Point of No Return

Point of No Return by LastGlance

“I wanted to call you to tell you that I’m leaving LA today.  I won’t be coming back.”

He wasn’t leaving me.  I had left him months ago.  But his recent trip back here originally planned for work purposes turned personal and…

“I knew better in February.. but it was already too late. Interesting.” I’d tweeted a few days prior to that day.

None of this was a surprise.  None of it.  Even the bad things that transpired and came into light on that fateful night.  This had been unhealthy.  I had let it continue too long.  We both had.  And now the hurt had to… at least be put on pause.

“My dad cares about the baby.  He hasn’t been the same with me since you told him.  He’s been on my case about things.  He doesn’t like the situation.”

I had liked his parents.  We’d met briefly back in April on this two day excursion where they visited.  They had been very welcoming and had offered to help us a bit.  I didn’t tell them then I was pregnant.  He didn’t want me to.  But it had to come out a bit later.  After a phone call where he cried to me about how much he needed help (this was not the first time I had seen how he’d needed it but it was the first real time he admitted it) after I’d left that night.  I looked them up online and found the information.  He needed the intervention and I didn’t know who else I could turn to.

Since then he made a point to make them seem like they didn’t care about anything and that the whole thing between us/going on/his issues were just… something they’d rather not deal with.  My heart was very broken about it.  In particular after a conversation with his father where… things had gone particularly out of left field from a previous conversation where he not only agreed that his son had needed help but they had essentially given up on him since “he’s done this for 20 years”, he’d “done this before and will likely do it again”, and “had been given help in the past but that hadn’t been enough to change it.”  I thought that his family did not care at all about the baby.  Hearing Bear talk about otherwise was bittersweet.

I essentially heard the words “hopeless cause” and… it really tore my heart out.  I can’t imagine how hard that was for Bear to hear.  I can’t imagine how hard it is daily for him.  I… too wish I had been able to save him but at the end of everything, I couldn’t.

He’d left me a message on my phone apologizing after five missed phone calls the night prior, a suicide threat and 911 calls a few nights prior to that, and an introduction and talks with another woman whom he had not mentioned prior but had a brief “affair” with back in December while we were together and… was currently with again previously unbeknownst that dreadful drunken somber night.

After.

After.

After.

Alas this was the “after” after the “Happily” and “Ever” portion of our relationship.  It was sad and broken beyond repair.  All hope had gone beyond lost.  And months later, I was still obliterated.

Rewind to a week prior-

I got the ultrasound and had found out the sex of the baby. He seemed “back”.  He was eager and happy to be a dad.  He didn’t want me to have an abortion.

“Don’t you dare kill my son.”

It was a complete 180.

But things changed. Just as instantly as that picture had touched him and he’d felt connected, he disconnected again.  And even last week before he left he was finding him again trying to pressure me into getting an abortion.

I nearly considered it and I felt terrible at even the thought.

” I won’t be coming back.  What reason do I have to?  What reason do I have to stay at all?”

I shouldn’t have had to answer that.

It was wrong.

So very very wrong.

He doesn’t see what he did.  He doesn’t acknowledge the cheating.  He doesn’t care about getting mental help or quitting the drinking or “living higher than the poverty line”.  He only cares about himself… and protecting trying to salvage the relationship with the other woman who he had been with for six years prior to arriving in Los Angeles… a woman that… he had taken full advantage of her kindness and… loneliness.

(Another blog.  Another time.)

“I want you to be nice to me and I want to be nice to you. I am scared. I want to put my hand on your belly and feel the boy punch my hand with his little fist.”

I didn’t see him while he was here.  There had been talks about it but nothing had happened.

“Why did you tell me that if you didn’t want to see me?  Why did you tell me all the rest of those things if you didn’t want to work on things and come back?”

“I was drunk.”

“I wanted to call you to tell you that I’m leaving LA today.  I won’t be coming back.” he told me when I called him back after that message.

Here stands the official point of no return.  As of 22 weeks, Planned Parenthood will not perform an abortion on you in the state of California.  Last week was the last official time I could potentially go through with the procedure.  I think about how much has happened from that first message, ages ago when he told me he loved me.  From all the terrible correspondence that has transpired after many bouts with his erratic behaviors.  With my struggles to keep myself as composed as possible while going through everyday.  With…

There is no more returning to that sadness anymore.  That life is gone and a new one is officially going to be here in a few short months.  I don’t have much more time to prepare but… that’s too bad.  Life doesn’t stop even if your heart does… at least this way.

