Yesterday I wanted to "fall off the wagon"...

So yesterday I almost fell off “the wagon”…The Him wagon of sobriety. I wanted a “drink” of The Him so bad.

I wanted to ask him why he’d said the things he said.. Things like, asking me to consider moving out there in the fall, asking me how I’d become so powerful to him, like an addiction. Saying that talking to me was what he imagined a “hit of heroin would feel like to an addict”. So powerful was his need to hear my thoughts.. my words..my opinions

All this he said to me just hours before going on his second “outing” with her. See, it wasn’t a date. He was just going to accompany her to her 30 year reunion of their mutual high school cause she’d invited him… oh, and because his mother wanted him to. His mother used to be the woman’s basketball coach in high school, and they’d become cyberly inseparable since the woman had declared her undying love for him….

Speaking of his mother, the woman who, over the last 10 months has repeatedly called me “an angel” for “saving” him (long story), saying I’d done SO much for their family. His mother, who told The Him that, while she hadn’t been crazy about us getting married so young 22 yrs ago, she realized that he’d never loved anyone in his life the way he loved me then and now (including the two wives and countless girlfriends in between). She also told him that she didn’t know if he’d ever live with, or marry, anyone again but if she had to “pick” someone for him it would be me… That must have been right up until she realized that in “picking” me he’d most likely be moving 1500 miles away with her grand-kids, and so changed her mind and picked someone closer…Telling that person that I was nothing to The Him… just a friend… told her that she should “go for it”…go for him.

How do I know what’s going on between them now? Well… social networking sites, of course. How do any of us know anything these days?

See, no one “rubs my nose in this.” I do it to myself. I go there. I try not to, and…. sometimes I even succeed….. for days at a time.

Some of my friends think it’s SOOO hilarious, the things she says there…Everything that happens between “the lovebirds” is described in GREAT and nauseating detail by her on this site. Which is completely galling to me as I was perpetually censured by him not to “live my life” on there if I posted anything remotely personal. Now, it appears she not only lives there, but can't refrain from spewing every detail of her life on there, right down to the detail of every bite she eats, including the genus of corn, and how he's rearranging her sleep patterns in the nicest way....excuse my while I throw up.

She also uses the site for her business contacts, and has over 650 “friends”. To read it you’d think she was in 4th grade not a 50 yr old PHD in something or other…It should be embarrassing to someone so supposedly intelligent to be so publicly over-romantic, sappy, and schmaltzy over someone she just barely met. Someone she’s only been in the physical presence of for a month. Okay, so she's known him for six weeks if you count the time they began flirting online while he was here in MY presence… Oh, and that’s described in great detail by her too.

She friended me so I would be sure and see it all… I just didn’t believe her at the time.. I thought she was just crazy.. or lying. I didn’t want to believe.. sometimes still don’t want to believe.. that THEY were the liars instead.. The Him and his mother…

I have friends who think this is all so entertaining.. I mean after all, can’t I “see the humor in it all, now that I’m not in the picture” they ask? Can’t I see how crazy he is and just be relieved that I didn’t get hurt any worse than I did.. Be thankful that I didn’t move in with him, or let him move in with me, before finding out who he really is?.. Come on they say… it’s FUNNY! Right?

No… It’s not. It hurts like I imagine surgery without anesthesia would hurt.

Intellectually, I can see that they really are perfect for each other. He needs a blow up doll with voice box programed to tell him how perfect he is. Someone to have no expectations of him, and make no demands. And she seems only to need someone she can gush over online, post pics of them together, and take on occasional public outings to prove he exists… In my head I see the perfection, and am thankful I escaped with as little damage as I did, but in my heart… in my heart it’s a whole other story.

This is how I try to explain it to those friends… I tell them it’s the way I imagine an alcoholic might feel stepping into their longtime favorite bar… the low lights… the noise… the glisten of the beautiful amber liquid, the feel of the glass as you press it to your lips… the smoothness as it slides over your tongue.. the exquisite warming as it travels down your throat… burning your chest…settling, like a fire warming you from the inside out.

It’s one thing to “hear about” what’s going on in there.. in that “bar.” My friends can come out of the bar and tell me verbatim.. line by line.. what is said and done there and it doesn’t knock me for a loop.

