Everywhere I go I seem to be confronted by my past. Walking through Central Park with a new guy I am dating we approach a part where my ex and I took our first stroll that resulted in our first kiss. As I am holding his hand and passing it my head swivels to see the newly born couple walking in the snow arm in arm and about to kiss. “What are you looking at?” I am jolted back to the fine summer day with my current beau. “Nothing….lets go”.

Another such occurance happened today. I was down on Wall st. for some training with my firm eating lunch at the Financier cafe on William St. Two years ago I had a friend I was very close with who moved away. We both were in love with other people who were unavailable to us and had agreed that had we met in another place and time we would have fallen in love with each other.  From the moment we met it was like we had known each other for years. We never wanted to leave each other and would trade longingly sad looks. Why did we have to meet after all this pain.

Instead we nursed each other through the tough times. Our relationship was never sexual but it was incredibly emotionally intimate. As I sat at the financier on this lovely, warm summer day I looked over at the bench we sat at one lonesome winter evening and was instantly transported back. All of a sudden all of the feelings I was experiencing at the time came flooding back. “Are you staying at this table long?” warm summer day again. “No, you can take it.” I stammered as one lone tear rolled down my cheek. Thank god for sunglasses and people’s inherent narcissism.

One of the things that has helped me stop living so much in the past is Buddhist meditation. I have really been succeeding of late in living in the present and it feels good. But sometimes, you just can’t help but revisit your past.

Its like a far off dream…of someone who I can barely remember. My body feels the memory – of what its like to feel close, to feel love. But I awaken to a harsh reality…one where there is no one.

I feel alone. I wonder what its all for. I wonder why I am so utterly disposable. And I want these feelings to just go away.

When reading these blogs, I always hate the depressing ones. So dear readers – I will not be offended if you choose not to read. I wouldn’t if I were you after all. But this is one of “those” blog postings today.

There is a man I love. He is married. His wife is on her death bed. We have been having an affair for over 2 years. Pretty much everyone knows of the others existence in our lives. I am close with his 2 small kids. I even know his ailing wife and care about her and try to be there in my own way. I know a lot of people will condemn me for this but this is not what this is about…

I find its so easy for him to hurt me.

I stumbled across a blog he wrote to vent. It spoke of how he felt we are all replacable. My lips purse trying to choke back the tears. To think I am replacable validates everything I deep down believe. Everything I work so hard with my therapists to overcome. To make myself believe that I am unique and special. That everything my adopted father told me was wrong. But the one person I love the most tells me to my face that I could be replaced.

I am replacable. I am worthless. I am nothing. I am not special.

If I am replacable then why should I not kill myself? I mean, you can always get a new girlfriend I guess. Right?

Knowing this depresses me. It makes me want to shut everyone out. It makes me want to down the entire bottle of pills because its not like I’ll be missed.  

So quietly and to myself I cry.

1. I spent my first new years with my boy and his family.

 2. I missed my medication.

The dream was about my ex husband. I dreamt I was back in CA and seeing how he was doing. He was fine. He was running some kind of camera spy business with the guys from his band and doing well. His hair was curly now instead of straight. Instead of hating me like he does in real life he was kind and hugged me. But he also told me I had to go. All the members of his band actually hugged me and told me I had to go. I was really sad after that and a very old friend of mine appeared in my dream to comfort me. He was hanging christmas lights and started to rub my back.

Then I started dreaming about this puppy. I first lost this tan colored puppy and couldn’t find it. I was looking all over and finding other puppies but not MY puppy. I was extremely distraught. In looking for the puppy I was looking underneath busses and finding mice who were to be crushed and was trying to flick them out of the way so they didn’t (I didn’t want to touch them).

Then I woke up and cried.

When I went back to sleep (when I get sad I have a hard time getting out of bed so I sleep more) I had another dream about another puppy – this time a bigger puppy and black and white. He belonged to my neighbors and I was talking to him and he wasn’t happy there. Specifically with his female owner. So I told him he could come to live with me. But then his owners came out and looked at me like I was trying to steal him so I just said I was going to play with him and they said ok. I dreamt I was at my grandparents home I grew up in and family was coming over. I kept running through the different rooms – distraught – and finally back to my room crying. I was on some kind of rollercoaster. The world was ending. These were some of the themes in this second dream.

I have no clue what these dreams mean. But the phrase “You can never go home again” sticks with me. I am making a new home for myself. It is difficult and arduous, but I am doing it. I have a support system around me. I know I can do it. But subconsciously, I see I long for the past still. It’s a new year. I brought in the new year with the person I wanted to. I hope this is good portents of what may come. It really was a very lovely new year. Playing monopoly with his kids. Having a snow ball fight and building a snow girl. Dining out in a nice restaurant and finally, ending up in the arms of the man I love. My life now has its challenges, but overall its not bad. Challenges are nothing new to me. They’ve always been there. I will continue to face them with the grit and fortitude I had in my younger years.

Happy New years everyone.

My co-workers and business acquiantences have used words like “poised”, “confident”, “assertive”, “go-getter” and the like and my friends similar. But the one word that kept coming up over and over was confident.

What people admire in me most is my confidence.

Thats what they said resoundingly over and over. And I am confident. It’s not some facade. But lately I have been feeling very incapable. Incapable of running my life. Incapable of controlling my feelings and actions. Incapabable of staying alive. I’ve felt overwhelmed by life recently and I start to feel like a slowly sinking ship with no help. Luckily, my friends and family were there for me during this time and I am getting better and my outlook is changed. But I also know my self perception is fragile and can change so very easily.

But I find it interesting that while I’m in the midst of personal crises people still think I am professional and poised. Suave and smooth…able to still make that deal.

