writing to you before I write to her

[Lady Itone]

I'm losing it. first of all, it's "Womanfest" here all these happy lesbian couples, and I'm wrestling with the reality that I'm alone, middle-aged, and it's highly unlikely I'll never have a such a beautiful woman in my arms again. During the good times, no one has ever made me feel so loved. Second of all, exactly one year ago, a hurricane directly hit where we live. Major trauma ensued.

 I'm this close to emailing her, though I know it won't fix anything for either of us. So instead I'm posting it here, hoping I'll get some peace, or some feedback if this is "safe" to actually send to her. Thanks you guys rock!

Dear ****,

A year ago today, I got into a car with a stranger because you refused to leave with me and everyone we knew had already gone. What followed was one of the worst two weeks of my entire life, going through it all by myself gutted me, and I'm really struggling with depression on the anniversary of all that. I hope you are doing something to deal with YOUR trauma. I hope you know how badly I did not want to leave you there.I can't even imagine how you felt, alone in the house, and I certainly can't imagine what led to you walking naked and psychotic down the highway when first responders found you a week later.

Now, I hope you are taking your meds as prescribed, seeing therapists, and really trying to make your life better. I hope you never have to set foot in a psyche ward again.

I've tried this summer to concentrate on home improvement (painted my walls, new toilet seat, etc... ) I finished/sent out the lesbian erotica short novel that you inspired, but so far only rejections. "Scooby" my new guinea pig is cute, I'll attach a picture. I stopped going to therapy, didn't feel like she really "got" me or had help to offer me, but might try another if I don't feel better soon. I took a few sailing lessons, fun, but it's been rainy lately. I'm leaving for New England trip in a few days, looking forward to whale watching, leaf-looking and lobstah!

Are you still with you family in the woods? Has that been helpful? Are you planning on going back to your group home? I'm curious what comes next for you? I know you would rather talk on phone or messenger, but email is as close as I'm willing to get.  

I do want to go through your closet soon. I'm assuming I can throw away or donate the clothes? What are your thoughts on your tools, your art portfolio, and I don't even know what else you have here? Anyway, just letting you know I haven't forgotten you.

Best, Lady Itone

[Wicker Man]

I'm this close to emailing her, though I know it won't fix anything for either of us. So instead I'm posting it here, hoping I'll get some peace, or some feedback if this is "safe" to actually send to her.

I re-read your Loneliness / cognitive dissonance thread. 

I am getting old enough that I repeat myself a lot... .  so here goes... .

While you are thinking this over this please consider, first and foremost, what your needs might be.  You seem to be looking at communication with her from her perspective not yours. 

I suppose what I am try to say is this.  Cui Bono?  (Who benefits). 

Back to present time... .

If you are close to sending an email to your friend I would spend some time and figure out what effect do you wish this message to have.  Cui Bono


Is the purpose of the email to:

Get some sort of closure I.e. get something off your chest? ---(I wouldn't)
Re-open a dialogue? ---(only possible outcome of sending email)
Teach your friend a lesson in compassion? ---(You can't)

I believe I understand your email -but I see all three of the above (assumed) agendas within the subtext.  As catharsis the email is fine, but to send it to an ex-lover who suffers from a profound personality disorder I should think it would be emotionally confusing. 

When I read the text I feel a push pull.  My ham fisted analysis:  First paragraph she hurt and abandoned you.  Second paragraph you show concern about her mental state -with the slight barb of the psyche ward.  Third paragraph stating your own need and loneliness ostensibly for her.  Fourth paragraph back to concern about her.  Fifth paragraph a bit of a push pull about throwing her things away and having not forgotten her.

I am going stand firmly by my thought from weeks ago.  You need to figure out what your needs are --once you have an agenda (which serves only you) figure out if you wish to contact her, then figure out what message you wish to deliver, and finally write a succinct note following that agenda.  --Remember emotion seems to drive people suffering from BPD.

Next week I have to fly back to Beijing for work.  It will be excruciating to be there and have no contact with Dream Come True.  I will have to walk through the very place I asked her to marry me.  She drove me away and herself into darkness -BPD is a diabolically ironic and sad disorder with plenty of pain all around.

... .unlikely I'll never have a such a beautiful woman in my arms again

In my rumination I have likened the love I felt for Dream Come True to love verging on psychosis.  It was the most intense feeling I have experienced in my more than 50 years.  As I have mentioned before it was Heaven and Hell, High and Low, black and white. 

Once the dust settled I realized how much I had forgiven and or blinded myself to in our brief relationship.  I have never been loved so much or received such utter brutality. 

