Ask The Hard Questions

Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.-Antoine de Saint Exupery

 

I never asked him why he loved me.  What he loved about me. Or why he said it so soon.  We had only been dating two months when he had taken me to Paris to celebrate my 26^th birthday. While laying in bed at the Paris Marriot Champs Elysees he let those three words leave his mouth. “I love you”.  He whispered them in my ear as we were snuggled tightly under the silk duvet after making love for the second time that morning.  I smiled when those words graced my ears.  Slowly I eased away from him sliding onto my back to face him.  He eased up and carefully rested on his elbow hovering over me.  There was sincerity in his face.  I had known Mr. Money to be an honest man so far.  He wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it.  “I love you” he said again.  I didn’t know what to say.  I adored Mr. Money but I didn’t love him yet.  I struggled with the right words and quietly said “thank you”.  He smiled and assured me that he was ok with me not saying it back.  I was still the woman that he had waited so long for and he just needed to say it.  It was wonderful to hear that.  I was so used to dealing with men my age having commitment issues and weren’t done playing the field.  And now finally…finally someone who wanted the same things I did. Trust. Love. Commitment. Stability.  Mr. Money was a dream come true.  At that moment in bed it didn’t matter that he was 3 times my age.  It didn’t matter that he was almost all gray in the head.  And it certainly didn’t matter what anyone else thought of us.  I had found someone who loved me.  But I wasn’t being wise.

 

I should have asked him what love meant to him.  I should have had a discerning & discriminating heart.  When we hear the words “I love you” we tend to take our personal meaning of love and attach it to our lover.  We know what love means to us but hardly stop to ask our lovers what it means to them.  When “I love you” was spoken it saddens me to say I began thinking with my heart and abandoned my head.  Looking back now I should have been skeptical. How is it possible to really love someone in two months?  Was he really sincere or did he smell a “love” insecurity in me somewhere hidden?

 

Recently I finished reading an amazing book called Eat, Pray, Love  There is a passage so profound to me that I photocopied it and it now stays in my purse. It reads:

 

  How will you provide for my daughter? What is your reputation in this community?  What are your debts and your assets?  What are the strengths of your character? My father would not have given me away in marriage to anybody for the mere fact that I was in love with the fellow…I never thought to ask a suitor the same challenging questions my father might have asked him, in a different age.  I have given myself away in love many times, merely for the sake of love. If I am to truly become an autonomous woman then I must take over that role of being my own guardian.  What I have only recently realized is that I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too. Page 286

 

Ahhh…If only I had run across this book sooner.

 

Do you know what love means to your partner? Are you on the same page?

 

Love & Light

 

 

 

My Peace of Mind

Thank you Ms. Hill for singing what has been on my heart!

Signs: No Friends No Family

They say blood is thicker than water.  Maybe that’s why we battle our own with more energy & gusto than we would ever expend on strangers.-David Assael

 

When I met Mr. Money he had already disowned his family.  He wasn’t reared in the most loving & supportive of homes.  He was a witness to the many drunken insults & beatings his mother received from his father.  He feared his father.  Hated & loved him at the same time.  He despised his mother for being a martyr in his eyes.  “Why couldn’t she just leave him?”  This was his question to me every time he came across old family photos or when we passed someone on the street that looked eerily similar to her.  How could I tell him the answer?  I didn’t know her answer but I knew mine. Fear.  Fear of setting him off just enough that he might hit me (he never did).  The fear he would kick me out of his home for being seemingly ungrateful (oh he did do that).  And the fear of  being so far removed from all family & friends that I’d have no one to turn to when this got way too deep for me to handle alone.

