Musings: Relationships in Film

One of the reasons I want to make films is because films have always been one of my passions. I've always been inspired by something in a movie, even if it's a bad one. That's why you will see me quote things often from movies. One of my favorite things to do is to catch a matinee alone. Sometimes it will address some issue that's been on my mind. And sometimes if I feel lost about something, I'll get some insight from something I've seen or heard in a movie. Sometimes I'm just in the mood for popcorn.

I rented Serendipity this weekend. I found it a lot like The Notebook when I rented that right after a break up. I found it very unbelievable. I like chick flicks as much as the next chick, but all these movies only focus on the wooing stage of the relationship. The romance, the excitement of getting to know somebody, that "everything you do is cute" phase. There aren't many movies that portray the relationships realistically and show what happens after the "wooing" phase. Then after six months or whatever when you are more comfortable with each other and are just yourselves, you don't do all those cutesy romantic things you did at the beginning and think something's wrong because you aren't skipping through the park holding hands, grinning like idiots at each other like you remember (or at least you hope it's not captured on film somewhere). When you never really did anything cheesy like that to begin with, you just saw it at the movies when you were nervous and excited in the beginning. Then, a year later you are in bed and he's trying to sleep and you are asking him stupid questions like, "are we soul mates?" and he's half asleep going, "wha? I have to get to work tomorrow morning". And he starts getting annoyed that you leave the cap off the toothpaste and you hate it when he leaves his clothes all over the bathroom. And you can hear him fart from the other room while you are talking to him about what to have for dinner. You don't see *those* scenes in the movies.

The whole fate thing was a little unbelievable as well. I agree that there are definitely some people who are meant to be in your life. But I felt they took it a little far. There was wayyy too many coincidences. I did like the line "Fate only gets you so far, everything else is up to you." Or something like that.

I was wondering about the roles different people play in your life. Usually you learn different things from different relationships with different people. My marriage was not a very good one. The next serious girlfriend my ex husband had, I was impressed because it seemed like a healthier relationship than our marriage. Getting to know the girlfriend better and becoming friends with her and her confiding in me things that were happening in the relationship made me see that it really wasn't that different. He was still abusive to her. Well, he moved on to another girlfriend, and it's been over a year that they've been together. It really does seem like a healthier relationship than he had with me or his last girlfriend. He buys her flowers, writes her love letters even with them living in the same house and has even stopped drinking, for the time being. But it's been a 3-4 months and that's quite awhile for him. So I'm wondering what it is that's changed. What is different with both of them that it's working out? I think I'm too nice and just put up with too much crap. Looking back on my last two relationships, with this last bf and my ex-husband, I sometimes feel like I was too weak. I put up with too much crap that I shouldn't have and stayed longer than I should have. I'm in a stage right now where I'm sort of emotionally beating myself up over things I feel I should've done differently. I know it won't change anything, but it's something I'm working through.

Til next time......

Musings: Men Suck

So I'm trying to think of what the hell is wrong with me.

How is it possible to miss someone who was an asshole to you? I knew there'd be days where I would miss him. I just wish I could turn it off. I guess it's inevitable when you are used to someone being in your life for 3 years. One of the last times we talked we discussed why it's so hard to let each other go. We both found each other at a time when we didn't have anybody else. Maybe it's just scary moving on. We also came up with the theory that maybe we were addicted to each other. I told him we would both be ok. It hasn't been too bad because I got rid of everything that reminded me of him, except this computer he got me for Christmas. And when he pops in my head I think of something else right away and push him out. Some times are harder than others to push him out. Is it part of the process when you purge someone out of your life to sometimes miss them? I know it wasn't meant to be and that it couldn't have worked out. But I wish there was a way to program your heart

Movie Quote of the Day: Wedding Crashers

Can't think of any burning topics to discuss today.

There's a line in Wedding Crashers that Christopher Walken's character tells his daughter. "We have no way of knowing what is ahead for us in the future, all we can do is use the information at hand to make the best decisions possible. Your whole life is gonna be fine." I like that. That is all for now.

More ramblings to come.......

Musings: Abusive Relationships

So I've been thinking the past couple days about patterns and cycles.

For those of you who know me well enough, you already know I was in an abusive marriage. It seemed like a never-ending cycle that I thought I would never get out of. Five years of the building tension phase, the violent/active phase, and the honeymoon phase over and over again. I know many women who have been in similar relationships. I also know some men, too. Which made me wonder, where does a man get help when he's going through the cycle?