When I think about how much I miss her I remind myself of the week she picked up a shiny penny and ghosted me.  I wrote her a message which roughly said 'We are both in this relationship for mutual benefit, it has to be a two way street'.  I received back, after a few days of silence, 'So boring'.   I then wrote 'You are putting me through hell' -she responded 'I know'. 

When she loved me it was with every once of her being, when she hated me it was equally as passionate, and finally when our love was inconvenient she stopped it with shocking brutality. 

I am not in the 'Run' camp.  I do believe relationships with all manner of personality disordered people can work -however BPD is perhaps the most difficult.  Nothing is impossible, but if you decide to walk down this road again please do so with open eyes. 

Further do not let physical beauty play a roll.  Dream Come True is 'young and beautiful' (I include this as an inside joke to myself.  It was a text I got from her at 3am from a bar, instead of coming back to me that evening she just texted 'Remember I am young and beautiful')  It was not her physical beauty with which I was smitten, it was her creativity, sense of humor and the countless hours we spent talking about art, music and movies.  That, along with her family, is what I miss. 

Physical beauty is fleeting, being 'in love' is fleeting.  Love, real love is about hard work and discipline.  Being 'in love' is easy and largely a chemical trick of the brain -real love for the long haul is hard work on the part of both parties.

As I wrote this I listened to Paradise Circus again -a song she and I would listen to.  I now look at the time I spent with her as just that -a Three Ring Circus -Love, hate, and abandonment.



Wicker Man

[Panda39]

Hi Lady Itone,

Good idea to share here, you clearly care about your ex. and are still processing and grieving.  It sounds like the Anniversary of this past event has triggered some sadness today. Sending some    .  IMO it's good to share and not stuff your feelings.

It sounds like you are blaming yourself for your ex's Psychotic episode.  You also mention that she has been prescribed medication.  Was not taking her meds a contributing factor here? 

Do you want to share more about the evening you are remembering and get some perspectives from the members here? 

I do encourage you to find a different Therapist that you feel more comfortable with out there in the real world, getting a professional involved should help.

Take Care, 
Panda39

[Lady Itone]

Thanks guys.

So far I am not sending it to her. Though I would love for her to know someone is genuinely on her side in this world, I do not want to lead her on in any way. I don't want back on the roller coaster, I really don't. With someone who abandoned me in a hurricane. No.

You guys get it. I just wish I could make her understand when she hurts herself (staying in a cat 4 hurricane) she hurts those who love her.

I suppose I'm feeling "trauma bonded." We went through this horrible thing together--except, not together because she abandoned me, or, in her eyes I abandoned her by refusing to stay. None of us (her housemates and me) noticed she was in a manic state--we all were. It was a chaotic, frightening situation, and we were all running around like chickens with our heads cut off. I honestly didn't realize how far gone she was until suddenly she turned cold and stone faced and refused to leave.

I stayed in hotels, among strangers. She stayed all alone in her house in a category 4 hurricane. Later that week, I had to put down a beloved pet because I couldn't care properly for a hospice animal while going from hotel to hotel. She went through a hell of her own, I'm sure, and I feel the empathy for her on top of my own pain.

When I finally located her about a week and a half after the storm, she was in a psyche ward in a city hours away from our home, I remember her just bursting into tears at the sight of me. No one else was coming to get her. Just me. My heart broke for her.  

It IS a push pull on my part. I love(d) her, and know I can't safely be with her.

Last year, this night, Sept 9, was one of the top 3 worst night of my life (and I was in downtown Manhattan on 9/11. This was worse for me.) I got into a car with a stranger with everything I owned, my pets, and left my lover behind to die (I thought.)

If I can get through the next few days, I know I'll feel better. I spent today with friends. I take a trip in 2 days. But right now, the memories of this night last year feel more real than my reality, and it's throwing me for a loop.  

[Panda39]

Wow, sounds like a traumatic situation for you both. 

It sounds like she refused to leave/evacuate?  I'm sure you already know this but for what it's worth I'll just say it... .The only people we truly control is ourselves, we can not make someone else do something they do not want to do. 

You made the best decision you could in a horrible situation, but I sure can see how heart wrenching leaving her behind must have been for you.

Why did she not want to leave?

Panda39

[Wicker Man]

I am sorry you are going through this hard time -there are still so many triggers for me.   In a small way I have a feeling I understand what you are going through.

Leaving mine out of self preservation has been the most difficult thing I have experienced. 

Please accept the notes I gave concerning your email in the spirit they were sent -I certainly did not mean to give you more pain. 

I hope you are able to find some piece in the coming days.

[Lady Itone]

Panda38: Why didn't she want to leave? Good question. Maybe that's where I'm trying to get closure. According to her, it was just bad luck, a series of errors. I see it as a deliberate act of sabotage, to herself and those who loved her.

