Last night...

.... I spent 5 mins. trying to use my brain to set back time. Focusing as hard as I could on bending time and getting back to last year.
I would do anything to get back to last year.
HOW THE FUCK DID I GET HERE?!

I keep trying to think optimistically while also trying to get my heart to start back up again and force air out of my lungs.
This year I learned:
1. Just have fun. Stop worrying about the mundane and trivial things in life as much as possible and just enjoy the journey. It doesn't last long, and let's face it, you're more fun to be around when you do.
2. Pick your battles wisely. If you are going to argue, make sure it is worth while, because most of the time, truth is, it probably isn't.
3. Never forget about doing the things that you love the most and sticking with them. Because when the love of your life dumps you, you are not going to move out of bed without those things.
4.People change. I pulled my hair out this year worrying about what others thought of me, telling only the people I thought I could trust (I couldn't) and fretting about how I should tell the people I couldn't (they turned out the be the only people I could). This goes mostly for my family, who has been the most supportive through all of this. Everyone else fell by the wayside.
5. I have one more month left of this year, soooooo, I will get back to you on that one.

I feel so lost. The man I love and planned my life with and saw an actual future with and was bursting with happiness over (most of the time, because depression doesn't allow all of the time), doesn't even want to talk to me anymore. Every second I am working on catching my breath as I think of all the wonderful memories and intimacy we shared over the year. So much more than I ever shared with David in 5 years, or Josh in 2. Everything we did had to be intimate, and it was. Cooking dinner, playing games, going to work, being on holiday, making the bed, doing laundry, brushing our teeth, and the list goes on. My mind will not let me rest. So how does he rest so well? What did I do that was so wrong? well... I know the answer to that. but still. We were about to go to China together. We were about to have our first apartment together. We were going to decorate it and share laughs on the sofa, and cuddles in bed, and smoke off the balcony and watch China through our clerestory windows. and he was right. things would not have gotten better if we did not stop the crazy cycle.
But why did we need to end this ALL and break up?!
Why not just a much needed break and talk?
I know, he said it was him, he needed to think about himself and do his own thing and I did not fit in there.
So how, after this man says I am "the most beautiful creature in the world",
compliments everything about me from head to toe,
sticks with me after I trashed the entire house in anger because my whole life was unraveling before me,
tells me how cute our kids will be and what our wedding dance song will be,
shit...I can't even go on.
I need to go have a smoke.
My heart is breaking out of my chest. And I have no idea how I am ever going to be the same again.
I left my husband thinking I was never going to get back here again.
And here I am , at my parent's house. The same as I left a year ago.
Heart broken that I had to leave back to Surabaya with the devil and hated David.
Heart broken now that the man I love does not want to love me back anymore.
How can I do this to my parents over and over again.
What does it say about me? Does it say anything about me?
Is this one of the things I am meant to learn? to stop reading into things so deeply and just realize that it is life? Or am I meant to pull the pieces of these things apart and read into all of it and find the meaning?
Because that is how I got here. Why Daniel and I went so wrong, and I was tormented for a year.
Does that mean that Daniel was wrong for me, or that I was not meant to do that because life is just life and things work or they don't?
I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA!!!!

All I know, is that I miss the shit out of Daniel, and every day seems to be consistently harder and easier at the same time. Every day, I can feel how much he really does not care anymore and wants no part of this. Today, I realized that he does not love me and is never coming back.
And I just cannot accept the reality of this. Because I love him with all my heart, and all the intimacy we shared, all the secrets I told him that I never told anyone, all the tangles I untangled, all the mysteries solved, all the clarity I received during our time together, is something I will NEVER have with anyone else. And I don't want to. Because what is so special about that? My sweet, sweet Danny. Words could never express how I feel for and about you love.

Scorched Earth Policy

I had a man

 that stood by my side,

and held my hand as I forlornly cried. 

He begged and he pleaded, 

 I never conceded, 

and he walked away knowing 

he tried.

Over the last few days, I have been through many different stages of this thing I am going through.

A year ago, I was going to California for my sister's wedding. 

A year before that, was my own, 

and the year before that I was on a family vacation meant to be the initial date of my wedding, 

but it got cancelled because he punched me in the face and broke my nose. 

And now, I am here, visiting California to see my family on the weekend I was meant to 

be going to LAX to start a new life with the man I love. 