I've had two abusive relationships, one in high school and my husband. I remember being at a dance with that bf I had in high school. My good friend Rox introduced me to a friend of hers who I'll call W. We hit it off right off the bat, he was funny and charming. Anyway, this bf of mine had thrown a big fit over some stupid thing that I can't even remember now and stormed off outside the building. I remember W, who I just met that night and who had witnessed everything, came over and said to me, "Look, I don't know you but you seem like a very nice person so I want to tell you something.....don't chase after him, whatever you do. Please don't chase after him or you will always be chasing after him and you're better than that." Well, I didn't listen to him and did chase after him, and I chased after him for maybe another year after that. W and I remained good friends throughout that time, he even teased me about chasing after him like he told me not to. My fondest memories of him are after a night of dancing at the bar, hanging out at Boston Pizza or Humpty's (like Denny's) and talking and laughing all night. I had a lot of fun with him. Well, after I got married, I moved from Regina to Calgary so I lost touch with a lot of my friends. I was shopping one afternoon in Calgary and bumped into W, it was great to see him again. He introduced me to his girlfriend and we exchanged numbers, but we didn't really keep in touch. One day, I got a phone call from W, it was a few years after I had bumped into him. He had married that girl but was having some trouble. He told me he was staying with his parents after she threatened him with a knife and was physically abusive to him. So you think, well he's a guy, he could have just pushed her off or whatever. Not W, he was raised in a very traditional Chinese family and he's always been very respectful to women and would never hit anybody. He told me about some of the things going on in the relationship and they seemed similar to mine. He was staying with his parents and told me to make sure I let them know who I was when I called, since his family was hiding him from her. After a few days, I was worried about him and wanted to see how he was doing. I went to his family's store where I thought he might be. He was there, with his wife, they had gotten back together and she was so nice and polite to me. He told me he would get in touch with me. That was the last time I saw or heard from him. That was 6 years ago.

Every once in awhile I think about him and wonder if he's ok. It's well documented that abused partners end up leaving several times before finally making a clean break. I left my ex husband 6 times, two of those being in a shelter, the other times staying with my parents. The thing that got me worried was that after awhile, understandably, the family of the abused person will get tired of helping them and wonder why they keep going back. Sometimes they'll even cut off communication with the abused when they go back out of exasperation. I worry about what would happen if his family got tired of helping him. I hadn't talked to him in 3 years before he called me to tell me about the knife incident, so it didn't seem like he had a lot of friends to turn to. Isolation is a big part of the abuse cycle, so you become more dependent on the abuser. Women have first and second stage shelters when they don't have anywhere else to go, but what happens to the men who are being abused?

I hope wherever he is that he's happy and managed to break free from the cycle. Miss you, W.

Musings: How Do Males Handle Breakups?

So I'm talking with a friend tonight, and he tells me my blog is turning into a "blog for chicks". Which is probably right. But I'm working out some personal stuff right now and I guess guys aren't great at that kind of thing. Or maybe they just don't talk to anybody about it. Which would be a real shame. If you don't express your anger/sadness/whatever other negative feeling, you internalize it and do a lot more damage to your body and your mental health than if you were to just bitch to your friends about it.

Which leads me to ask.....what does a guy do when he breaks up? I won't say all girls do this, because I'm only writing from my own experiences, but when I go through a break up, I look at the relationship to see what happened. What can I learn? What part did I play? You can think through those things clearer when you have some distance. Plus, women just like to talk. Or watch sad movies, or go get a new haircut, or some cute outfit, or anything else that might make us feel better. I have no idea how a man copes with it. But I do know that sometimes it seems like the guy moves on quicker than the girl. I used to have a male best friend before I got married. I remember one time when he broke up with someone he called me to talk about it. I picked up some ice cream and a couple new releases and went over there. We hung out all night and talked. He was not like a lot of guys I knew. He talked about what he was feeling. I feel bad for the men who can't do that. So guys who are reading this, next time you are talking to one of your male friends and he seems like he's having a bad day, put a hand on his shoulder and say, "Share how that makes you feel." lol, I'd really like to see that one day.

Now that I'm thinking of my old friend who I lost touch with because of my husband (yes, they didn't really like each other), I'm reminded of how much I miss him and the times we spent together. I have no idea where he is right now or what he's doing. I wrote a poem for him 10-11 years ago. It went something like this:

Lucky
to have a friend like you
Without you,
I don't know what I'd do
You help me,
when I'm down and blue
Without you
I feel like a piece of poo.

