Well sometimes, life gives us lessons sent in ridiculous packaging,
And so I found him in the arms of a Student Against the Treacherous use of Fur,
And he gave no apology, he just turned to me, stoned out to the edge of oblivion,
He didn’t pull up the sheets and I think he even smiled as he said to me,
“Well, I guess our dreams went up in smoke.”
And I said, No, our dreams went up in dreams, you stupid pothead…
[Dar Williams, The Poignant Yet Pointless Crisis of a Co-ed]
A year and a half ago the most beautiful man I’d ever seen walked into my life. He had kind eyes and beautiful hands. He liked my energy. We were compatible in all the best ways.
But over the past year and half I’ve had my red-flag moments: When he couldn’t manage his money through the next payday, when he’d absent-mindedly lose track of his keys, his wallet, his phone, when his casual daily marijuana use became an absolute necessity, and when that became not enough, and he started to crave something stronger.
The biggest red flag came yesterday and within about an hour, the past 18 months of laughter and joy and delicious food and silly tv and speed metal music and the most amazing sex of my life, came crashing down.
He’d lost his keys, again. But this time he swore that I’d had them. That I’d used and misplaced them. (I knew I hadn’t). He was adamant. And even though I was completely confident (and later proved) that he was wrong, I began to doubt my reality.
Let me back up: I am an adult-child of a dysfunctional family. It’s a term applied to children who grow up either with alcoholic or other “crazy” family traits. As kids, we take on practices outside of our true selves–such as disassociation, denial, fantasy to help us survive some, well, rather wacky familial shit.
I was one of those kids. I was taught to believe that my feelings weren’t my feelings. That the unhealthy behavior I was witnessing was normal. That being raged at was normal. That chaos was normal.
I learned to deny my own internal compass. So that even now, whenever something seems wrong but is being explained as right, or, worse, if I am wrongfully accused of something I didn’t do (so many painful childhood examples here) I become ridiculously triggered. And that’s what happened last night.
The keys were found. He’d gone into my daughter’s room to pet the dog who was lying on the bed. Hey unwittingly laid the keys down. Harmless mistake, right? Wrong. He was supposed to respect the boundary of my daughter’s bedroom. He was not supposed to get onto the bed. He was the one responsible for losing the keys. He blamed me.
I snapped.
And in an instant, by disrespecting my daughter’s private space and by falsely accusing me, the whole relationship came crashing down.
And now I can see what I’ve been denying. He has an addiction that I cannot control, or cure, nor did I cause. And without his “medicine” his life is unmanageable. Out of control. His temper. His reality.
And so, I am done. We are done. This poignant, important crisis of a middle-aged woman has revealed what is the most important thing: my integrity. My world. Time to go it alone.
Farewell, you stupid, beautiful pothead.
(Title and lyrics used without permission. I am hopeful Dar won’t mind)
mindful musings 