The only reason I was in her house and with her people (and not with my own friends in the town 45 minutes away where I live) was because I thought she'd be more comfortable among her own people, and she'd already made it clear that she would NOT be ok if we evacuated separately. So I took a bus with my pets and was there with her friends, who were not also my friends, really. This was probably a mistake, as gf now felt "responsible" for my safety and well-being. I was very ill at ease, and I know I was snappish and upset.    

See, I wanted to evacuate. All of my close friends had left already, I wanted to go to them. But she and her housemates and neighbors wanted to stay and "hunker down." We had among us two ER nurses, an EMT, a navy officer, two little girls, and me and my gf and assorted pets. We had a generator, supplies etc. So, I agreed, against my own judgement, to stay.

All this changed once we learned we were in for a direct hit. So now, her housemates and neighbors were leaving. There was plenty of room for us in their cars, but gf didn't feel "ready" to go with them, then she refused to do anything to GET ready. I was shocked and confused. She'd been taking her antipsychotic meds, I think, up until that point, but we'd done some drinking the night before and taken a xanax, probably this messed up her judgement the next day. She hadn't seemed any worse than the rest of us up until that point.  

So the housemates and neighbors left. The little girl who gf took care of (live-in nanny) was heartbroken, but even her little buddy couldn't get through to her.

Now it was just me and her in the house. She was all closed off to me now, telling me to go away and leave her alone, let her think, she was looking up "how to survive a hurricane" on her tablet and messaging her mother. At one point, she physically put me outside and locked the door because I was beside myself.

I contacted a guy I barely knew but who lived nearby, and luckily, he hadn't left yet was just getting ready to, so I said please come get me/us. It was night now (the storm hit the next morning.) She was still saying she wouldn't leave. The guy showed up in a 2 seat convertible. Now, she had the excuse that there was no room in the car, though we begged her. I'm little, I said I'd sit on her lap. She put me in the car, kissed me goodbye. I told her I'd never forgive her, or myself, for this. And I guess I haven't.

I reminded her that one neighbor was still there, though he was leaving very early in the morning, I said please go with him. She said she probably would--but I don't think she ever meant to. Of course, instead, she started drinking. She says she passed out, when she woke up, the neighbor was gone. The storm was coming. She huddled under a mattress. For a couple days, I think, she was kind of ok. She found some people down the road who had stayed. They fed her hot dogs and peanut butter sandwiches. She kept drinking more, not taking her meds.

One of her housemates, the guy who is an EMT, came back he was a first responder, and he told me that he'd seen her, she was alive, I heard later she asked him to take her to the hospital and for some reason, he refused, I think he was overwhelmed with work and didn't understand her condition. After that, no word of her for a week and a half.

When the police found her naked and psychotic on the highway, they assumed she'd been raped. That's what they told me when I finally reached a social worker in the hospital. Later, we put together that probably she was not, no evidence. She was subjected to a rape kit. I had to tell her family, who live across the country, all this. Later, she told me she was naked because it was hot, in the 100's.

They sent her to a hospital several hours away. The hospital was a mess at that point, I couldn't even reach her or anyone on her case for days after learning she was there.

When I finally got her on the phone, she was nonverbal. Just cried. I made my way to the city where she was, she was still not able to speak until the second time I went to her.

Did she stay to hurt me and everyone else? Did she stay because it seemed thrilling, and because she knew she'd get lots of attention if she survived? I don't know. I don't think SHE knows.  

WickerMan: You are not causing me pain with what you said. I know I cannot send her this email. I wonder if she's hurting tonight too. I think I'd feel less alone knowing she was.
 
Today I was at a resort pool with my bestie, and two little girls were jumping in and I remembered being with the two little girls at the gf's house, I was looking after them while everyone else buttoned up the house and the girls were jumping into the canal. That memory felt more real today than my reality. That's been happening all day. I told my friend what was happening so she patted my arm and reminded me that I wasn't there anymore, that we all lived and everyone's ok, and no one is in my life causing me trauma anymore... .

Tonight, and the next few days, can't end soon enough.

[Panda39]

Alcohol, Medication, not taking medication, mental illness, stress... .all playing a part in this... .it sounds like she was not at her best to make a good decision.  Her decision to stay was dangerous to herself, hurtful to you and those close to her, maybe not made in the best frame of mind... .but the decision was hers.  You made the best decision you could for yourself that was all either of you could do that day.

I hear you grieving this relationship, caring about your ex, regretting the awful day and the way it ended, and missing her still. I hear that you care for her and that you recognize this relationship is not good for you.

I was in an important relationship years ago that ended with my bf cheating on me.  Cheating was a deal breaker for me and I broke things off.   I blamed myself for his cheating... .if only I had been this way or that, or it I had done this or that, he wouldn't have cheated.  I stuffed my feelings and went on with my life.