And I’ve been making some pretty good deals lately. But with bigger deals comes more responsibility and stress, things I tend to not deal with so well. I am concerned about falling back down the spiral again. But as with everything, the higher you climb the harder you fall and I am afraid one day I may fall so hard I don’t get back up.

But I also believe in trying and living for today. I will deal with that and those feelings when/if they come. So for now, I am doing well, I am poised, I am confident and I am able to live my life.

Now to just keep it going.

This came on the heels of my date dumping me. The entire weekend I had been simmering. Worrying. First emailing him – no response. Then calling him a day later – no response. Finally, later that day he called and just said he couldn’t see me the same way and it was over. And I couldn’t take it.

I hated myself. I felt like I fucked things up. Why did I take it so far? I should have just sent him home after one kiss. Now my new years eve is gone. I have no date to my company christmas party. I will be all alone.

Then I spied my 4 bottles of meds…

The urge to down all 4 was overwhelming. I opened all 4 and stared into them. I wondered if it really would be enough to kill me. I sat in my bathroom looking at the tiles on my wall wondering if this would be the last thing I would see. Wondering who would find me. Wondering if this is really what I wanted.

Then I made a call to my doctor. What I wanted was an emergency appointment the next day to get stronger meds. He called an ambulance on me. I was taken to an emergency psychiatric facility and kept on a 24 hour suicide watch and pumped full of atavan. I cried the entire time.

Tuesday morning I woke up and cried. It was kind of my last cry mourning this I felt. That day I would go on to close a deal with a government non-profit and sell an annuity for an IRA. It was a really good day. Five of my friends were there for me. My friends at work cheered me on and comforted me. I met with my lover at a coffee shop and just snuggled in his arms. My ex boyfriend came over and just talked to me for hours. Another friend just called. I felt supported and today I actually feel good. Today I can actually say “yeah, it IS his loss. Fuck him!”

My psychiatrists appointment is this Friday. I think I can do it.

I have slowly started to trust him a little as I have gotten to know him. For me, weeks feel like years. In a week and a half now, we’ve had 3 dates and spoken on the phone and emailed various times. Yet we have not kissed or held hands or been physically intimate in any way. I was starting to question if we were just friends or if he was gay.

Those questions were answered tonight.

Soft Jazz was playing in the background. Candlelight dotted my apartment. He appeared in his Madmen blue suit and crisp haircut straight from work. I was cooking dinner in a dress with a crinoline and heels.

We ate dinner and drank wine on my couch at first. Then we slowly inched toward one another. Finally, he asked if he could kiss me. I said yes. It’s like we went from 0-60 in 1 second. He was all over me. Before I knew it, he was on top of me - still in his suit mind you – making out.

We spoke of many things. Emotions, what we want, fears. He said he has never been in love. That he is happy. That he is emotionally closed off and has been since he was a boy because he was always alone. I know his parents’ divorce really affected him at 2 years old.

He discovered a secret that I carry. One he confessed he kind of knew about. You see, I am a former dominatrix. I am into S&M. If you take a good look around my apartment, you’ll see the clues – on my book shelf, the “toys” stashed under my TV, the art work I have hanging on my walls, the way I dress.

It was the way I dress that clued him off.

Well, we explored some of the darker side of fetish. This was something he said he liked and always wanted to try. It started out innocently enough – he tried spanking me. His attempt was pretty weak, so I said “I’ll teach you how” and turned him over my knee and gave him a real spanking. It really went from there. He asked if we could do “more Mistress stuff” so I really started to dominate him. I tied him up and slowly went from light spanking to heavy strapping. I kept asking him about how he felt throughout. The emotions he mentioned were vulnerable, humiliated and then at the end…nervous. He was so nervous he couldn’t look at me and was in kind of a rush to leave.

God damn my fucking Impulse control. There goes another one.

After a year and a half of growing pains, crying, and overall fighting against being single I have semi come to accept it. I live alone, have few friends, and pretty much just work and come home.

But then I met him.

I met him about 2 weeks ago out and about. He commented on something I was wearing and we struck up a conversation. Not even thinking I just gave him my business card since we both worked in the same industry. By the time I reached my desk not even 15 minutes later there was already a message from him with his home number and an invitation to dinner.

We have gone on two dates now and spoken on the phone a few times. I have learned that that was not the first time he saw me and that he had a “crush” on me. We have the same commute and live in the same neighborhood. I had never noticed him before, not even the day I sat down next to him.

He is handsome, funny, outgoing, gentlemanly and very chivalrous. He dresses in beautiful suits and took me to an elegant jazz bar where we talked over candlight followed by a walk in the light rain to dinner and a cab ride home. He caressed my hands as he gently laid a gentle kiss on my lips and told me I was beautiful. He even spoke of me to his mom.

And I am freaking out.

The day after our magical date I at first was ecstatic. But then I wondered why he has never been married and is in his early 40′s. Obviously he doesn’t want a commitment. Obviously he is just using me to get sex. What a bastard! How dare he manipulate me!

I’ll show him manipulation.

That was exactly what I thought following my joy. I go between being perfectly normal and myself with him to being a plotting, scared she-devil when I’m not with him because I convince myself he’s using me. I just can’t figure him out. He did all those wonderful things yet hasn’t gone in for a real kiss or even seriously hold my hand. He will joke about if we get married or have kids and jokingly refer to me as his girlfriend (which I don’t mind – I love intense men) but somehow is keeping his distance I feel.

I need to see a psychiatrist.

This blog really is to just vent and try to cope with my feelings. It’s difficult because there is so much inside. By day, I look and act completely normal. Most would take me for being sane. But in the privacy of myself, I slowly lose myself down a spiral of fear and paranoia.

I welcome those to comment with their experiences if they wish to share them. Thank you for reading.