Healing…Double Time.

I have never really been sure what will heal me. In fact, often, what I think will heal me, breaks me more.

True story.

However, lately, I have felt very at one with the universe. I seem to have leveled up a bit or something. And now, I just seem to allow whatever happens to happen and I don’t get all bent out of shape about it. Someone comes into my life, great. Someone leaves my life, great. How I feel about the coming and going is really immaterial. My job is just to accept. Not question why, or how, or how long or what. It is just to accept and trust that whatever is happening, is supposed to be happening, because it is.

Now, I have tried to practice that the whole of my life, with mixed results. Mostly I wanted things, clung to things and demanded more. I was not capable of the high level skills of allowing, letting go and trusting. Somewhere along the way, despite my hardened commitment to a whole bunch of maladaptive bullshit, I have leveled up. Because I now have these skills in a depth and breadth that I never did before…

So about five months ago when I got a random Instagram message from a woman I did not know asking for information about the man I had just left the month prior, I didn’t question or worry, or fret. I just read the message. She inquired as to whether I was still dating said man. I said I was not. She stated she suspected he was lying to her. I inquired “about what?” She said “about you.” I said, “we should probably talk…” She called and I told her my truth. I told her what I knew. I didn’t embellish or fan the flames of hurt and hurting. I just told it like it was.

She was shocked at the nearly three month overlap of her relationship with the guy and mine. I was not shocked. I was sickened. I was relieved in some sort of weird way, in that what I had suspected all along, was now proved beyond, not just reasonable doubt, but all doubt. I was sad for her and how much pain my truths gave her. I was worried about her level of distraughtness and her fragile nature. I was kind. I was honest. And I was done. I sent one final text to him before I blocked him forever: “I do not ever want to see or hear from you again.” And I meant it.

In the intervening five months, I have done a lot of healing, and so has she. An unlikely friendship grew out of shared pain, loss, betrayal and relationship with that man. We spent the beginning part of the relationship comparing notes. Figuring out he was NOT camping with his daughter, he was with me. Figuring out that he was NOT in an acute mental health crisis, he was with her. Figuring out all the ways that we were lied to and manipulated and gaslit and betrayed, repeatedly, over time. It was a rough time, particularly for her. I was just relieved that everything I had suspected all along was now confirmed true. And so glad that I had ended it a month prior, finally listening to that inner guidance voice that had been screaming at me for two plus years.

For her it was not so easy. She allowed him back in, several times. And he lied some more, manipulated some more, gaslit some more. At a time when he most needed to be honest, he couldn’t do it. He just had the one trick, and he just kept playing it with all the futility of the string quartet playing as the Titanic went under.

And the final result was the same. Eventually, she reclaimed her self esteem, her body, her mind and her vagina and moved the fuck on. She stopped taking his calls. She blocked him. She began the long and arduous process of healing from narcissistic abuse.

I was further along in the process the]an her and had a lot longer in sobriety. I, while still smarting from all of the attendant drama and trauma, was not acutely suffering. I was over him and the whole fucking debacle. I forgot, for the most part, he existed. I didn’t spend any time at all thinking about him. I, instead, focused my healing on helping her get out and away from him, if she wanted to. It was not my job to tell her what she needed. Just to help her remember all the times he let her down, all the lies he said, all the words that rang completely fucking hollow.

This was not my plan. Any of it. Him. Her. A now bizarre, us. It was fucking weird. All of it. Everyone in my life was like, “what the fuck are you doing? This isn’t healthy for you. Just block them both and move on.” And I knew, on some level, they were right. But I knew all too well how much she was hurting and suffering. How being left alone with someone like him would break you down and rip your self esteem to shreds. I knew that I stayed as long as I did because I didn’t have anyone who really knew how I felt. I had lots of friends who loved me through this horrific ordeal. And I am so grateful they are still my friends. I am sure, almost daily, they all wanted to shake me and/or slap me. But they didn’t. They just loved me and listened to all my crazy that was really his crazy but became mine because I kept allowing myself to be manipulated by him one more time.