I really miss this guy. If this is you, get in touch with me.

Keep dreaming big.......

Musings: Cheating

Well, another day gone.

I was catching up on my celebrity gossip online a few days ago and came across something that made me think. In case any of you don't keep up with celebrity gossip, I'll fill you in. Jude Law's nanny came forward with a claim that she had an affair with Jude Law while he was on location somewhere. One of those anonymous sources close to Sienna Miller, Jude's fiancee, said Sienna had confonted him about it. Just to clarify, I don't know that this really happened, but it doesn't really matter whether it did or not, it just made me think of something which I will go into in a moment. Allegedly, Jude had told Sienna that it was her fault. She spent so much time partying and if she had been more devoted, he wouldn't have strayed. So even if this didn't happen, I know it's happened with other people I know in life.

If anybody blames you for their actions, don't hesistate to move on and don't look back. I bring it up because I know women who have stayed after and actually let themselves feel guilty. Last year I had a friend at my work place. She's a really cool chick and we got along well. She told me about catching her boyfriend cheating on her. Her and her boyfriend lived together and one day she turned on his video camera to watch the tape on it. Yes, what a horrible way to find out. It was a friend of theirs. And he blamed her for being too busy for him. They broke up for a little while and got back together. She said they were going to move to another city. She decided to quit school for the time being (he just finished getting his degree, she still had two years left) and was voicing some concern about whether she was doing the right thing. I wanted to scream "NO", but she's a grown woman with a mind of her own and she decided to go anyway. I still think it was a mistake, but what can you do. I just think that anybody who blames someone else for their behavior is not taking responsibility for their own actions and doesn't feel sorry for hurting the other person.

I just brought it up because if anybody else could be helped from going through another _ months of false hope only to have the same thing happen all over again, then it's a good thing. I hate to admit that it happened to me, but it has. When my ex and I broke up recently after I confronted him about some stuff, he had said that he waits to see what kind of mood I'm in to decide what he was going to do. If I'm good, then it's all good. But if I'm bitchy, then he'll go talk to other girls. What kind of sh*t is that? Everything depends on my mood. I said well, forget that, I'm not going to be responsible for your screw ups. Plus I don't buy that. I think even if I was sunshine all the time, it still would've happened. I think that was some bull to try to make me feel guilty. I hate to sound all negative, but I'm just working through some stuff right now. Things are becoming clearer to me. So if you ever find yourself in a situation, it doesn't have to be cheating, when someone tries to blame you for something they are doing......turf em. Say "Get away from me, your bad energy is crowing my aura" and move on. Just a little tip from me to you.

More ramblings to come.....

Guide: How to Tell If He/She is Cheating

So, I'm trying to think of what to talk about today.

I decided to come up with a mini guide on "how to tell your significant other is cheating and/or lying".

1. They become distant, not wanting to talk about anything in their life when normally they are an open book.

2. They act completely disinterested in anything you have to say about what's going on in your life, when before they actually gave a sh*t.

3. They act completely annoyed with everything you do or say.

4. If you ask them a question and they do not give you a direct answer, eg. "Have you ever put up an ad on adultfriendfinder.com?" (yes or no question) and they respond with something very vague that doesn't answer the question, eg. "I've been aware of the site, it's been around for almost 10 years, you know."

5. If you push for a yes/no answer and when they answer no, the tone in their voice goes up at the end. If the tone in their voice goes up, they are lying.

6. They no longer want to talk about the future when before they talked about it all the time.

7. The biggest indication is that feeling in the pit of your stomach that something's up. Whenever I've had an ex that has cheated on me, my body seemed to always know before my head did. I'd get very nauseous and start feeling panicky.

Granted, some of these things could be indications of a relationship at the end of its journey and not neccessarily cheating-specific. Especially if it's a relationship that you have been in for a long time, your head doesn't want to believe it. A good friend of mine had said near the end of the relationship that she didn't know why, but she just felt like he wanted to end it but didn't have the balls. She thought he was trying to piss me off enough that I'd do it. I think she was right. I think we had depended on each other so much we were both afraid of moving on without each other. Well, I guess I can only speak for myself. I really wish if that was the case he could have been a grown up and talked to me about it rather than do what he did. I'm thinking of Carrie's conversation with Berger's friends on Sex and the City after Berger broke up with her on a post-it. "I think you all could get over your fear of looking like the bad guy and have that uncomfortable break up conversation because here's what.....avoiding that conversation, is what makes you the bad guy." If it had to end, it had to end. I just wish he would have given me some proper closure. Looking back on it now, I don't think we were meant to be, anyway.

