To Sue, he is ‘Uncle Dick. To her daughter he’s D3. To me, he is Crossroad.Man.

I don’t even know what to think. You know, I’ve been writing this post for a week now. And every day something changed.

Kept going back, re-editing, changing my approach, dancing, dancing. Around. As the script changed. Lets not get into the details, really. Certainly the details are significant. They are.

I guess I just don’t know where to start, where it all started. When exactly it changed. When was it that I realized he was toxic?

When? When did I begin to suspect? I don’t know.

Was it when I’d go over there and at some point, I’d end up in the toilet puking from the vitriol he spewed? The self-righteous, angry, sad, negative commentary of all the horrible things he sees? Has every cloud a lining of putridness to him? Every, single, one?

He sees ONLY ugly. Remembers every detail, of every bad thing you told him you’ve done. He collects it like those plastic figurines that line his walls. Like the matchbook collection. The planes, the books, the knowledge.

He also collects all the ugly.

Everyone is flawed, wounded, and he goes on and on.

Oh, he is sad. And he wants the WHOLE world to feel that way too. Wants to make sure. Wants to make sure you know about ALL the horrible things he just heard on the news. All the mean, the hate, the ugly.

As I’ve gotten to know Sue better, I’ve begun to see him for the first time through her eyes. Through her almost 20 years of knowing him eyes.

Oh, Mom. What a sad, sad man he is. And what a cancer. Like that horrible place, ​he lives in. To which Sue says “he wasn’t always this way“. Apparently… he was WORSE?

HAH!!

So as Sue and I have spent more time together, we’ve become good friends. And, I told her that I am on a quest to indulge in the seeking of pleasure, freedom, and happiness, sans any other person. I am well and truly off the relationship rollercoaster ride.

I mean, what am I doing when I am happiest? Shouldn’t I be doing that more? If I’m honest, I realize that often I am on my own. Not always, certainly, but quite often.

“To know how to choose a path with heart is to learn how to follow
intuitive feeling. Logic can tell you superficially where a path might
lead to, but it cannot judge whether your heart will be in it.”

Jean Shinoda Bolen

It became this UP, down, UP, down yo-yo of emotion of looking for someone over the years. Crossroads.Man was a means to an end… to stop the ride…like my methadone.

UP, down, UP, down. Always at the rhythm that they set, and eventually forgetting your own. Swerving off your course, again.

There is science that actually suggests there are some very positive benefits to being single.

In her research, DePaulo located tens of thousands of studies done on marriage. Yet over the past 30 years, she could only locate 814 studies about “never married” or “single” people. Which is particularly surprising after learning that according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 47 percent of Americans over 18 are unmarried (107 million people) up from 1970, when just 17 percent of Americans were not married (38 million people).

These studies on unmarried folk had significant findings: “Research comparing people who have stayed single with those who have stayed married shows that single people have a heightened sense of self-determination and they are more likely to experience ‘a sense of continued growth and development as a person,’” DePaulo wrote.

[Single ladies: You might be healthier and happier than married friends, Gabrielle Frank, TODAY]

Am I myself? Or am I just bits and pieces of these men?

“Here we are, women who have been the beneficiaries of education, resources, reproductive choices, travel opportunities, the Internet, and a longer life expectancy than women have ever had in history.

What can and will we do?”

Jean Shinoda Bolen

What will I do?

Sue helped me to see that it is a sort of addiction, perhaps, the catching of a mate. Or, even finding one that even wants to be a mate. At some point the affection of said mate becoming this addictive high. And all the gauze and fog of beginnings.

One, after the other, after the other, and so forth. Chasing the next HIGH. The next guy. The next one will be THE ONE.

The TRUE love.

The TRUEST.

Crossroads.Man was called that for a reason. He maybe just helped me to break the dirty habit of seeking another man. I had one; well, kind of.

How ridiculous is it to believe someone else was going to make ME happy? Give ME pleasure? Freedom?

It was about this time last year I walked away from the call centre, into a void. I had just enough to pay the rent and my bills, and nothing would be left until I found another job.

And I found one. BOY did I. Complete turn around, completely different type of work. All physical, and basically no sitting. Except for driving a forklift.

Me, driving a forklift? Me, hauling boxes, and climbing ladders, and going farther up then I thought I could. I have less, but technically I make more. I just need less. I live simpler than I ever have lived before. I often even wash my clothes in the bathroom sink, Mom. You know, light T-shirts, underwear, shorts, socks.

Anyways, as Epicurus said…

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”

And, perhaps, this crossroads has been crossed? Maybe for a while, I’m thinkin’. Sue and I agreed on that. She’s been his friend off and on, over those 15 years since they dated, and I can see he maybe still pines a little for her.

And so, he manipulates. Oh, but I learned from the best how to identify them. You think, Mom? Ol’Tim taught me how to see through their narcissistic ways. They’re means of taking control. To own you. Oh, I see through. How they see the world through their own sad eyes and think they can make you see it that way too.

Never. Ever.

No way.

But I’ve gained a friend, and that is good. And we decided to get together this week, have some fancy latte down at the new coffee bistro.

Anyways, her Poppy is totally in love with Irish, and we can’t keep true love apart.

Eh? : )

Love,