The vampire and the clock...

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
--Carl Sandburg

The clock ticks so slowly it’s as if someone poured molasses over it. Time is the dark enemy and it refuses to loosen its grip on your heart. The maddening sound of the silent minutes as they creep by into another day and then dusk and then night make you wonder if you’ll simply go insane.

It’s been a three weeks now. Three weeks that feel like a year. A year of hell in three week’s time that you’ve spent...well, how? Twisted into knots with just one question on your mind: “Will I hear from him again?”

Why that’s such an important question is a bit of an intellectual mystery. You know what he is. You’re the one who’s not caving in this time and calling his lame, cowardly, seriously messed up ass to beg forgiveness for something you didn’t do wrong in the first place so why, why, why would you spend another minute worrying about whether or not you’ll ever hear from him again or what he’s doing or who he’s with?

He’s already stolen so much from you. Your dignity. Your strength. Your spirit. Your money. Your heart. Your soul. Your light. Chipped away at your core until your outer shell has become as fragile as antique glass—brittle, cloudy. You know everything you need to know about this so-called “soulmate.” You’ve searched and dissected every troubling behavior, every little glitch that has tugged at your brain since you started wondering why things had flip flopped so badly. You googled “silent treatment” and “marathon sex” and “abandoment issues” and made discoveries that help things make sense. You’re led to Lisa E. Scott’s ‘All About Him’ forum and you feel like you’ve landed at home. You read stories and posts and questions and responses and blogs and sharing and you feel a burst of strength. Validation at last! You’re not crazy! You’re glued to the site, where time doesn’t seem to tick by so slowly...where the time is well spent discovering the truth.

But you don’t like it. And so you don’t want to believe it. Maybe, just maybe, your disordered experience is a little different. Maybe, just maybe, you’re the one woman/man/person who can “love” the situation into something other than it is. You think if only he’ll come wandering back into my life things will be different...things will be good...it will show he’s changed, regardless of all the forum information that screams otherwise. You cling to that thought like a drowning man to a life raft. You float across the hours swaying up and down with the waves of hope and despair, hope and despair, despair and hurt and then hope again. Time ticks away. You’ve just handed over another 24 hours to the disordered freak who cut you to the core. You’re burning up more of your precious time on him. He’s not making you do that, either. He doesn’t even know or care that you’re giving him such a gift.

No, you and you alone are choosing it. You don’t feel like you are, you feel like you can’t help it. But you can and you know it, you just don’t want to because that means LETTING GO OF HIM.

So you sit in solitary confinement in a jail of your own making. Caged by over-wrought thoughts of the warden—the one you willingly hand over the key to. You hated how he controlled you throughout the so-called relationship, and a tiny part of you realizes you continue to hand over that control. You continue to give him your precious, precious time. No one else can change that. Only you can, but you’re so tired. It takes work to kick the thoughts out of your head, to handcuff the phantom soul-sucking shadow man and haul him out of the jail you’ve set up house in. As much as you hate and loathe the darkness—and the disordered one who shrouded you in it—it has become familiar. What lies ahead should you break free is uncertain, unknown, unpredictable, and most of all, may not include the torment and the tormentor...Is it worth the risk to just STOP thinking about him, him, him? Worth the leap of faith to just KICK THE SICK MO’ FO’ OUT OF YOUR HEAD? To disconnect the vampire from the clock and plug into the light?

You realize you’ve been acting like you’ve got piles and piles of time in front of you. You don’t think about the way we spend it so randomly; the way it marches on and pulls you into the aging process whether you want to go or not. Whether you’re aware or not. Whether you’re enjoying any of it or not. And you realize you simply are not enjoying it at all. Why are you so stuck then, wondering whether or not he’ll “hoover” you. You post the question and pretend that you’re loathing the prospect, but secretly you want an answer that will keep you stuck in all that bad time. You have a choice and you keep choosing the past...

But you KNOW you can’t stay stuck there...You witnessed your dad’s soul go off to heaven. You remember when he was 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 and it doesn’t seem possible that time swept you all through those years. Time flies, as they say, and you realize you’ve been absent for much of the trip.

You wake up at age 53 and can’t really quite say where the last six years have gone. You feel ripped off. Robbed. Conned. Duped. Cheated. Dumped on and dumped. It hurts and then it sucks and then it makes you want to destroy things. That’s when you realize there’s been enough destruction already, and you REFUSE to let him destroy any more of your precious, precious time. You REFUSE to devalue yourself any more by devaluing YOUR OWN precious time.

A little voice starts to whisper “if your life ended tomorrow would you really want to have the final moments spent pining and agonizing over someone who brought you to the gates of hell, shoved you in and then fanned the flames? If you only had one more hour to live would you really want to spend it focusing on the source of your pain? What about the source of your JOY? Where is that? Why not spend your precious time trying to find THAT again? It’s YOUR choice...”