Their telling me doesn’t make me crave the drink so badly that I can’t breathe….most of the time. But, occasionally… like yesterday.. they tell me something that makes me run down the block and throw open the door.... I have to see for myself this woman in the life that was mine such a short time ago. Pictures they say! Him taking her where he took ME!!!!! Doing with her the things he did with me!!!

I HAVE THE SAME PICTURES OF US!!! Sometimes I am overwhelmed with the urge to post them at the bar with a date stamp showing how recently they were taken… sometimes… At those times I want to take a drink so bad…

At those times, as I’m gasping for air, I try with all my might to remind myself of what my “sponsor” friends would tell me… my other friends, the ones who remind me of how much it hurts to be “hung over.” How “beside myself” being in contact with him makes me. The friends who counsel me to take the long way home and avoid even going past the bar. Tell me not to look… so that I’m not then tempted to drink..

They say that someday I’ll be able to go in and enjoy the company without so desperately wanting the drink…..someday… but not today.. and not yesterday.

Yesterday I wanted a drink. I wanted to send a text to The Him that said,

"There is NO WAY I could have been, as you said, the “Only woman who’s been in my heart for the past 20 yrs and if I live another 30 the only woman who will be,” (just to name ONE, such thing.) To say that and then be with her so instantaneously… if you are as you say “not a liar,” then what are you?”…..

That is what I wanted to say. Even knowing that it would be as futile as asking a patient in an mental ward to explain why they’re eating with a rubber fork…

I didn’t take the drink.

I wish I could tell you that it was some sort of strength of will that kept me from doing it… sending the text.. initiating the contact… See, he would like to remain in contact.. I am second to none as a friend. Actually, as of last Thursday, I am still his BF&BLE (Best Friend & Best Lover Ever). But the real reason I did not take the drink was not any strength of my own it was… angels.

Angels work in mysterious ways if we let them. Yesterday they used an impromptu invitation from my littlest “spirit guides” to go hiking up the mountain near our house…

A 5 hour hike as it turned out…

After the first hour I felt so much better… My heart was pumping, the endorphins flowing… After the third hour I was stopped in my tracks by a memory… doubled over, and in tears, at the thought of The Him’s thumb on my jaw.. the exquisite warmth as it traveled down my throat…fingers behind my neck.. the amber liquid heat of his eyes.. the feel of his lips on mine….

RRRRrrrrrrriiiiiiiiieeeeetttttttttttt!!!!!!! That screeching sound is the record player needle being dragged across a moving record….

His lips….. The last time we were together he would not kiss me on the lips more than a peck.. do everything else under the sun, but no kissing on the lips.

It struck me as odd that he’d talked about kissing me long, and deep only days before he came, yet had been at my house a week and had not done it… So I asked him. He said that he wasn’t doing it because it would mean we were in a "real relationship”… He sounded like a moron who’d watched the movie Pretty Woman WAY too many times… I was dumbfounded… he was serious…At the time, I didn’t know he was in the process of starting things up with the new woman…makes more sense in hindsight.. but then most things do.

You gonna make it?

Yes, I'm gonna make it...So yesterday… hour three into the hike…I dried my eyes and kept walking.. for two more hours.

As I walked I reminded myself of my tumbleweed note yesterday. You do know that “we teach that which we most need to learn” don’t you? True story…

So I reminded myself of perseverance…. Defined by Webster as - steady and continued action or belief, usually over a long period and especially despite difficulties or setbacks… That thought had been the first thought that entered my head as my feet hit the floor yesterday… Before I’d heard of the events at the bar and ran down the street to see for myself…If we listen, sometimes the answers will come to us even before we ask the question.. Also a true story.

So as I walked yesterday, I looked around at all the perseverance surrounding me on that mountain… and I took pictures for you.

With only the tiniest amount of dirt.. a seed will persevere…

And even among great adversity… become a tree…

And if it doesn’t give up in the face of it’s challenges it can become THIS tree…

Or this one…

I hope you don't give up... I hope we both keep on putting one foot in front of the other..


Thank you for taking the time to catch this tumbleweed as it blew past...




Angels on your body..
Prairie Girl... And her Spirit Guides..

Finding A Way...

