My mind is in a highly emotional place right now, first and foremost because yesterday was the Celebration of Life for my daughter Cordelia’s best friend Breese. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so much in my forty-seven years.
Anyway, I want to get past that so I’m not going to say more about it. I really want to get up out of that heaviness.
A lesson I wish I had learned earlier is to do with love and people. Not everyone who says they love you, actually loves you. Or at least not in the same way you love them. Or their definition of love differs from yours.
I learned this the hard way when I was eighteen and had a two year relationship with a really messed up guy. I’ve written about that experience several times before so won’t bore everyone with the details again.
I’m over it now, gosh it’s been over twenty years, at least I’m pretty sure I’m over it and it doesn’t spill over into my current relationships.
That evil man taught me what love wasn’t. If only I had known. If someone could have called me up the day after I met him and said “THIS GUY IS GOING TO SHOW YOU WHAT LOVE IS NOT, FOR THE NEXT TWO YEARS…SO HANG ON FOR THE RIDE”, that would have been perfect. Or maybe my parents tried lol, they actually did now that I think back. About two or three months into that relationship. They stood on a milk crate with a horn and screamed that sentence into my ear. I didn’t take heed.
It was a waste of two years of my life and left me with some emotional baggage. I know now, that carrying the baggage caused me to take some wrong turns…some shortcuts if you will and I married someone I shouldn’t have married.
So it kind of is/was a domino effect. Even though I was so sure I was healed from it once it was over, when I look back I realize I probably wasn’t. I seem to always think I’m more resilient than I really am.
Am I over it now? Sometimes I’m not sure. I want to find him. I want to tell him off. I google him, I search for him on Facebook. Part of me wants to come face to face with him and tell him how he did me so wrong and ask him what part of it was okay. And how does he live with himself. I want to find the partner he has now and warn her. I want to find every partner he’s had since and compare notes.
They don’t teach you in school what love isn’t. Just like they don’t teach you how to change a tire, unless you take auto mechanics. Or how to do your taxes or prepare a personal budget.
But at least I have been able to warn my kids about such predators which will hopefully save them from the ‘what love isn’t’ experience I had.
bloom.planted.north 
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