It’s been a long time since i’ve written anything. Even now i don’t want to write because sometimes just talking about experiences can cause me to fall back into that experience and undo the healing that i’ve worked so hard to earn. Sometimes just remembering what i’ve been through is like eating a lump of cancer. Very stupid, selfish and insane cancer.

Nonetheless, i’ve always taken pride in that i’d rather live with an uncomfortable truth than live a convenient lie. This is coupled with some information that was given to me a few months ago that just… it just made me numb. I also gave this person my word that i wouldn’t say anything because of the potential to compromise her project for school.

Then that deadline passed months ago and then it became an issue of feeling hurt and rage every time i thought about what happened and the absolute stupidity and insanity that nearly consumed me.

I came so close to drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid. So very, very close. But there was this part of me that stayed alert- that held my core values and although it kept whispering to me something was very, very wrong, i didn’t know how to listen for it at the time.

Sometimes an experience is too large. It becomes a task of “eating an elephant,” an analogy for anything that’s too complex and deep to explain or learn in any one sitting. What began in the spring of 2012 and ended in late 2013 is more than just “eating the elephant”. It took my dignity, my common sense, it cost me two jobs and worst of all… worst of all was that once i was alone again, my friends quietly told me that they never trusted my ex and that they had always felt she was taking advantage of me, my naivety, my kindness, my patience and my trust.

And for a while i wanted to tell them they were wrong- but they weren’t and i couldn’t.

They never said anything to me at the time because they know how much i ache to love and be loved – but what they didn’t know, nor did i, was to what extent i was ready to sacrifice my dignity, my self respect and my common sense to maintain the illusion of love.

It will take me time- i do not know how long. It’s my intention to talk about what happened, why i did and made the decisions that i did, the information that came to me that simultaneously makes me sad and laugh and then i am going to talk, very very passionately, about the difference between things Sex Positive and Sex Pathetic. I am going to talk about the difference between Slut Shaming and Your Right to be Ashamed of Someone. I am going to talk about what my friends, my family and my counselor reminded me of- that every relationship, especially every healthy, loving relationship has expectations, rules and reasonable compromises.

Then I am going to talk about bullies and how being a shame based person can make someone a bully- and how all bullies are cowards at heart. That the content of their character is hollow, self absorbed, insecure and… pathetic.

I am going to talk about how love is not proven when times are easy, rather when times are hard and demands more of us than we think we can give is when we are revealed. It is when things are tough and we want to run away that we prove to ourselves and to our loved ones that love and its ilk- honor, dignity, strength and the content of our character are revealed.

And i am going to face and talk about this truth that hurts me every time that i think about it. I am going to talk about love versus the illusion of love and why i am worthy of the former and have only found the latter in the two women in my life that i finally found the courage to take all of my armor off to.

And i do not care how much it hurts. I will always accept an uncomfortable truth over a convenient lie.

And i am going to talk about my failings. I am going to talk about the price of ignoring my inner voice back that warned me to not get involved with my ex in 2008 or 2009 and why i ignored it. I am going to talk about everything that i’ve learned in the hopes that if anyone ever needs a sanity check and perspective, i will lend what i can in the hopes that it helps others avoid the coping strategies that i used to maintain a relationship that broke me. It utterly and wholly broke me.

The good news is that i almost drank the poison. Almost.