Yesterday as I was walking (I said I did it sometimes!) I glanced back over my shoulder as I crossed this cattlegard and saw Baby crossing it behind me. I’d never before paid attention to how the dogs got where I was going.

Most the time they’re out on the prairie somewhere, but when I saw Baby crossing like this the first thing I thought was “resilience”… but I don’t think that’s accurate… “determined” maybe? How about “persistent”? Or better yet “perseverance” - steady and continued action or belief, usually over a long period and especially despite difficulties or setbacks.

See, what struck me is that other dogs would have just crawled under the barbed wire fence to the side of the cattlegard, or gone under the panels to the side. A sleeker dog might have jumped it. A wimpy, whiny dog (of which I’ve known my share) would have sat on the other side of the cattlegard and complained until the rest of us got back…

Not Baby. Baby found a way. If you can’t jump over it, you can’t go under it, and you can’t ..or don’t want to get dirty crawling around it….tip toe over it…

Just find a way.

Here’s hoping you find a way through whatever challenges, or adventures rather, you find on your plate today.

I’m finding a way by writing these notes… and sending them out there… When they come back I know which way to keep heading…. Thank you for helping me find my way.

Angels on your bodies.
Prairie Girl

The Thick & Thin of it....Or How I "Accidentally" Lost 73.5lbs

I’ll tell you the secret to how I lost 73.5 lbs (gotta be exact ya know) without trying, but I have to warn you.. it,… the secret…. is not a secret… I KNOW you’ve heard it at least 1000 times… well, I’m actually sure you’ve heard everything I’m going to tell you at least 100 times before… I know I had... but it was thinking about it all at the SAME TIME that made it “click” for me.

There is ONE key thing you have to do but it is so… tiny… so… obvious… that I feel silly even pretending like I “know” anything… You know how in the movie Kung Fu Panda, Po finds out in the end that the secret ingredient in his father’s secret ingredient soup is…..that there is NO secret ingredient?... Ooops, sorry if I should have put a spoiler alert on that… I can just hear the groans… “Aaaaahhh Prairie Girl now you just ruined Kung Fu Panda for me!!!!!” again I say … “Oooops”

Okay…the secret ingredient in my accidental weight loss is….. pay attention.

No… that was it….. PAY ATTENTION….. seriously, all there is to it….. Okay… before you start pelting your monitors with bread rolls, or tootsie rolls, or something I’ll start at the beginning…. often a good place to start… Hey! I’ll even start with pictures! How about that?

Me July 2009

 

 

Me July 2010

First I’ll admit that, like so many of us, I have done EVERY diet known to man… and woman. Some have worked some have not.... I’m not putting anything down.. I’m just saying what happened to work for me and NOT feel like work…

Okay, so get on with it your thinking… but, first, I do need to say… take all of this with a “grain of salt” … or two.. I love salt by the way….. I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on tv… and I don’t know if, health wise, anyone should be doing what I’m doing… I don’t feel like I’m living on the edge or anything, but… what’s good for me is seldom everyone else’s cup of tea….

That being said, there were several food related “AHA” moments that happened to me over the span of a few weeks last fall. I’ll point them out to you as I go. For now, just know this, everything that ended up causing me to loose weight only worked because of how these aha moments happened to coalesce (that’s my $3 word for today, and yes, it did hurt) in my mind, into a way I could live the rest of my life. They are absolutely NOT new and may not mean ANYTHING to you…. But I’ll tell ya anyway…

I have to say that my weight loss this time started with loneliness…not unlike this blog actually.

It was at about this time last year, school started, and my BABY started all day kindergarten. I was completely and utterly alone with myself, oh, and my now ex-husband (not The Him, my 2nd ex-husband the father of my kids). I was suddenly without distractions, other than food, of course, and having to admit to the fact that my life was not the happy one I’d been projecting to the world…

So I made a video of my kids..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc-Cv425OIg

But it didn’t alleviate the sadness that was overtaking me.

I decided it was hormones, I mean I was about to turn 45 it was about time for peri-menopause right? So I started taking herbal stuff for that (which I’ve since quit as after 6 months on it I began having periods ever 16 days. They went back to regular as clockwork as soon as I quit them).

