Graduation Day

Well, this past week I graduated. Not from school but from therapy. After having gone to therapy actively since the summer of 2008, the summer when my wife and I had the last marital troubles that led to our marriage dissolving, I am now no longer seeing anyone. And it feels...weird.

I started going to the first therapist, Marie, as a marriage counselor with Portia, my then-wife. The marital therapy was about as effective in keeping the marriage together as the Cleveland Browns offense was that year (4-12) in winning football games. I then continued to see Marie for the next three years, surviving the break up and then the tumultuous relationship with Stella. But progress seemed slow and less than satisfying.

Then two things happened. The first was that Marie, after three years, found out that my father was an alcoholic. I never hid it from her. It somehow just never came up. This led her to suggest I read Co-Dependent No More, which is where I heard of Adult Children of Alcoholics. But the other thing that happened is that Marie took an opportunity to do some special work elsewhere, leaving me in the care of her colleague, Caroline.

Caroline had a much more assertive style. She pushed me. She gave me homework. And so, between ACoA and her, I began to make much swifter progress. Of course, it didn't hurt that my relationship with Stella was soon over, allowing me to focus even more on healing myself, since she was a bullet still lodged in my open wounds.

And in one last push, she pushed me to push off and leave therapy. I could argue with it. I'm better. I can do things in love relationships (like set boundaries) that I couldn't before. I have come a long way. Am I fixed? No. I will continue to evolve as long as I live. But I am moving to a new chapter, so play the music; I'm marching in graduation.

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Pomp and Circumstance No. 1, conducted by the composer.

I wonder who taught her how to talk like that.

Baby's into running 'round, hanging with the crowd,
Putting your business in the street, talking out loud,
Saying you bought her this and that
And how much you done spent.
I swear she must believe it's all heaven sent.

— Boz Scaggs

As I have said here on any number of occasions, Stella, my ex-girlfriend, has seen fit to libel me on her blog. She's also disparaged Kathy, my current girlfriend. And we've pretty much just let it go. We both stopped looking at her blog because time had marched on. However, mutual friends, family, and acquaintances interested in the main subject of her blog continue to read it, as well as Portia, the ex-wife.

Portia and Stella have struck up a relationship that I have taken to calling the Paramour Revenge Squad after the Superman Revenge Squad of comic book fame. Again, no skin off my nose. In fact, I think it both a little funny and sad that the two of them get together and compare notes as to how horrible I am.

At any rate, word got back to me that she had made a big life decision and had posted same on her blog. I think it a positive life decision and I was glad to hear it. I mentioned it to Kathy. Kathy, who has a relationship of sorts with Portia, mentioned to Portia that she thought this was a good decision. And, apparently, Portia told Stella. And Stella went what I shall charitably call "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs®."

She assumed that I got the news through a mutual friend, Whitney, and proceeded to libel Whitney on her blog while excoriating Whitney for telling me this information. And she repeated her many lies about me for good measure.

Whitney is a wonderful friend. But as Stella is going to find, she's even more a tremendous enemy. Stella should not have done this, especially since she puts her own business in the street in the form of a blog that is open to the world. So pretty soon Whitney will "bring the chick around to the sad, sad truth, the dirty lowdown."

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The dirty lowdown.

I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?

Apparently, I am some really powerful stuff, because here we are more than a year past when she dumped me, and yet I am still the subject of Stella's blog. I had pretty much given up reading her blog, as the person that I am now is so far removed from the person who would have been in a relationship with her.

However, she has maintained relationships with other people that I know, so it came to my attention that yet again I was the subject of her blog. It's basically just more of the same: exaggerations, mischaracterizations, and absolute lies about me. She topped this by branding me with the epithet of "Loser". She is a fan of Glee, so I guess that's where she gets it from. Or maybe it's indicative of her maturity level. She even threw in a shot at Kathy.

How crazy was it? So crazy that even Portia couldn't believe Stella had written it. Kathy was a bit concerned that I would be bothered by the blog post, but it really doesn't bother me that much. I'm writing this blog post mostly as catharsis to get it all out of my system, because she isn't worth me spending any more time on it from this point forward.