 

His siblings wouldn’t escape his wrath either.  To him they had mental issues.  The oldest couldn’t seem to sleep without a man in her bed and therefore married 5 times.  The youngest sister accused him of sexually harassing her and his younger brother was a drug addict/thief who committed suicide in his early twenties.  He was the only one who came out unscathed from the terrors of his childhood home he says.  But I saw it differently.  They all had their unresolved issues from childhood creep into their adult lives.  Mr. Money seemed to handle his issues by needing to be financially, sexually & emotionally dominate with the people in his life.  If you weren’t down with his program you were easily cast aside.  Or like Mr. Money would say “Take a big black marker & cross my name & number off your list, you mean nothing to me”.  And he meant it. A few years ago he had his attorney send his family letters stating all communication must be made through his lawyers only.  Suffice it to say they got the message.

 

His daughter.  His one and only daughter Ms. K. receives the brunt of it though.  He feels the absolute need to control her life because he pays for everything in it. Ms. K is just as much to blame.  She’s in her mid 20’s, has never had a real job (though she graduated from one of the best colleges in the west) and inhales pot like it’s her last meal.  “This is not the daughter I wanted”. He tells me in the kitchen one night.  I was preparing my special Moroccan salmon when he let it slip.  I looked at him questionably and asked him how he could say something like that.  “Easy.” He said. “I raised her better than this.  I raised her on my own since she was 12 years old and look at her.  She turned out to be some tattooed pot smoking freak!”   He was seething now.  I knew better than to continue the discussion for fear of disagreeing with him.  So I dropped it. 

 

Then there are his friends or dare I say his one and only friend M.R.. M.R. is a wandering gypsy musician who lives over in Sweden with his wife and child.  They had a falling out years ago when Mr. Money tried telling him what type of songs to write and how to deal with record executives.  Things Mr. Money had no experience in but felt fully qualified to give his two cents.  When M.R resisted Mr. Money was highly upset & ended their friendship.  They reconciled a few years later but it has never been the same.  When we went to visit M.R. in Sweden he refused to play us his music in fear of what Mr. Money would think.

 

That ugly word. Fear.  It seemed to pop up in everyone involved in his life.  I didn’t get it at first but it slowly grabbed a hold of my neck and I could barely breathe.  Mr. Money had this bigger than life persona.  Even if you knew you were right you feared not being on his side.  He was always trying to “teach ya something” and if you didn’t get it you were stupid.  I hated feeling stupid.  I never felt stupid until I met him.  I have always been a confident person but being with him brought out major insecurities.  I felt maybe he knew more because he was older.  He’d seen more and traveled the world more. I on the other hand was just coming into my own, learning who I was and what I really wanted. What I really wanted at that time in my life was not to be “stupid” in his eyes. 

 

What I know for sure now is to look out for controlling behavior.  To look for the fear your partner can stir up with people in their lives and question it.  Control is not a loving quality.  Instead it is an insecurity your partner has within themselves that has not been rectified and the only way to sooth the beast is to control & conquer.

 

Don’t be conquered!

 

Love & Light

The Simple Kind of Life

That stuff is for the commoners, we’re too good for that.” -Mr. Money

Ahhh where do I start?  Commoner. That would be you.  The person reading my words right now.  Don’t worry I’m a commoner right along with you.  According to Mr. Money a commoner is what I have now become since leaving his privileged lifestyle. It’s a word that Mr. Money found great joy in using whenever he could.  When I was searching for a library when I first moved to his town he would say That shit is for the commoners just buy them.  When I suggested we go to a movie on a Friday night he would say That shit is for the commoners lets go during the day and catch the matinee. I wish I could say the last one was about frugality, but oh no he just didn’t want to be around a lot of people.  Being around a lot of “common folk” was beneath him.  He was not one to go with the masses.  Everything we did had to be “different” or not done at all. We ate dinner no later than 4pm.  We fucked no later than 2pm on a set schedule.  Oh and the clincher was that we could never fuck while he had a full stomach. He wasn’t able to get it up unless he was damn near starved.  I wish I could say I was making this up.  I laugh about the ridiculousness of this now.  How the hell did I survive in this circus for so long?