Oh and here’s a very humiliating confession… a few weeks before school started my eldest (7 at the time) had a buddy over. They were playing in the hay fort and my son got stuck. The other boy came running to the house to get me to come help. I began “running” out there and was shocked. No matter how hard or fast I tried to move I was barely moving… here’s your visual… think… hippo under water… seriously… that’s how it felt, and probably how it looked….

So I decided that I should start walking…I mean that’s supposed to elevate your mood and other good stuff right?... –

You should know that I am some one who understands fully how food can be a drug.. I used it as one ALL the time.. admitted I did it.. said that I could drive my kids to ball practice on “medicinal fudge” (fudge made in the microwave that won’t “set up” but who cares we’re eating it with a spoon) but not on a glass of wine (I’m a lightweight when it comes to booze).

I thought it was funny when I told people that I only had a kitchen cause it came with the house and that I didn’t cook (Ex-Hub was too picky)…I knew they had to wonder about the size of my rear end if I didn’t use my kitchen…. Well…. I may not have cooked in my kitchen, but I spent more than enough time in there eating Doritos until I could pop…..

See, as I’m sure you already know, there is a lovely…numbness… than comes when your stomach is stretched tight… for you skinny folks think about the way you feel after Thanksgiving dinner when you are stuffed and sooooo relaxed… okay…Can ya remember it? Okay, you’re with me.. That’s why I always knew that if I had gastric bypass, or the lap band it would be a waste of time and money. I didn’t eat because I was hungry, I ate to be numb….to be “happy”.. I would have told you that I ate just because I “enjoyed the flavor” so much… then I saw one of those news shows and got my first aha moment….

Here’s “aha moment” #1- The news show said that there were “super-tasters” and “non-tasters”.. they even had a little paper strip they’d put on people’s tongues to test them.. non-tasters said “tastes like paper.. nothing”. They also claimed to LOVE to eat, loved the flavor of food, and were either overweight, or struggled with their weight.

All the skinny models they tested on 5th ave in New York City were super tasters.. they thought the paper tasted horrible… and admitted to being picky eaters… and of course.. they were skinny models… duh

Hmmmm… I thought… I’ve struggled with my weight my whole adult life… would swear I LOVE food.. swear I eat for the sheer pleasure of it….hmmmm.. I wonder… what if I’m really a NON-taster…. interesting

Aha moment #2- They’ve done studies (I’d heard about them years ago so this might should have been moment #1, but….) that said we only taste the first few bites of our food (maybe 3? Can’t remember) and after that we’re eating based on the memory of how that food tasted the first bites.

Aha moment #3- My special angel friend Sally told me about one of her customers who had gastric bypass and was now so annoyed that she had to stop what she was doing to eat now… she just wasn’t hungry, but her blood sugar would drop and she’d have to go have a spoonful of peanut butter… I had to wonder…did she KNOW how much fat was in peanut butter? How many “points” it had? Did she care? Uhhh no… Did she continue to loose weight? Uhhh yes…hmmmmm

Aha moment #4 - I saw an actress on the red carpet of some awards show and they asked her if she let herself eat cake or the like and she said yes, she ate everything she wanted…. Just only a few bites of it….not more than say… three…hmmmmmm

So, back to me, my life was starting to unravel a bit. I was no longer able to numb or distract myself from how unhappy I was and I’ll admit that I had a few days of…. Unrest…upset.… in my stomach. So I “went with it”… I kept thinking about the peanut butter lady and I just stopped “stuffing” myself.

I also announced that I was tired of being treated like crap and wanted a divorce, and while that is a whole OTHER topic, it has to be documented as a turning point. I was now able to listen to my “gut” and not stuff down the feelings with food. Funny how we call it that, our gut, and… anyway… refer back to previous “gut” postings for more on that… back to the eating part.

I began to really, seriously, no joke, PAY ATTENTION to me. Pay attention to how I felt when I ate. How the food tasted. I began to pay attention to WHEN, exactly, I was no longer hungry… NOT full.. just…..not hungry…paying attention at every bite… and STOP eating THEN… at that bite when I could honestly say… Nope..no longer hungry..

I’d often heard that the reason we get so stuffed is because we don’t stop eating until we FEEL full, then the rest of what we’d been eating up until that point hits the bottom and we’re STUFFED! Miserable even. So now I stop at the bite when I realize I just don’t feel the hunger pang anymore. I mean, if the hunger comes back I can always eat again! Right?

