times…

so i nix the original plan, that brilliant, calculated idea of a moment ago – to break shit, break a bunch of shit, outside, out back, out of the way and easy to clean up, a glorious crash as they hit the concrete. too much noise for those unsuspecting neighbors.

you didn’t think of me, or them, or anyone else,
while you were fucking that betty crocker cunt

but someone has to.
so I do. kinda. i stay inside at least.

so i lift up, just a bit of extra leverage, before
smashing down the whole goddamn stack
on the kitchen floor.

heavy, smooth dishes, they feel.
crash, boom, bang
anger in motion, they feel

the physical manifestation of pain is momentarily gratified, but hungry for more, to pull the rest of that abstract inner, out into the world, ‘outta me…’

those that don’t break, i heave and hurl with heavy satisfaction, aiming for the heart, aiming for the head. and they skid off at angles, to the floor with the rest,
and you wrestle me down, and i crash and kick and flail, and hit the floor too,
hit bottom

the anger and the feel pour out, shatter on the floor with the dishes
but none of it is ever enough to accomplish what i really want:

UNDO

but nothing ever undoes any of it,
and i am lying pinned on the floor in the shards, wracked with tears
and i am still a quivering disaster of too much feel

at least i spectacularly broke some shit.

________________________
Originally written 7 December, 2010
the breaking point, preceding a downward spiral of pushing, to get through, to get away.
Push back ’til it’s fixed or broke or both.

More reflections on that later.

Hello, my name is Eb, and I’m codependent to a sex addict.

whew, and now to explain that too much.

I have spent the last year in a relationship with a man who is a compulsive sex addict. I’ve coped, better and worse, with that knowledge for the last six months or so.

Complicated… just a bit. I fell madly for him from the very start. When Joe and I first began it was immediate spark, a glorious fall. It’s amazing, finding those rare intense connections. And it’s harder still to forget them – that intense love you can literally feel, the dreams and hopes, the incredibly good times, all the ways that you’ve been so good together. Even as the nightmare unfolds -a downward spiral of negative reinforcement, a trainwreck, too many broken promises and things gone awry- still, you hold those things, they hold you.

It hasn’t helped, either, that from the very beginning it’s been complicated, and there are a lot of other hopes and fears and karma and choices that were tied in. My relationship with him has been tied up in and symbolic of so many other existential life issues I’ve been wrestling with the last few years. There are a lot, too, of other issues, fears, and weaknesses, mine and his, that have factored in. It’s difficult to extricate them all, to deconstruct and clearly see what is what. Intertwined shades of grey. There’s a lot to hold onto and a lot to consider, but I’ll save that for another time…

When I discovered, the first time, that Joe had been cheating, and not just sleeping around, but some straight up depraved shit, I exploded. I did what any good feminist would do: kicked him to the curb with some righteous anger. Hell, as some may recall, I put a goddamn sign around his neck, tarred and feathered the bastard on the street. And goddamn if he didn’t deserve it.

Two weeks later, atomic bomb boom, the impetuous pull of connection, heart and body. we’re having a drink, we’re getting a hotel. He drops me off in a penske, him to work, me to walla, and tears falling. Over the summer, we reconnected. I recognized that he really did have a problem, an illness, and me, I’m too damn empathetic, too understanding, too bleeding a heart. And for better or worse, I fucking loved him, couldn’t forget that spark, the myriad good things. And we talked about it, some, tentatively poked at the issue, ways to be better. but change is slow, and requires consistent daily effort, continually honest acknowledgement of the problem. And we both slipped. Neither of us were really prepared to face it or do something, there was still too much denial of how serious it was or how daunting an issue to address, neither of us really put in the effort or commitment to stop, change. So when he fucked up, I kept reacting worse, yet still clinging to desperate hope for change. And we spiraled further and farther out of control. Though you know you deserve better, your heart still wants them. It’s hard to accept love isn’t enough, that it’s not changing.

“I can’t let it go,
and I can’t get through”

I don’t think I was codependent before, though maybe it was a dormant trait. Either way, in my fumbling attempts to face the problem, I’ve decidedly become so. It’s hard to help, it’s hard to face. This shit has changed me. The nature of the problem of loving a sexual addict, worse one who still hasn’t really faced their problem or stuck to the commitment of change, is that it makes you neurotic. You feel helpless, futile, not good enough, like you’re beating your head against a wall. You can’t make them stop. Even when you understand that it’s their problem, it plays on far too many underlying fears about life, love and our self-worth. A heady task for the strongest of souls to face. It conditions you, even when you resist, to worry, to be jealous, to feel emotionally insecure, to wonder why you’re not enough, to doubt everything, to be neurotic, to be paranoid – afterall, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you, right? And sexual addiction tends to be so much more sneaky than others types of addiction, you never know for sure if/ when they’re slipping, what’s going on, and you can’t necessarily rely on them for full disclosure. So you think too much, and you worry, and it cycles…

and it drives you fucking batshit.

Careful what you wish for, but all the same, it’d've been so much easier, it seems, if he could have just been a drunk or a junkie. A good old fashioned alcoholic, as we said once, while drinking beers in a room full of nitrous crackers and dinner plates of coke. It’s more tangible, easier to point to and harder to deny. It’s a well defined illness. The problem is obvious to you both. And more obvious when they’re acting out. You don’t wonder if and when they’ve slipped: the vomit reeks on the floor, irrefutable proof. The downward spiral, the grip of the illness and its effect on the addict and those around them is undeniable, even in denial. It leaves physical traces, physical destruction.