He and I briefly reconnected 25 years later and a lot of emotions surfaced as I worked through the lasting effects of the relationship and breakup that I stuffed and ignored for years.  I had walked around for 25 years loving this man, blaming myself for his leaving me and secretly hoping we would get back together.  By the time I re-evaluated this relationship I'd lived 1/2  a life-time and my perspective was different.  I realized he left me the way he did because he feared commitment (he was 50 when we met again and I had been his longest relationship... .he was a serial monogamist who could never commit to anyone), I also realized that to be friends with him again that I had to forgive him in my own heart and mind.  On the path to forgiveness, I realized I had a lot more feelings than just Love and hope when it came to him, there was sadness, there was disappointment, and there was anger.  In recognizing those other feelings... .all feelings of grief... .I could acknowledge them and then let them go.  I could forgive him and in forgiveness I was able to see him for who he was not the idealized version of him that I carried in my heart.  He was not perfect, he most definitely wasn't the one for me, we loved each other and always would because of our past and more recently the present, but I actually didn't really like him... .a very enlightening moment for me.

Why does your story bring me to this story?  Because it's about love, pain and forgiveness.  You're in the love and the pain, you are grieving... .have you come across anger yet? Have you acknowledged that, and let yourself feel that?  Could a goal be forgiveness... .forgiveness for her and forgiveness for yourself?

Panda39

[Chitchat]

What you risk is reopening hurt, either by getting no reply or by getting one. If you are feeling the hurt now, it will only be greater after contact.

'What will you get out of it?' - The problem with this approach is that your emotions will try to trick your reasoning, so, rationally, the rational decision you can be most sure of on this, your saddest of sad anniversaries, is to do nothing.

And don't they say that you cannot give a pwBPD a bit of what they need, or be their best friend. For that matter, how easy is it to go from any hard break - up to the friend zone?

What I find helps is the old adage, 'The only thing I'll give you this [occasion] is the gift of missing me.' After all, she is not reaching out to you.

On the other hand, you are free, free to love and make mistakes, love is love, and if you can minimise your expectations, have a soothing remedy if overwhelmed, and minimise exposure to minimise damage, why not?

How much hurt could one impregnable word - 'Hi', 'Hey', 'Nudge' - without follow-up for a month, do either of you?

[Lady Itone]

What you risk is reopening hurt, either by getting no reply or by What I find helps is the old adage, 'The only thing I'll give you this [occasion] is the gift of missing me.' After all, she is not reaching out to you.

On the other hand, you are free, free to love and make mistakes, love is love, and if you can minimise your expectations, have a soothing remedy if overwhelmed, and minimise exposure to minimise damage, why not?

How much hurt could one impregnable word - 'Hi', 'Hey', 'Nudge' - without follow-up for a month, do either of you?

She HAS reached out to me, not in the past two weeks, but only because I'm being all no contact-y. I don't want to get sucked in again. Her several attempts to reach me by phone failed. She called, I blocked, and responded rather cooly via email. I've told her I will only communicate via email, which I doubt she finds satisfying.

I think the very most I could/should say is something with no emotion behind it. I cannot tell her I'm depressed or reliving the trauma of last year. She has repeatedly deflected any responsibility for all that, it's pointless to try to make her understand how badly it affected me, her housemates, and her family. I CAN tell her the work I've done on my house, ask her about her own life, and maybe we can try to figure out what to do with her stuff, but I can't open up emotionally, she will take it as an invitation.

I'm feeling a bit less anxious and upset today, I think I managed to purge some of that last night talking on here and to my friends. I opened up to my besties yesterday about how I felt like they just left me in that storm with my mentally ill girlfriend, crippled pet, and no car. One friend promised me a place in her car, and my pets, next storm. She, at least, won't leave again without asking me if I need help. 

[Chitchat]

Come on, next storm!

[Wicker Man]

... I can't open up emotionally, she will take it as an invitation... .

I feel in my heart of hearts if I were to ever have contact with my ex she would say anything to try to begin again.  The beautiful part of her loved me deeply.  She is a genius, artistic and knows me -I think it would do me great harm to ever have that sort of a conversation with her.  You are incredibly strong for being able to have the limited contact you do with your ex.

I'm feeling a bit less anxious and upset today

I am glad to hear you are feeling better.  It sounds like it was an amazing conversation you had with your best friends about the past and how to handle the future. 

I was shooting a movie in New Orleans when Harvey rolled through last year.  We were lucky it tracked North -but I am guessing it went from us into your neck of the woods.  If it had hit us the movie would have been cancelled -it was a very nerve wracking time. 

I learned... .I hate hurricanes.  A fine drink, but the storms are horrible.


Wicker Man