I began to pay attention to how food tasted… REALLY tasted… every bite… The first might be good but how was the second? Third? Was what I was eating what I REALLY wanted? If I had a bite of … say…. peanut butter, was THAT what I wanted? Or was I craving salt and what really sounded good was greasy potato chips? If so … I ate em… and if they weren’t salty enough I had the peanut butter stuffed pretzels… mmm love the salt on them… anyway…I began paying attention to how every bite tasted… how my hunger felt… was it the 3rd bite that really wasn’t cutting it for me taste wise? The 4th? Was the taste gone but I was still hungry? If so I’d use my previous dieting experience and think…hmmmm had a bunch of chips… how about some protein to balance it out and finish off the hunger… What sounded good?

Something else that happened at the same time is that we happened to not have any sugary foods in the house for about a month… no birthdays.. no holidays with yummy desserts.. nothing… I don’t drink pop much, and never drink diet, so when the next birthday rolled around and I tried a bite of cake it tasted HORRIBLE!!!! Unlike in the past, when I would have “pushed” through it and ate it anyway, for the “buzz” if nothing else, I just didn’t. It didn’t taste good, so I didn’t eat it.

Which brings me to aha moment #5 – I mentioned food as a drug, and medicinal fudge right? Well, I’d also recently seen a news program talking about THAT! They took people, both skinny and heavy, and gave them an milkshake. Then they put them in an MRI machine to look at their brains… The skinny people’s brains lit up like a light bulb after the shake… The heavy people’s brains barely lit up… they concluded (I’m paraphrasing here) that the heavier people had to keep “chasing” the buzz and having more and more sugar to get the buzz, hence the weight problems… ding ding ding….my lightbulb went off big time… I WAS needing more fudge to get the same effect!!!!

Okay, on this note I have to say that now I never never never go hungry. Never.

One more thing…people are always asking me if I’ve been exercising to loose this weight… my answer is… sometimes… but it’s not motivated by weight as much as it it by mood elevation… though.. if I’m going to do some form of exercise I’m going to use what I’ve learned from my failed diets… So…

I learned from the 6 week body makeover diet that lower intensity exercise like walking, biking, very slow jogging, like a marathon runner, will supposedly make your body burn fat instead of sugar like it will if you work out too hard…meaning your heart rate is too fast.. he says do this very low intensity stuff for 45-60 min a day…

Oh the The Him confirmed this 45 minute belief by telling me that 20 some odd years ago when we were married and he had a…. person who knows… tell him that it’s not the intensity of the exercise that’s important as much as the length of time you do it and that 45 min was the minimum….

But since we’re playing “true confessions” here, I have to admit that I do good to do 35 minutes most days, and I haven’t done ANY exercise all summer (except for riding horses a few times)… and while I haven’t lost as fast as I did in the winter (2 lbs a week then and only about 15 lb all together for the early spring and summer), I didn’t gain. And I didn’t have to “do” anything to not gain, so I’m happy.

Okay… to sum up.. should have told you in the beginning you could have just skipped to the end huh?
1) I pay attention, and only eat exactly what I want.
2) I pay attention, and stop eating when I’m just no longer hungry, not when I’m full
3) I pay attention and don’t eat what doesn’t taste like EXACTLY what I want… even if it did and hour ago.. and even if it means I might be wasting food (put it in the fridge and hope for the best)
4) I pay attention and never never never go hungry.
5) Oh and everyday I say “I loose weight as fast as my body & skin can handle it” over and over… Don’t know if it does anything, but I do it anyway.

Okay… I’m tying this diatribe to a tumbleweed, but it’s so long and heavy I’ll be amazed if it makes it outta the yard…

Sweet Sam Elliot Dreams

Good Night MtnBarb, Sleep Tight.

It's cuz I love you Barb... think he's looking for a tumbleweed in this picture?


I'm thinking about a post for tomorrow.... so... do you want to know how I lost 73.5 lbs in 10 months without trying/dieting?

It's nothing new. Nothing you haven't heard before, and of course it's "trippy" & "weird" like me....but I'll tell you if you want to know.. and even show the before and after shots... went and looked them up... scary.. I swear I was a reverse anorexic...