 

That is the question I asked myself yesterday while standing at the counter of my new job at 4:30am.  Yes, my new job. It is the main reason why I have not been writing for the past few days.  I found two part time jobs that leave me little time to do anything besides eating and sleeping.  And I am completely ok with that.  I have become a commoner once again and I love it!  Not that I ever stopped being one, but you know what I mean.  So this new morning job is nothing special, nothing exciting or elite.  It’s just plain old greeting and checking in our customers.  Though I’ve only been there for three days I’ve gotten the nicest compliments.  “Wow you’re really chipper in the early morning, that’s nice to see”.  “I’ve never met anyone so…pleasant”.  “It’s too early to be smiling…look you have my wife smiling and she never smiles lol”.  I wish I could tell each and every one of them my story.  I wish I could tell them how I used to wake up depressed and sad for months.  Or how I used to abuse Ambien because my body was always on alert and wouldn’t let me fall asleep naturally.  But I don’t and can’t say these things.  I just let them assume I ingested a great deal of coffee and that is the reason I’m bouncing off walls.  They will never know I’m super happy because I’m finally free.  Free to live life on my own terms.  Free to happily serve them without someone in my ear telling me I’m too good for this. Free because I finally found a job.  Free to be around people my own age again.

 

Man that last one feels good.  Being around people my own age again.  I forgot how nice it was to have people to relate to.  People to joke around and shoot the breeze with.  Mr. Money was 32 years my senior.  I cringe as I typed that.  Don’t judge me.  I can already see the looks of shock, disappointment and ewwwe-ness on your faces.  Trust that I have seen and heard it all before.  The nasty looks older women would give me.  The weird side eye glances people my age would throw my way.  The uncomfortable feeling I got as older men would stare at us probably wondering how Mr. Money landed such a young piece of ass.

 

But not here.  Here I’m just the naturally happy woman greeting them with genuine smiles and laughter.  The woman helping them with problems without an attitude.  The woman who wakes up Monday through Friday at 3:30am just to make sure their day gets started on the right foot. So, if this makes me a commoner I’ll choose it over sex schedules & starvation any day.

 

Love & Light

My Career Was Just Taking Off

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.-Oprah Winfrey

It was a gorgeous day in October 2006.  I had just been promoted as the director of my department.  I couldn’t have been happier.  I had proved to my boss that he had made a great investment when he recruited me from across the country.  I had been with this company for a little over a year.  I was the youngest and newly hired person on the team.  I took a tremendous pay cut just to prove myself and standing in my new corner office reaffirmed my belief that I made the right decision to accept their offer and move out west.  I strolled around my office softly caressing the new micro fiber chair in the corner next to the beautiful artwork hanging on the wall. The chair that my boss would eventually love to sit in while he was hiding from the world.  The chair he would casually slump in as we talked about travel, marketing and client referrals. I walked closer to my desk and smelt the flowers that were placed there by a co-worker who was proud of me.  Stargazers!  My favorite!  Oh how he knew me so well.  I took a seat in the new “executive” chair behind my desk and twirled around in pure joy.  I wanted to share this moment with someone.  Someone who would understand the feelings of career success.  I decided to phone Mr. Money.

 

Mr. Money and I had been dating exclusively by this time.  3 months to be exact.  He had been supportive so far.  He listened as I spoke about how I could make positive changes in my department.  How I would place trust in my co-workers and give credit where credit was do.  He joked about how one day my boss wouldn’t be able to afford me like he could.  I never quite got that joke.  But in his mind my boss wasn’t taking me to Rome & Paris. That’s where we were when he said that “joke” the first time. He had taken me there in September for my birthday.  I quickly pushed that thought away, picked up the receiver and dialed his land lane.  After 3 rings he picks up with the usual cheery “Hey hey hey”.  An instant smile was brought to my face.  I explained to him that I was in my new office and feeling indisputably happy.  He congratulated me with sincerity, said a few more nice words and told me had to run.  Something important had just come up but we would talk later.  We said a rushed goodbye and I went on about my day.

