Retail Therapy Success Story

I spent a splendid Sunday afternoon shopping with two absolutely wonderful women whom I am blessed to call my friends. If you've read my previous posts, you know that I was still mad at my ex upon commencement of the shopping trip. Well, after four glorious hours meandering around some of my favorite shops, succeeding in my quest for some key wardrobe items, and having a scrumptious dinner, I felt much better; by this morning I was contemplating giving up the anger.

Then, at acupuncture today something else interesting happened. I remarked that the area between my shoulder blades really hurt during the treatment, which was unusual. A deep, burning pain was radiating from the center of my body. My acupuncturist remarked that, in several Eastern religions, the heart chakra is located in that exact spot and, given the events of the past nine days, it wasn't really all that odd that I was feeling some release in there.

Huh. Bodies are so strange! It knew I was ready to let go of being mad and had already started the process. I'm not angry with him anymore.

I made my own mistakes, I know this. I overreacted, I let myself get really worked up about something so that I made no sense by the time I brought it up, and I had really poor timing in my very typically female emotional mini-breakdown. I think I also may have though it meant more than it did in his mind when he started to call me his girlfriend. We hadn't had that "status of the relationship" talk, he just started to call me his girlfriend one day and I simply accepted it under my paradigm of: Girlfriend = we have more than a casual-hey-you're-a-nice-person-let's-have-fun relationship. That paradigm comes with expectations he was not interested in meeting. He really doesn't want a girlfriend right now, which is completely fine. I wish he'd figured that out before dating me, let alone before he started calling me his girlfriend. Yet, somehow, he did start to call me his girlfriend one day and then had to deal with a real relationship, and then he ran like hell upon that stark realization. Nor was he particularly considerate of my pain or confusion as he fled.

At the end of the day, we can both be the decent yet fallible human beings we are and go our merry ways towards finding more suitable partners.

Don't I sound smug? Damn right I do.

Three good things (this is an easy one)
1. I'm not carrying around a little burning rock of anger in my heart anymore. Yahoo!!!!!
2. I learned something cool about my chakras during acupuncture - I can't wait for yoga!
3. I have some wicked-awesome new clothes as a result of my therapeutic shopping session.

New Mantra, Or Not

I am adopting a mantra to soothe my wounded pride. I feel that I'm rather adept at choosing nice people to be a part of my life. I have fantastic friends. I also have relatively few "stinkers" in my romantic history, all of whom I met before I turned 21. It's something I've worked at and feel I have had great success at. My most recent ex embodied my idea of a good person: considerate, communicative, self-aware, caring, and appreciative. The way he handled breaking up, however, wasn't any of those things. It was self-centered, inconsiderate at points, and he said some pretty condescending things. Why would somebody who consistently displayed all of the "good person" behaviors, even during some intense and unpleasant discussions, suddenly not display any of them?

The answer could lie in a new mantra: "Good people make mistakes." It's easier if I think of him as a good person who is going through some tough times and who made a big mistake in his handling of a situation. It makes me feel better, all right? I also just can't get myself to be cynical enough to think he had somebody on the side who was more tempting than me, as some of my friends have offered up as a reason for his behavior. This may mean I am naive, but I'm choosing naivety over cynicism - so shoot me.

Wait, wait, wait, there's a flipside to this whole "he's not a bad person" gig. If I let him back into the good person arena, then I have to battle off that old demon of "maybe ______" insert delusional and pathetic hope of reconciliation and resumption of "the good times." Gah, I think being mad at him is easier. Maybe I'll just do that for a little while longer - I don't think I'm sufficiently advanced in the "getting over it" process to not miss him if I'm not mad at him. Screw "new mantras," I'll stick to my current one "He was unkind, regardless of the validity of his choice, he was unkind about it and so I'm mad at him."

Good things:
1. I haven't been tempted to drunk dial/text/email because I'm mad at him.
2. I have a handy coping mechanism if I go somewhere that reminds me of how wonderful he could be.
3. Being mad at an ex is a great excuse to go shopping with girlfriends, which is what I'm doing later today.

How Appropriate - A Tarot Card

"The Temperance card reversed suggests that extreme emotions could flare up as patience is pushed to the limit, which means built-up frustrations finally seek their release."

As out-there (or woo-woo, as my naturopath once said) as it is, I do subscribe to a daily horoscope and tarot card reading. They're typically entertaining. However, I find it slightly disturbing when one is accurate. The tarot card above was the "tarot of the day" for my latest breakup. I wasn't the one over-reacting, well, not that day (and, for any male who happens to read this, I had APOLOGIZED for over-reacting a few days earlier and wasn't continuing the over-reaction on said break-up day). What really raises the hairs on the back of my neck a bit is that this was the third highly accurate reading that week.

Should I begin to pay more attention to these things, or is this just a series of coincidences?

Good things:
1. Mysticism is interesting to me, so my brain is occupied.
2. This is distracting me from a research paper (wait, does that count as a good thing?)
3. I feel further vindicated in my feelings about the breakup (more on that later)

Good Dates Come Back To Bite Me

Tonight I have been invited to go out with friends to a place that I love. It's a place I went with the man I was most recently dating on our second date. We had a wonderful time with dinner and conversation. Now, I'm not thrilled about going there tonight because, of course, we're no longer dating. Can I take along a smudge stick and cleanse the table where we sat for hours, laughing and talking and flirting? I had a similar experience Monday when out with friends for dinner at another one of my favorite places, where said man and I had one of the most wonderful first dates I've ever had in my life. Thankfully, my seat Monday faced away from where we sat on the date and my friends were generous in letting me vent about the situation.

Maybe I just shouldn't take guys to my favorite places until they have been with me long enough that I know they're worth the risk of tarnishing my favorite places with having to miss something when I go there as a single person.

I feel old saying that, like I'm giving in to the eventual skepticism and mistrust that mark many other singles I know who have been around the block a few times, but which has never marked me. I want to trust that people will be kind to me, even when their path diverges from mine. Am I finally reaching the point where I wonder if I should be open and trusting of someone without testing them? That is so inconsistent with the way I've lived my life to date, but the quesiton lingers nonetheless.

Good things about tonight:
1. I get to go to dinner with people I like tonight and create some good vibes again.
2. I'm going to have good food at dinner.
3. It's Friday, which means in the morning I'm having breakfast with one of my favorite people.