I was like an anorexic in that we both saw fat people in the mirror, but I really was fat! I was always SO surprised when I saw myself in either a mirror or picture cause I was convinced I was just average sized...Like they say de-nile isn't just a river in Egypt...

Let me know if you're up for the weirdness and I'll attach it to a tumbleweed tomorrow and send it to ya.

Angels on your dreams..
Prairie Girl

Do you believe you can speak without words and other phantom phenomena?

Do you believe you can speak to someone without using words... speak to their hearts/soul/mind?... Have you ever just been thinking of someone when the phone rang and it was that person?...hmmm maybe you were on the receiving end of that thought conversation...

I choose to believe we sometimes can.. I don’t know how to “control” it, or do it with any accuracy or consistency- meaning the person will hear it when you think it.. it seldom seems to work like that but sometimes it does..

My angel friend Sally is a hairdresser.. she told me that the other day she and her customer were visiting as things wrapped up and the customer walked out the door still talking, and forgot to pay... This has apparently happened before but the person usually remembers by the time they get to their car... but this gal didn't.. So Sally decided to just speak to her.... Without words... she just started thinking... Joann, you forgot to pay me... Joann you forgot to pay me...over and over... Joann drove out of the yard got to the end of the driveway... all the while Sally kept thinking Joann you forgot to pay me... Joann hit the end of the drive turned around and came back in saying "Sally, I forgot to pay you"...

But more often than not we are unaware. Unwitting participants, we seldom stumble onto the connection…but sometimes we do.

My friend who is a speech therapist told me a story today... she had a sudden overwhelming craving for a milk shake... it was so so strong she had to get in her car at lunch and drive and get one.. when she got to the restaurant instead of ordering her usual chocolate all she could think was she wanted strawberry.. HAD to have strawberry, weird, she thought.. when she got back to her office her next client, a child with autism, arrived with his grandmother. The grandmother said "I thought we were going to be late because he just HAD to stop for a milkshake... strawberry of all things... he always gets chocolate"... It made me wonder who was talking to whom on that one...

In my youth I could talk to someone on the phone and tell them what color they were wearing... nothing else..nothing useful like don't take Route 6 to school you'll be late because of a traffic jam, just useless stuff like colors...

Though once, when I traveled with a southern, charismatic, evangelist, many years ago, I not only witnessed but experienced a phenomenon they call Word Of Wisdom.. which is like getting a brief psychic reading for a person but it’s supposed to be coming from God. Meaning it can come through anyone, anytime, it doesn’t make them psychic.

I got one of these once for a girl I didn’t know. I told her what had “come” to me. It was something I had no way of knowing but was VERY timely & critical to a decision she was struggling with. I would awaken every morning for the next 2 weeks w/her sitting by my bed in the apartment I shared w/several other girls (they’d let her in), waiting for something else.. another “word from God”… I never had one..

All this talk of “thinking” or mind reading made me wonder… so I went out today on the prairie and solicited my neighbors to help me with an experiment…. I discovered I just might be “tele-pathetic” (like telepathic only different… really really different lol)

The morning board meeting, already in session...

Yes, I'd be glad to assist you this morning.

I'm reading your mind..... it says.. you want to be scratched...

"Oh, you have a gift for this scratching stuff"...

I wanna play.. do me do me!

Hmmm.... listening...

You said you have an itch too! Hey I'm good at this...

 Okay, just to be clear... I do NOT believe I can read minds... equine or other.. the proceeding was...well... just cause I'm silly.

So that brings me to my "phantom" sensations... when I became involved again with "him", The Him who betrayed me so... did I mention that I was married to him very briefly 20 some odd years ago and hadn't seen or heard from him in all those years? No? Well true story.... Anyway, in the beginning of becoming involved with him this second time, I would get an overwhelming sensation of being enveloped...like in someone's arms.. it would take my breath away and make me weak in the knees at times... after it happened a few times I texted him and asked him if he’d been thinking of me a minute ago, and he said he had, very strongly... later he would intentionally think about me and when I would text and ask he would say "yes, I've been “buzzin” you for 20 min, nice of you to finally notice". Sometimes I could even tell him what color he was wearing… It’s good to have a talent, even if it is random and you have no control over it…

As the months went on, and we got to spend time together.. did I mention he lives 1500 miles away? No? True story... Well in recent months when we were physically together I would get the overwhelming knee weakening sensation... but when I’d look at him he would be no more paying attention to me then the man in the moon was. Completely involved in something else... It wasn't him "thinking" that way about me...