Be good to each other.......

Musings: Sexual Swingers

So I was thinking tonight.....is sex just sex?

I'm gonna try not to sound like Carrie Bradshaw here and use my own voice. But I am really asking this question. I talked to someone tonight who was into swinging with her spouse. This idea has intrigued me ever since I read Terry Gould's "The Lifestyle". I recommend this book about swinging. I never really knew anything about it. It's something I don't know if I could ever do because I am just too jealous and possessive. I know these aren't desirable traits, but it really is part of my personality. I'm just admitting that it's always been a fault.

I sure hope I can talk about sex on this thing....lol. I read about the different levels of participation. Open= engaging in the act in the same room as your spouse, closed=engaging in the act away from your spouse, or just watching. I know it can be more complex than that. But since it's something I've never experienced, I have no clue other than what was given in the book. I would assume, however that it would take a tremendous amount of trust. I'm nowhere near that right now. She had said that it had its ups and downs, but the downs came when jealousy and greediness came in. I stated that it's something I doubted I could do because I'm just too jealous. She said that it was just sex. Which is true, but I'm not far along enough yet to think like that. Too much emotional baggage to get through. I've had some not so great experiences the last 7 years or so and I haven't let anybody get close enough. I know sex can be just sex, but given that it's been so long and the bad experiences, it's not something I've felt like I could jump back into.

Back ten years ago, before the hubby and the kids, before responsibility, I was rather selfish. I took great pleasure in all things with instant gratification. I spent most of it drinking and doing things I really shouldn't have. But I was young and dumb with no sense of myself. It wasn't such a big deal back then. But it's something I used at times to validate my self worth. I wasn't very happy with myself back then. I cringe sometimes thinking about the person I used to be. I'm not saying that anybody who has a lot of sex is like that, too. I'm just saying that's where I come from, so it's my own thing and I need to get over it myself. I just feel like swinging takes a lot of trust and a strong relationship. I need to work on some of my own stuff before I ever feel strong enough or secure enough to even consider it. I doubt I'd ever actually get into it. The idea just intrigues me is all.

I guess if you left emotion completely out of it, sex is just sex. My emotions have always ran too strong, though. I commend those who can do it and more power to them, and I guess I'm a little jealous of that. I can't seem to separate sex and emotion.

More ramblings to come......

Musings: Female Friends

My two favourite tv shows of all time are The Golden Girls and Sex and the City. Both shows feature four different women with very different and distinct personalities. Both shows focus on the importance of their friendship and the bond between the friends. They both show women coming together for each other. All of the women are strong.

One thing I noticed about the fairy tales children hear when they are growing up is the dysfunction in the relationships between the women characters. In the princess fairy tales, the princess is always beautiful, sweet and lonely. The only other women are the villians who are jealous of the princess because of her beauty, usually women from within the family, stepsisters, stepmothers, etc. (how sick is that, btw?). The princess doesn't have any female friends. She usually sits in the forest alone singing and dancing with little woodland creatures. No wonder she's put so much faith in her prince coming to save her. She has no life. I always wonder what happens after they live happily ever after. I imagine Prince Charming coming home from doing his prince things in the forest all day and sitting in front of the t.v. with a beer ignoring Snow White. Then she realizes that marrying Prince Charming didn't make anything better because she still feels lonely. I think she should get together with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel for a girls' night. They should watch Sex and the City, share a bottle of wine and bitch about the annoying things Prince Charming does. A girl needs her girlfriends.

That's what I love about those two shows. They emphasize the friendships with the girls rather than pit them against each other to fight over a man. These stories that children grow up with condition little girls to start to look at other little girls as the enemy and on into adulthood.

Mothers especially need their girlfriends. We need some alone time to feel like women. We spend our whole day being a mom and a wife (if you are married), that at the end of the day we are so tired and just wanna pass out. We need to recharge to continue to be good mothers and/or wives. Motherhood is great and feeds you, but takes from you as well. My time at a second stage shelter taught me the importance of having adult time with your girlfriends. There were 10 of us women and the staff emphasized community, organizing dinners and girls' nights. Connecting with other women and talking about motherhood, relationships or just anything else going on in our lives was very important to our well-being. We as women always put everyone else before ourselves, then we wonder why we are always so tired and worn out. We also need that time to re-inforce that we are our own people with a life and not just "mom" doing everything for everybody else. We need each other to stay strong.