From this moment forward you VOW with all the reverence of a monk to kick any thoughts of him out of your head each and every moment they try to invade. You’ll do it a million times a day if you have to because you REFUSE to give him one more minute of your life. You make a pact with yourself to start working the Six Steps, to start creating a NEW LIFE, doing whatever it takes to be free from pain and self-doubt; free from chaos and illusions. All the information is right there on the forum. You are not alone, you have guides the moment you step on The Path Forward. You look around at all the great things right in front of you and it’s like seeing them for the first time. Time to start living in the only moment you ever really have...NOW. Time to spend time clawing out of the jail and into the light...because you’re worth every second it takes to get there.

--------------------
Dear brothers and sisters on The Path Forward. Each and every moment we spend twisted up in the past is a moment lost to the darkness. I readily admit (as per the above) that making the choice to direct my energy in a way that would serve ME best was difficult and I had to make it on a moment by moment basis for a long time. I still have to consciously choose to focus on what’s good in my life and ways I can find inner-peace and joy, but it has gotten easier and easier and more automatic with each passing moment. The old cliché “life is short” is TRUE. We don’t have endless piles of time...time is a gift we get every day and none of us knows how much more of it lies ahead. Each day, even on the bad ones, I make the choice to REALLY TRY to spend the time I do have seeking self-knowledge, self-love, peace of mind and laughter. Accepting that the past is over and has no relevance to NOW, and then letting go, is the homework...it truly does change everything, and the light begins to shine.

Love,
(not) spinning. IT’S A CHOICE AND I CHOOSE MYSELF

Nov 12 - 7PM
NoMoreFreakBoy
NoMoreFreakBoy's picture

This might be it

Aug 10 - 8PM
Ekahue
Ekahue's picture

Narcs don't age well

Aug 3 - 4AM
florence (not verified)
Anonymous's picture

Well said, NOT Spinning

Jul 15 - 10AM
erika astrid
erika astrid's picture

Spinning...

Jul 14 - 6PM
someday
someday's picture

Everything you say is true but

Jul 14 - 7PM (Reply to #18)
cdngemini
cdngemini's picture

I WILL TRY

Jul 14 - 7PM (Reply to #19)
someday
someday's picture

My pain sister

Jul 14 - 7PM (Reply to #20)
cdngemini
cdngemini's picture

STAY STRONG

Jul 14 - 7PM (Reply to #21)
someday
someday's picture

We will get through tonight

Jul 14 - 7PM (Reply to #22)
cdngemini
cdngemini's picture

Tonight - and the next night, I'm someday's friend :)

Aug 29 - 9PM (Reply to #28)
cassia
cassia's picture

cdngemini [and someday, later in this post is also for you]

Jul 14 - 8PM (Reply to #23)
someday
someday's picture

you got it!

Jul 14 - 8PM (Reply to #24)
cdngemini
cdngemini's picture

OF COURSE I UNDERSTAND...

Jul 17 - 8PM (Reply to #27)
Puppy
Puppy's picture

Hello my friend ... Listen, u

Jul 16 - 8PM (Reply to #26)
someday
someday's picture

Hi dear friend

Jul 14 - 8PM (Reply to #25)
someday
someday's picture

That's funny

Jul 13 - 6PM
erika astrid
erika astrid's picture

Amazing....

Jul 13 - 12PM
Froglegs
Froglegs's picture

Amazing post and oh so true.

Jul 13 - 12PM
shock and awe.some
shock and awe.some's picture

Spinning (NOT)

Jul 13 - 7AM
Lovely1
Lovely1's picture

wow!

Jul 12 - 1PM
Totally Stunned
Totally Stunned's picture

My dear "not" spinning

Jul 11 - 7PM
wsh
wsh's picture

Wow.

Jul 11 - 7PM
WhiteSwan44
WhiteSwan44's picture

Beautiful!

Jul 11 - 7PM
Londonteacher
Londonteacher's picture

Thank you so much for another

Jul 11 - 5PM
Jenna H
Jenna H's picture

(Not) spinning - excellent!

Jul 11 - 4PM
OneDay@aTime
OneDay@aTime's picture

Speechless....

Jul 11 - 3PM
transcend
transcend's picture

Letting go

Transcend

Jul 13 - 12PM (Reply to #6)
shock and awe.some
shock and awe.some's picture

Hello GF

Jul 11 - 3PM
d. talks
d. talks's picture

oh, spinning.

Jul 11 - 2PM
Hunter
Hunter's picture

Tick,Tick,Tick!!! Love this..