But he decided to end the crazy cycle we were in, 

because I was in a crazy cycle. 

For the last year, I have been trying to undo the damage done from years of David. 

I decided it ended when I met Dan. The love of my life, who showed me that nothing had to be 

any certain way that my brain said it was. Who taught me to 

uncondition myself from years of awful conditioning. 

For five years, I stayed with a him. Faithfully by his side. 

And I conditioned myself to think that it didn't get any better. 

Because all the boyfriends I had before him told me 

I love you. 

and it always amounted to the same shit. 

(I never realized they were just words before I met Dan)

I thought, well, he let's me freak out and cry and stays, 

so,

he must love me. 

Thinking it was all my fault, and that whatever love I got,

was all I deserved. 

I stayed with David through years of this. 

We got together in college, year 2. 

I met him on the first day of school, and he fell hard. 

And I remembered him from then on. 

After a bad break up with a rocker dude who left me after crying that he didn't care one to many times,

(because surprise, he didn't at 18)

I started talking to him and it quickly turned into a rebound relationship. 

The first night we spent together, 

he cried about how lonely he was. 

I coddled him ever since. 

I spent years making cookies, meals, cleaning,

driving late nights, being lied to, being ignored, 

putting my self on the back burner for his happiness.

I watched as he stood up for his bachelors degree with honors, 

and hated him, 

because I missed the half GPA point because I received a C in history class for not 

turning in my mid term paper because I was making him dinner as he sat on the 

sofa and played Xbox. 

Escape

I surprised him at his brothers wedding after a week of not speaking to him 

for something he seriously wronged me for

(I don't remember what it was at this point)

Escape. 

I asked him the first week if he watched porn, 

because it is a habit i strongly detest. 

He said no.

and two years later, 

I logged onto his computer for something quickly, 

to find tons of downloaded videos of Asian porn. 

Escape. 

And yet, I stood by his side faithfully for years on end. 

Telling myself that I did not deserve any better, 

because I was crazy, and unmanageable. 

Never realizing that these situations were creating a sick psyche in me

that perpetuate the crazy,

and that the problem was not me. 

so much. 

So when he punched me in the face. I went back. 

because it was my fault. 

and he did love me. but i was unmanageable. 

Excuse.

I did deserve something better. 

and they never "loved" me.

and I realized it when I met Dan. 

but when he helped me out of this 

with the kindest and sweetest and most real love I have ever known,

years of poison started to flow out of me. 

and it spewed like a radiation leak.

It killed everything in sight, 

and even through this he saw me and knew me and loved me. 

I was the radiation after a while,

as I walked around killing everything with one single touch. 

and no matter how hard I tried to pull us apart.

He stayed, and he loved. 

Sure, he got sick of it and warned me of impending doom. 

and I begged him to hold on and apologized.

Because I knew what he knew. 

This wasn't me. 

It was growing up. 

and it was necessary. 

But not in this way. 

not in this manner.

and that was something I didn't understand. 

until it was too late. 

I feel like the thinnest of China figurines. 

Painted with bronze to hide the frailty.

And after everyone has rubbed off the paint. 

I'm left with myself, only the fine china core. 

And I feel my frailty in a way I never have before. 

I see how naked I am and want to hide. 

Daniel leaving me is something I will never, ever want. 

But it was a catalyst for something good. 

First, I have to break though.

so that I can rebuild, 

and I am so afraid. 

My fine china has cracked. 

and pieces keep falling off. 

and it hurts in a way that cannot be explained. 

The wind, my movement, the feeling of words as they hit my body. 

the slightest of things that keep causing pieces to drop. 

I try not to breathe. 

even this feels painful. 

and if it's not the pieces falling, 

it's the feeling of the sharp edges left in their absence. 

Everything causes the most agonizing pain I have ever felt. 

And only now am I realizing that this is real pain. 

Not what I was terrorizing our lives with, our great lives together, 

because that should have been the release. 

We had the whole world in front of us. 

we were on a journey of a lifetime.

and all I did was sulk and muck it up. 

This entire journey I could have made a great thing for me and him, 

and I chose to sit and cry in the corner. 

and ask why nobody loved me.

REALLY ERICKA

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?????!!!!

The only man I will ever love in this capacity, 

is the only man I will never have again. 

I have only myself to blame. 

What a heavy weight to carry.