Women helping women.......

Musings: Til Death Do Us Part?

I went to another matinee this afternoon (The Wedding Crashers) and heard a great definition of true love. "True love is the soul's recognition of its counterpart in another." I really like that.

I know I've wondered this before, but is there really such a thing as soul mates in this day and age? Wanda Sykes, the comedian, made a good point when she said the "til death do you part" part of the wedding vows was made for biblical times back before antibiotics when people didn't live that long. I'm not saying it's not entirely possible. I'm actually hoping it is. The people who have been married for 25 years or more are from a different time. When everybody was from a small town where everybody knew each other and their families. Small towns are being replaced with big cities and everybody keeps getting busier and has less time and a lot more stress. I doubt there was any road rage back in the days of the wagon train. I think as a society we are becoming meaner. We have a lot more divorces now than they did back then.

The person who I consider my father is actually legally, my adopted stepfather. My mother and my father went to school together from Grade 1 all the way to Grade 12 in small town Saskatchewan. My grandmother (mother's mother) says she remembers on my mother and father's first day of Grade 1, my grandfather (father's father) said to her, "you know, one day those two are gonna get married". My grandmother says she thought he was nuts. She actually married somebody else (my adopted father) but divorced him when I was 6 and my sister was 3. Shortly after that, my stepfather came into my life and has been my father ever since. They've been together for 25 years now.

There very well could be such a thing as "soul mates", but if there is.....I haven't found mine yet. I already decided that my son will decide who will become part of our family. There is a guy who works at the daycare, and I've noticed that he only greets and acts nice to the kids who have moms that are young and hot. As soon as the mother is gone, he goes back to barely acknowleging their existence. Therefore, I think watching to see how your bf/gf acts with your children is not a good indicator of how they will be with your children. How are they when you aren't around? I will know because my son will feel a connection. I still remember being 7 and meeting my father for the first time. He's the only one who I felt when he was talking to me, actually had a genuine interest in what I had to say. This also wasn't a phoney baloney "your mom's watching so I'm gonna be nice" kind of thing. I felt a connection. He will, too. Kids are pretty smart that way.


I highly recommend the movie Riding Giants, the Stacy Peralta documentary on the history of big wave surfing. There's a story in there that pro-surfer Laird Hamilton tells of his childhood. He was a young boy on the beach in Hawaii and began talking to a man and asked the man to body surf with him. The man did and they both said they felt an instant connection. A physical, mental, emotional connection. Billy Hamilton, the man, said he fell instantly in love with young Laird. Laird grabbed his hand and said, "I want you to come home with me to meet my mom". Billy did and said he fell in love with his mother "the beautiful brown haired, brown-eyed gal". Soon after that, they became a family. I wouldn't recommend young children talking to strangers on the beach nowadays. But I think that is a good illustration of what I meant by the child will feel the connection and just know that this person was meant to be in their life. Children are just smarter than us, sometimes.

Keep loving life.....

Musings: Love to Just Friends?

They say that Love is friendship on fire. I heard that in a matinee last week. What happens when love shifts to something else?

I talk a lot about my marriage lately because I don't want to focus on my recent breakup. It's still too close to home.

I'm actually really glad that my ex husband and I are now friends. It took a year after we split before we were able to talk without it turning into an argument. He's the only person I've ever been in a relationship with that I still talk to. If we didn't share children together I would have done what I normally do when I break up with someone. Move to another place and never talk to them again. We can even talk about our relationships with other people to each other. I really like his girlfriend. He has a habit of picking the caretakers (myself being one of them), so I know whoever his girlfriend is (he's had 3 so far), she's going to be really good with the kids. I said to him one time, "You're lucky you have a girlfriend who mows your lawn." He said, "I'd probably hold out til I found one that did." Ya, I know....it was a jerk thing to say. He can also charm people into doing whatever he wants. People ask me now what I ever saw in him. I honestly can't remember. The charm wore off on me a long time ago. But, I still care very deeply about him and always will. He's the only other person on this planet who looks at my two kids the same way I do.

So getting back to the original statement about Love being friendship on fire......what happens when the fire goes out? What is love then? I think friendship requires trust. I never could trust either my ex husband or my last boyfriend. So was it really love?

I think too many people confuse love with co-dependancy.