I have said to Kathy more than once that I wish I knew what I did to cause Stella to hate me so. But now I don't even care. Because, frankly, anyone who is still this fixated on someone she dropped is, well, a loser.

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Soy un perdedor!

Well, I think it's going to be all right.

I heard on the news this morning that it was just about a year ago that Hurricane Irene came through the North Carolina community in which I live. The hurricane was the marker of an important change in my life.

Right before the hurricane, I had to put down my dog who had been with me for all but a few months of my entire time living here. And then, during the hurricane, my now ex-girlfriend Stella took the decision of ending our relationship out of my hands when she dropped me via text message.

That was my high bottom for being an adult child of an alcoholic and I started working the steps in earnest and started writing this blog. Since that time I have written a novel, had my new girlfriend Kathy move in with me, and gotten divorced from Portia.

There are some adjustments going on dealing with my living with another human being, but things are a lot better for me than they were a year ago. I'm often happy and even more often content.

I'm sorry that I haven't been updating this regularly, but my life is very full at the moment. I'm trying to come up with a frequency I can sustain but that allows me to do the many other things in life I love. I'll see if I can figure out.

Oddly, even a year later, Stella still talks about me in her blog, although thankfully less frequently. Portia is still being as demented regarding Tina as she was in the spring, so I may have to consider other options where that is concerned.

But as for me, I have moved on and life is good.

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Yeah, the worst is over now. The morning sun is shining like a red rubber ball.

Stone cold sober, as a matter of fact.

This is now approaching the level of Hollywood farce. Stella gave me a moderately expensive gift for my birthday (less than $500 more than $100). She then dropped me via text during a hurricane. She dropped me.

When you're in an adult relationship, sometimes you leave stuff at each other's abode. I sent her everything that I could think of and then later the one thing I hadn't thought of prior. I later met with her to give her an opportunity to give her closure. This for a normal person would be the end of it. Alas, sad to say, she's not normal.

She has since on her blog exaggerated about me and has downright lied about me. She uses my real name on her blog when I don't use hers (or even my own) on this one. She has talked about me at least once a week on said blog. She's maintained Facebook relationships with people in my life to IMO spy on me. She's scoured the internet finding other places I write or post other works. And she's asked for this moderately expensive gift back.

Her ridiculous pretext for asking for the gift back is that I was fraudulent in my relationship with her. Beyond being simply not true, it was a gift freely given and I gave her gifts of equivalent value that I do not wish back because they were gifts.

Today she's contacted me about this for the fourth or fifth time and I am starting to be concerned that she will be coming after me bodily next. Kathy says that the best course of action is to ignore her, which other than here is exactly what I have been doing all along. I agree with this. So I am handing this off to my Higher Power. But it's getting really old really fast.

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Chosen on purpose. Elton John and Tina Turner.

A solitary man

We're supposed to put ourselves on our amends list and I have decided to go ahead and do that. I have ruined relationships and missed opportunities because I didn't know how to handle the expressions of my condition. Shoot, I didn't even realize I had a condition. So in thinking about how to make amends to myself, I thought about what I could give myself.

First of all, I owe it to myself to keep sincerely working the program. The program has worked wonders in my life and I will continue to improve if I keep executing the tenets with zeal and understanding. So I vow to continue to do just that.

Next, I owe myself at least as much patience and understanding as I would give my stepson or granddaughter. I'm better but I am a far cry from perfect or even cured. It's bad enough things beat me up when they go wrong. I need to stop piling on myself in addition. This is no mean feat, by the way.

And finally, I owe myself my freedom. At first I lagged on executing my divorce because I didn't want to end the relationship. I thought that Portia and I might get back together even with Stella in the picture. Then, when I was certain that wasn't going to happen, I lagged because I wasn't sure about my relationship with Stella. Then, when that died, I didn't see any need because I wasn't supposed to get into a relationship for a while.