It’s rather like the difference between physical and emotional abuse: you can’t point to your shattered psyche in the same way you can to a shattered femur. it’s more frustrating, harder to prove, harder for others to see, recognize or intervene, but even so, it’s still just as painful and destructive. Similarly, the illness is not as well known, not as well recognized, and there is still so much silence that surrounds it on all sides. You feel like the battered wife, who after making a stink the first time around, but going back, can’t talk any more about the recent blows. The silence intensifies, ashamed to talk about the struggle. Afterall, you know you should know better, so why are you still here? Because you love him. Why? Who knows.

To be clear: this story does not have a character of The Villain. Part of me would love to stick that label on him. A friend told me he’d save me two years of therapy: it’s not you, it’s him, he’s the problem. But the reality is, he is not the only villain of this tale. There are several. He is a villain. I’m a villain, too. His addiction is a villain, as are my emotional issues. There are probably a few more bad guys in the mix. I try to refrain from labeling the women he fucked around with as villains (though a couple of them knew well enough what they were doing and will remain pettily labeled in my mind as fucking evil Cunts).

All the same, this isn’t a story with a bad guy, with a villain who did all this to me. I don’t think I want to be that passive an object. I want to be a protagonist worthy of accountability, and find a way to be honest enough with myself, clear enough in my understanding, to accept what is mine and reject what is not. It’s neither honest, nor true, nor fair to myself, to paint it black and white, say he did this to me. He’s done a lot, but so have I. There’ve been two of us, and all our assorted baggage, on this handbasket ride through hell. I need to learn to step back, see the roles each of us have played for what they are, accept I what I can and cannot change, and own what is mine.

I am codependent to a sex addict. I’ve long skirted the line of manic depression, and the stress of the last year has probably put me in the running for a borderline personality. That was really hard to say, but I’ve said it. I’m ready to drag this out in to the light and pull it all apart. I’m just starting to figure these things out, I’m sure I’ll falter at times. It’s going to be a long road, but I’m on it. again, feel free to comment along the way.

__________________________
Further reading on sexual addiction, for those curious, affected or afflicted by it:

• Cosa : Codependents of Sex Addicts / Co-Sex Addicts
• S-Anon : Family and friends of sexaholics
• SA : Sexaholics Anonymous
• SCA : Sexual Compulsives Anonymous
• SAA : Sex Addicts Anonymous

Please feel free to share, my writings and these links, with anyone you think might be facing similar struggles. It’s difficult and lonely, and terribly destructive to the soul. Feel free to reach out, though I don’t necessarily know what I’m doing either.

Besides my own reckoning, I hope this process sheds a little more light.

So I write, and write and write. snippets left in the draft pile, long emails, drunken texts, mad scribbles in my journal, napkins, scraps of paper. But it just feels like I’m still spinning and circling madly alone in the wind, and there’s still so much more inside, a levy broken. So… here come the posts. The midnight weeping, raving, laughing, pleading. the hopeful moments. the growing pains. the over-thinking. the anger, hurt, love, loss, bitchiness, patheticness, sadness, hope. an assortment of scraps, letters unsent, thoughts spinning madly, desperate hopes, determination to move on, griefstricken longing to go back, the reflections on hope, fear, past, present, future, love, life, me, him, the world at large… I know they may not all be appropriate, and probably far too cliché, and certainly there will be too much bad poetry and terrible music an unnecessarily lengthy diatriabes, but this blog was created to be a filterless expression of the what’s on my mind, so little by little i think i’m going to post them, even if they’re not so pretty.

I need to be honest, come clean, reflect, deconstruct, try to understand what has happened to me, what i’ve done, and work on some catharsis. Not just how i feel about the current cracks in my heart, but about the experiences of the last year that have brought me to my knees. it’s been a pretty rough one, as some of you know. it’s changed me, left me feeling a bit broken and bruised. there are no support groups here for this kind of trauma, and there are things inside that just need to get out, out of me, if i’m ever going to feel ok, if i’m ever going to heal.

and part of me just needs to know that another human being has seen me, heard me. Call me Tommy if you want. it’ll be a long and disjointed installment, no doubt, and one which i’ll probably move to the private pile a little down the line when i become acutely aware of just how much too much information it all is… but none the less… it needs out, i need contact, expression… so here goes, for those of you who like ambulance watching. feel free to comment along the way ;)

Walking down the street, it hits: at any given moment you just might shatter, perhaps with the very next footfall. Each heel hits the ground, feel the solid earth beneath the fragile guise, feel the cracks in the carefully crafted composure, the brittle smile of optimism. There are more layers of pain beneath the surface than you ever imagined possible, unfathomable depth and complexity of interwoven issues, as you hit new lows. The superhero undone by a common man, kryptonite unravelling the underlying faults.

and each foot falls, one after another
Yeah, ‘i used to be a superhero, baby, now look at me.’

Not ready to face it, you seek out the casual acquaintance. those with whom your natural inability to lie and natural inability to be vulnerable will collide, will push you to let a little out, make it something casual, but nothing full on. unsteady, unready, unable, to face the full depth of loss. moment to moment, pulling the mask back on. But even those who don’t really know you hone in that you’re in a pretty bad place. It’s something palpable, radiating out from the core of your being.

each foot falls,
this is what broke(n) looks like.

you know you need to heal, but something inside resists. not here, not now, no, not in this limited, defeated place. healing is pain, a friend says. it’s not fun. and there it is. the reality of resistance. there’s just too much. intimacy is terrifying. at least the one who broke you open was holding the pieces together in the cycle of destructions. at least then you could let the deluge out without thinking, spinning madly in the wind. though you hate to admit, backward looks better than forward, as you start to pull apart the pieces of how it all went so wrong, how you ended up here.

and each foot falls, one by one.
a shock that could shatter at any given moment

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