Musings: Dreams

Why is everything always 20/20 in hindsight? Why is it we chose to ignore the part of our brain that is trying to tell us what is really going on? Is it because we want to believe so badly that we choose to ignore our own instinct and put blinders on, only hearing the things we want to hear?

I encourage everyone who doesn't already have one, to keep a dream diary. If you get into the habit of writing down your dreams as you wake up, you will begin to remember more details and remember more vividly your dreams upon wakening. I keep a book on my nightstand with a pen and begin writing before my eyes open. Even my dreams are only 20/20 in hindsight. The last year or two of my marriage, I wrote down my dreams as I woke. Reading them now, I knew a long time before I left that it was time to end it. All my dreams involving my husband had a storyline about us being separated and me trying to find him. I could never find him, or when I did, he would ignore me or act surprised to see me. I even wrote down things in my dream diary that happened in real life to confirm my dreams. For example, one night I dreamt my husband was going out with a friend of his that I disliked, and when I woke, I found that odd because he hadn't spoken to him in months. I added a note onto that page later that day when he ended up going out with this friend. Just like in the dream. Weird.

I have slacked off, though, in the dream diary department. I haven't written down any dream in the last month, and I have been having the craziest dreams. I think that was me trying to ignore my subconcious(sp?). Then again, sometimes I write what little I remember and it will go something like this.....

"June 9th, 2005

I was in some weird Star Wars world. I remember sandwiches. And somebody like Paula Abdul."

I'm no expert dream interpreter, but I have no friggin' clue what that means. :/

Keep on dreaming.........

Musings: Loyalty in this Day and Age

Does anybody actually read these things? I've always wondered. Not like I expect anybody to lose any sleep over what I think or anything. I still have to play around with the format and stuff.

So I was wondering.....is it realistic to expect someone to be faithful in this day and age? Our world is getting faster and faster. We do more travelling and have heavier work schedules, so people turn to quicker methods of meeting people, ie. internet dating, etc. Sometimes loyalty seems like an antiquated idea. I dunno, maybe I'm just old-fashioned and naive to want to find a monogamous relationship. I'm told by a few people that it's not realistic to have a relationship that's 100% monogamous. I don't feel like I have to or should settle for anything less. I know I'm not the only one out there who thinks so, although it does feel like it a lot of times.

I'm trying to get my train of thought back. I mean it's always been there, but I mean have it flowing like it used to. I've got a month and a half left before school starts again in the fall and I'd like to accomplish something this summer. I keep meaning to start on a script that's been in my head for over a year now. A friend who predicted a few things for me about four years ago, predicted that I would get my break over the net. I'd like to get my school film and video projects online.

This friend also predicted that I'd have more trouble and work with my girl than with my boy. I always thought my boy would need a lot more work adjusting to the divorce. Three to four years after he predicted that, my daughter was diagnosed as being mild to moderately autistic. He predicted the worse time would be when she was a teenager. He said if I make it through that, I can make it through anything. And I thought making it through the separation and divorce was hard. :/

Musings: First Post....

Woo! Here i go.

Well, this is my first post and thought I'd just ramble a little about what's on my brain.

Did you ever have a feeling in the pit of your stomach that you just knew something was up but didn't know what? Did you ever investigate further on those feelings and find out things you didn't want to know, but needed to know anyway? I know I have.

When I was 19, I was dating a guy for a few months. Nothing serious, but I really liked him. One afternoon, I was watching t.v., not even thinking about him and a little voice in my head blurted out, "he's living with someone." Since I wasn't even thinking about him, I stopped for a minute and thought, "who's living with someone? Ohhhhh, he's living with someone, that makes sense!" Starting to backtrack the past few months at all the signs I ignored and after a few investigative phone calls found out he was indeed living with someone....someone he was engaged to.

Well, I've had a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was happening in a relationship of mine since February. I just didn't know what. We broke up late March, early April, because I couldn't shake that feeling. We ended up getting back together, despite my head telling me it was a bad idea. The past few months were great and just like it had been when things were good. The pit of my stomach still said something's not right. After doing some investigating using tactics I'm not all that proud of, I found out my instinct was right. I'm not angry like I was back when we broke up in March. I feel more relieved that I'm not crazy and there was something going on.

I think it was closure that I needed. I couldn't close the door for some reason until I had concrete evidence about my hunches. It's hard when you've had an unhealthy, addictive relationship for over three years. For some reason, I kept letting myself get sucked back in. I'm more angry at myself than I am at him. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm pissed at him, too. But I stayed and allowed it to happen.