Well, I am in a relationship now, but even so, that isn't why I am finally doing it. In the process of getting to know Kathy, I realized that I need to say to myself and the world that I have truly moved on. (Stella would argue that I already have said it to the world, but I digress.) Kathy and I made an agreement that we wouldn't officially announce we were in a relationship until I was legally out of my current one. So it's time.

I cannot get back my own years lost and my opportunities frittered away. But I can do this for myself. And so I am going to.

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Don't know that I will, but until I can find me
A girl who will stay and won't play games behind me
I'll be what I am:
A solitary man.

Seems you've lost your feel for me

Portia reads Stella's blog, so today I have had to endure Portia's questioning of me on the matter of yesterday's conversation with Stella.  And the cherry on the sundae?  She is siding with Stella (who is asserting that I could never have actually loved her, Stella).

Let's just say there's only she and me and we just disagree.

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Dave Mason again. I just wish we could actually be this mature about things (Portia and I or Stella and I, take your pick).

The list

It seems to do me good to not only do these exercises but put them out for others to see.  I think it is a catharsis of sorts for me.  So with that in mind, I present the actual list I came up with for those whom I have specifically harmed through my dealings with being an adult child of an alcoholic.  I will possibly add other people tomorrow, but for how, here is the list.  All names have been altered for the purpose of anonymity.

Whom I harmed	Relationship	How I harmed them
Portia	ex-wife	By not being honest about who I truly was or how I felt, I led her to believe that we had a future together when we did not.
Stella	ex-girlfriend	By not being honest about who I truly was or how I felt, I led her to believe that we had a future together when we did not.
Winnie	ex-girlfriend	Was tempted into thinking I could make it work with an alcoholic, giving her some hope of a relationship.
Wilma	ex-girlfriend	By not honoring myself and respecting myself when I was with her, I wasted valuable years of her life that she could have better spent in another relationship.
Kathy	girlfriend	Because of my need to people-please I sometimes put others ahead of her when they shouldn't be placed there.
Tina	granddaughter	Because I am lax on self-care, I allow myself to be too stressed when dealing with her and thus find myself yelling at her for, in essence, being a kid.
Rick	stepson	For being excessively strict while raising him.
me		By not correcting my behavior, I robbed myself of many relationship opportunities and subjected myself to agonizing break ups and personal humiliations in the name of making a fundamentally flawed relationship work.

It's humiliating to put this out here for the world to see, but shadows and secrets are harmful for me. Once it is out there, it loses its power. I only hope that others can find their courage to face this step from this.

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I have another list. It has to do with Kathy and Hall and Oates.

I gotta be me

I am working the various steps of ACA and am up to Step 8, which involves compiling a list of people to whom I need to make amends. In the process of trying to figure out to whom such amends need to be made, I was called upon to recall the end of my relationship with my girlfriend prior to Kathy. For the purposes of this post, we will call her Stella.

As I was working with the crew on putting my list together, I had to get into the gory details of how we broke up, those that I skipped in my prior post on the subject, to explain why she was on my list of people to whom I needed to make amends. In the course of explaining, I also had to explain that a large part of what ended us was my actually getting better as far as being an ACoA is concerned.

As I have gotten better it has become easier for me to be honest with other people as to who I am and what I actually like. But as I was more and more myself with Stella, it seemed that Stella liked me less and less. Part of it I think has to do with the loss of Mr. Nice Guy, the one who would acquiesce to every whim of hers. And part of it was just I wasn't who she thought I was and who she thought she was in a relationship with. That is the part that is my fault and for which I need to make some kind of amends.

I have learned my lesson from this, and Kathy has seen me warts and all. Well, I don't have actual warts, mind you, but if I did, she would have seen them by now. Again this is a common struggle for those of us in ACA. Because we would at our worst do literally anything to keep a relationship alive, we often lie in this way and then wonder why we are so misunderstood by our partners.

So now I know that if anything is to be real and lasting at all, I gotta be me, as the song says.

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The song.