I asked him about it once and he said then that he thought it was phantom sensations.... like amputees get when the feel the need to itch a limb that is no longer there... Or like I get when I feel a vibration in my bra only to find my cell phone is on the counter and NOT vibrating... phantom sensations... He said he’d heard a news story recently that people who wear their cell phones on their bodies, like on their belt, or in their bra, report feeling a vibrations in that part of their bodies even when the phone isn’t there…. He said that must be what I was feeling when it wasn’t him..

So all day yesterday, for the first time in weeks actually, at random times like while driving, or trying to hold an intelligent conversation, that knee weakening, toe curling, innards to jelly, sensation would come over me...... He's with the new love of his life, can't be him. So what is it? Who is it? Anyone? No one? Just a sign of sleep deprivation, though I slept pretty well the night before... Restless leg syndrome that spread like a fungus? Sign I need psychiatric help? I seem pretty competent in ever other area of my life...

Would it be bad if I said that I sort of hoped… it was the Diamond? You know….The real thing I’ve been trying to keep up the faith for?

In the movie Always with Richard Dryfus & Holly Hunter they propose that crazy old hobo’s are like radio stations and can “broadcast” things they “hear” from the “other side”… This morning I read that “even scoundrels and arch-thieves can be bearers of wisdom”…. Maybe that’s really what The Him was… a crazy scoundrel broadcasting hope from my happy destiny in the future… And I just didn’t listen when he quit broadcasting the future and became just crazy causing me pain.. that was when I was supposed to let him go… he’d done what he was sent to do…

Maybe I didn’t listen until the pain became so great as to be unavoidable and the decision was then taken out of my hands…. After all.. I have been very busy calling my happy destiny into existence.. “Claiming” it through positive words and thoughts… For IT to come The Him had to leave right?

What do you think?

If this tumbleweed happens to stop today up against your boot, or stiletto, or flip flop, I’d like to hear your thoughts, and experiences with speaking without words or phantom phenomena… tie it to a tumbleweed and send it back across the prairie to me would you?…I’m here… alone… all day… well, all week actually…could ya tell?

Prairie Girl.

The First Note On A Tumbleweed...

Okay, so I know that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger… or at least it’s supposed to…but what about the people we don’t “kill” yet want to… not REALLY kill, just wish were dead… well not REALLY wish it because that would be too quick and not make them suffer enough for the way they harmed you..

Really, just wishing random pain, like a flowerpot falling on their head, won’t do it. They need to break each other’s hearts, hurt and betray each other the way they did you to really make you believe in “seed-time & harvest”, “what goes around comes around”. Ya know what I’m saying?

Okay let me insert here that while I have been knocked for a loop the likes of which I have never known, I have merely been used, lied to, cheated on, and betrayed....by a man.

I have NOT lost a child. I have NOT been abandoned by a husband to have to live on the charity of others to take care of my children. I have NOT suffered a loss like so many of my friends have, and I keep reminding myself of that and thanking God & The Universe every day for all the good in my life I DO have

I just feel so stupid, so gullible, but most of all so sad at loosing what I thought was real. A man I believed was real but, as it turned out, was really just cubic zircona.

My problem is hope. Faith, or a lack of it. I have always been a cup is half full girl  but now my “jewelry/diamond” cup not only feels empty, I’m aware that it’s been empty for 12 years.

I want to believe there really is a diamond out there, and THAT is the rub. Before THIS man came into my life I didn't even WANT a "diamond". Would have sworn, actually DID swear repeatedly, that I NEVER wanted another man in my life. It was just not worth the effort. NONE of it (Not even s.e.x.) was worth the effort. Turns out I was wrong.

Here's another analogy. I'm like an Ethiopian who didn't know there was any such thing as steak but was given steak for months then sent back to Ethiopia.... with a bad case of food poisoning...a palpable longing for steak... and a doubt that she’ll ever find a good one, a true one. One that doesn’t make her sick in the end.