 

Later that night he called me when I got home.  We conversed more about my new role and how I would be traveling around the country representing my company.  First stop was Honolulu in 2 weeks.  I had invited him along for the ride.  Partly because I wanted to share this trip with him and because I wanted to somehow prove to him that I was different.  Different from the women he had dated before.  Who all at the time of their break-ups told him they only wanted him for his money anyway.  Or so he said.   I wanted to confirm that I could and would hold my financial weight in our relationship.  So I extended the invitation and he accepted. 

 

Fast forward two weeks and we land in Hawaii.  The first stop for me was checking into the Ala Moana Hotel, changing into my professional clothes and hauling ass to the Hawaii Convention Center across the street.  I spend the next 6 hours there convincing potential clients that our company has all the cutting edge resources to get the job done.  I’m nervous but thrilled.  I never knew I was such a people person and persuasive saleswoman.  By the end of that days convention I phoned my boss, told him the total numbers of sales I made and cringed while I waited for his response.  He was amazingly impressed at my numbers.  No one in my department had ever made that many sales in one shot.  Needless to say I could not stop grinning. 

 

So, I slip on my flats and make my way back to the hotel where Mr. Money is waiting.  We decide to take a tour of the city and grab dinner.  I tell him that I’d like to see a Luau since I’ve never been here before.  To my astonishment he abruptly shouts “No! Those things are stupid, big fucking waste of time”.  Now, this was the first of the many times he would scream at me for saying the most innocent of things.  I didn’t even know what to say, so I said nothing.  I spent the rest of that evening wondering what the hell I did to set him off.  Was I acting too happy about my great day?  Over dinner he sensed that I was a little too silent for his liking.  I assured him that I was cool but that I definitely didn’t appreciate him yelling at me earlier.  Guess that didn’t sit too well with him either as he gave me the silent treatment for the rest of the night. 

 

That was the first sign. I should have ended it then. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Starting From Scratch

 

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.-Alice Walker

Maybe Mr. Money was right about me destined to have a poor and miserable life.  Or maybe this is just the dark stages of my decision to leave him and the sun will shine for me soon.  It is now going on two months and I have yet to obtain full-time employment.  I did not anticipate this prolonged period of relying on my measly savings.  I thought that I would move back in with my family and land a 60K minimum job within a few weeks.  After all, I have years of experience and qualifications that were in high demand just a few short years ago.  I have never felt so naive in my life.    I literally have $340 left in my emergency fund and still need to register my car and find new insurance.  I feel helpless but still desperately clinging to hope.  Hope that money will come my way very soon.  Hope that I can indeed make it on my own again.  Hope that I don’t just say the hell with it and kill myself. 

 

Kill myself.  Now that is a thought that has been bouncing around in this head of mine for days.  I’m just so tired of not knowing how or when my life will start improving.  I feel defeated and helpless.  Still, I know I made the right decision to leave a controlling, volatile and angry man.  I left his home with an optimistic attitude but that is slowly waning.  It doesn’t help that the U.S. is currently in one of the worst recession of our time.  Thousands upon thousands of people are getting laid off, with additional mouths to feed and no savings to fall back on.  How do we get ourselves into such a mess?

 

Then yesterday I read a rather well known blog by a young woman my age.  She married some insanely rich man 30 years her senior.  She was babbling on about what hand towels to put into the guest bathrooms.  Should she get the monkey or artichoke design?  Oh me! oh my! such hard decisions.  So she just went with both.  I’m sitting there reading this shit and I’m like the ultra rich are not tightening their belts at all.  They are not feeling the hit of this country’s financial hardship and I don’t understand it.  Now I’m not mad with the girl.  In fact I’m happy that she seems to have a wonderfully fulfilling marriage.  I could say she married that old dude for money.  But I don’t believe that.  I almost married my wealthy old dude but he ended up being a douchebag. 

 

So, this is where my story begins.  A story of being self sufficient to living the fabulously rich life on someone else’s dime, to being broke.  I hope you will join me on my journey as I blog about becoming financially stable again one day at a time.

 

Love & Light