So I knew the hell she walked in. And if there is one rule that I have learned about time spent in hell, “Don’t unpack and don’t leave others behind.” I have walked through some shit in my life and I feel an absolute and unwavering duty to share what I know, even when it is unflattering as fuck, to share it so that perhaps someone else can suffer a little less, or a little shorter. And there she was, in all her hell, wandering around in circles and I could not, would not leave her there.

The truth is we helped each other out. It was not me saving her. It was us saving each other. Each reminding the other of our worth when we faltered. Her over him and me over ideas and concepts about myself that were no longer true or expiring. Some that should have likely never been held to begin with.

I didn’t want a new best friend. But I got one anyway. And now she is here. Yesterday the day we finally met in person after talking daily for the past five months. Both of us healed and healing from the shared disaster we both survived. We don’t talk about him anymore. Well, rarely. And when his name comes up, we both usually just laugh. At him and all his psychotic behavior. At us, for falling for him in the first place. Anytime we do discuss him, it always ends with, “what the fuck were we thinking???” And raucous laughter.

He was the catalyst for healing for each of us, together and Individually. I had to take a long hard look at my behavior in that relationship with him. Why I was susceptible? Why did I fall for all his nonsense? What was so unhealed in me that a man like that was appealing, ever? It was a humbling experience for each of us. We were so broken, but not because of him. He didn’t break us, he just exploited wounds that were already there. Ingrained over time by each of our inability to work through some fucked up shit from the past.

Together we reclaimed the land of our bodies and minds. We took back what was never his to take and did the work to unwind ourselves from the entanglement that was him. It was not easy and to some degree we are each still working that out. We are similarly wounded but uniquely healing.

So when it comes to trusting the universe, I do. Only divinity could take the shitstorm that was him and deliver me her, this beautiful, loving, kind, funny soul. Yesterday was her birthday and we celebrated with some beach time, a long drive, some thrifting and Thai food. We had so much fun. Laughing our asses off as we purchased ridiculous, outlandish outfits that empowered us to enjoy the lives we worked so fucking hard to get back.

Today our lives are about us. Not him. It is kind of funny how little the catalyst that threw our lives into an emotional blender together, is rarely mentioned anymore. And when it is, it is almost always as a punchline to some joke. Yes, indeed, when you can laugh at things that used to pain you, things you thought you would never, ever heal from, you have turned the fucking corner. Your life is now yours, the reclamation of body, mind and spirit complete.

And we get to now enjoy the fuck out of this unlikely friendship. Both of us healed and healing from all the hell he gave. The thorn in our mutual side, long removed and no longer festering. We healed each other from the inside out (with a great deal of help from our therapists and friends and family). And today we walk the earth free women who get to live this amazing life we have been graced with, together…without the likes of him.

I still pray for him. Not because I am resentful. But because if ever there was a fucked up soul that needed saving, it is his. And so I offer him up to the only power that can help him now…be that God or Devil. The battle of good and evil rages on within him and I assuredly know that it is not my job to save him. No, my own salvation and healing requires that I never have contact with him again. But I can pray, so I do on occasion.

Sometimes, you just get to love right on through the hurt and pain and loss. And sometimes, the universe thinks you need a friend who knows exactly what you have survived to hold your hand as you unpack it all. Sometimes, you get someone like her. And everything in your life gets rearranged. And you wake up in a life that is beyond your wildest dreams…free from the clutches of someone like him. And you move forward, living your very best life and help someone else do the same.

And that makes all the pain and suffering and loss of self worth it. Because you wake up and know with every fiber of your being that the wound that caused you to be vulnerable to a man like him is finally, blessedly healed. And you move on from there a different, more whole version of yourself. And that could only happen when you use what happened to you to help someone else do the same. We save each other, daily. And that, I can say, is a fucking beautiful thing.

Again…still.