But I’m choosing to believe. Believe in the good of all things. Believe that there are no coincidences. I am willing to, as Colin Tipping says in his book Radical Forgiveness, “be willing to see the perfection in the situation.” I am more than willing. I do see it. It all happened for a reason, just the way it was supposed to. I believe that, but then I’m just crazy that way.

I “get” that I'm just in the "waiting place." Waiting for the pain to go away and STAY away. Waiting until it doesn't bother me to be reminded of the betrayal. Until it doesn’t feel like a punch in the solar plexus to hear that they’ve found “the love of their lives” and knowing it started while he was with me! Letting me show him and his kids a great vacation. In my house! In my…. Never mind….

I’m waiting with GREAT anticipation for the day that I don’t miss him. Sick huh? Not the him that betrayed me with such blatant disregard… but the him that went camping and had to climb 500 ft up the hill above his campsite to get a cell signal and send me a picture, and hear my voice, because he couldn’t go all night without talking to me… The him that told me almost daily every good quality I possess…The him I used to call and read aloud every deep and meaningful thing I discovered.. The him who would call me and have me do a crossword puzzle with him over the phone while he drove just to hear me talk….I’m waiting not to have that sick feeling that THAT him was not real.

Waiting to NOT feel SOOOOOO stupid. Because how could someone so sweet and thoughtful, and amazing, do to me what he did and really be who I thought he was? He couldn’t right?

I’m waiting until I can honestly wish him and this new woman (a woman he barely knew from HS 30 yrs ago and met again on Facebook recently, who declared her undying love, and so he dropped me like a hot rock for, after using me of course) and let The Universe take care of them. Because I DO believe in “seed time & harvest”, “what goes around comes around”.

I know that my wishing happiness, honestly wishing it for them, is wishing it for myself too. I’ve taken the “high” road through it all (except for a few wishes of heartbreak that is,) and I’m willing to reap every thing I’ve sown. 

I’m waiting for the world to turn and time to pass, because I do believe that time is my friend.

I’m waiting… and I’m trying to have faith.. To believe… in diamonds…. diamonds that don’t loose their sparkle so easily the way cubic zircona does…

I am thankful for my angel friends who lift me up when my wings forget how to fly. Who are patient with me day after day when they have to repeat the same things.. “Fill your mind with happy/positive/thankful thoughts,” “find your peace, then you will create your world from there.”

I asked my wise, and special angel friend Sally, why my intuition didn’t warn me… I LIVE by my intuition! So why I did I have to be kicked in the teeth before I could believe the negative side of the mixed messages… I honestly think it tried to talk to me, my intuition. I just couldn’t get a clear read…

I liken it to rabbit ears TV (remember, before cable?) Well, for those of you too young to remember, back when the only way to get a TV picture/signal was with an antenna on top of the television, things would interfere with the signal. Like other electronics.. say if you walked by the TV w/the portable phone or something, the picture would get all staticy/fuzzy…. That’s how my “gut” has felt for the last few months when dealing w/this man and I didn’t know why. When we got along I was “sort of” peaceful, when things were….. unsettled.. I was obviously unsettled… for lack of a better way to put it… I couldn’t find my “peace”, and I LIVE by my peace… I had perpetual static..

Sally said that I couldn’t hear my intuition because I was so “low energy” (metaphysically speaking, not like I needed a nap, or cup of coffee) from the stress & negativity going on with my ex-husband at the time.

She said that they’ve done studies and that when people are “low energy”, with guilt and shame being the absolute lowest level, that they cannot even hear or recognize the truth when presented with it. I find this interesting, and plan to study this some more. I want to know about this energy stuff cause I’m gonna work on keeping mine up…

Okay, that sucking noise you hear…. TTTHHHHWWWUUUUUUUUUCCCKKK…. Is the sound of me being pulled out of the muck and stood on my feet by nothing less than angels… I do know that I really am VERY blessed.

The view from upright is pretty good… way better than face down in the mud that’s for sure… I’m putting one foot in front of the other….trying not to slip and fall again…with every step saying “I forgive you ______ _______ . I bless and release you to the Holy Spirit, and I am free.” “I am willing to see the perfection in this situation”…. rinse & repeat…

I send this out like a note tied to a tumbleweed… blowing across the prairie…. I don’t know if anyone will find it… or read it…I just needed to say it... even if just to the wind.