Editor’s note: I recently made a completely dedicated audio blog.  From there you can listen to voice mails left from Bear to me (for purposes of this entry) as well as found sounds and other miscellaneous dialogue from my adventures in the big city.

I loved you at your Darkest

Half of me. Half of you.

 

And last night was a very very dark night.

I’m frankly ashamed of how it went.  It was not something to be proud of.  It was something that I hope that my coming child will never do to someone no matter how poorly they act to them.

I had had a very difficult few days.  Mother’s Day had come and gone… but not without leaving its own marks and scars.  I’d get into it, but I’d rather not get into it right now.  Perhaps I will when I’m ready.

Let’s just say that the events that occurred this year cut that much deeper as one of them relates to my unborn child and my current relationship (or rather near complete lack thereof) with the father… a man who I had no intentions on meeting and falling in love with in the first place…

But life, of course, often has other plans.

Bear and I have gone through some very difficult and dark points throughout our relationship.  We have been off again, on again, so often it’d make your head spin.

Oh how my head seemed to feel like I were spinning we were so in love.

Once upon our time.

We were supposed to have been broken up (again) when I found out that I was pregnant.  However, after the news, we “tried again” (albeit briefly) and… it still ended up failing miserably.

In hindsight, I know what went wrong.  We were trying to conquer the same problem but we weren’t actually doing anything differently.  It was, the very definition of insanity.

One night, several months ago, he came to me in a mess of emotion.  I asked what it was.

“Darkness.” he cried to me.

And for a bit we held each other tight throughout it.

I hoped it would be over.

I know you did too.

It continued to get darker as the months went by.

We fought and fought.  We thought we were fighting the darkness but we were mistaken.

The darkness enveloped us.

It blinded us.

It was so difficult on our own and united we were too scared to stand.

I know I loved you at your darkest.

Unfortunately, in the process of trying to save us both from all of that, things only got worse.  He slipped further and further into the shadows.

They consumed us both.

Especially last night.

Our love had hit its expiration date even if the child inside me hadn’t.  The killing blow had been on Mother’s Day when Bear texted and later called me.

“Happy Mother’s Day”

He did not seem to understand how this “kind gesture” could be taken poorly.

So yesterday I made some phone calls and worked on things.  I consumed myself in other things.  The things that transpired throughout the day continued to beat me down.

So this is what it feels like to be alive huh?

The day had been a repeat of heartbreaking events.  Little did I know that it would be nothing compared to how it was last night… to the wee hours of the morning.

There was more crying.  More and more darkness.

I’m embarrassed.

How did it get this bad?

In the morning I would text him an apology.  I got up and sat in the quiet.  And then there was beauty. First the music.  Then a call from a recruiter again.  I was smiling.  My world had changed and I was still so sad but… why the hell was I smiling?

A friend messaged me asking how I was feeling.  She had just recovered from strep and yet, she was curious how I was.  If I’d slept much.  It was like… she knew.

Today was spent at the fashion district in downtown Los Angeles.  Curious… the little girl in the big city that loved and had her heart broken downtown was… going home to surround herself with… color.

Today was a reminder that no matter how dark it feels there is also color. (*See pictures from it by clicking the link*)

A part of me will always love you.  No matter how much pain and hardship we have gone through together, and apart, nothing is ever going to change that.

Someone once told me a phrase that I, in turn, flipped it around. “Where the light is brightest, the shadows are the deepest.”

Maybe part of the reason it got so bad is that we are so alike.

My friend Karissa summed things up wonderfully yesterday in private.

“No one’s a monster.  We’re all traumatized in some way… some more than… others… just looking for a way to heal.  That’s ultimately the purpose of all relationships– to serve as a mirror so that we may understand what is unbalanced within ourselves.”

Maybe we are both in that darkness… but in the light at the same time.

No wonder it scared the crap out of both of us.

If I hadn’t left that night

Sometimes (read: often) I think about that last fateful night when…

And I wonder… what would have happened had I not left that night.

But I needed to leave.

You needed to feel my absence a bit.

I needed to feel yours.

When I left that night, I was just as upset about it as you are now.

I didn’t want to leave.

I didn’t want to fight.

I just wanted things to stop.

I’m not sure you would have done anything to change those things

If I hadn’t left that night.

I wanted you to be better.

I thought that by me leaving, you might appreciate me more.

That I might appreciate me more.

In several ways I have found one of those things to be true.

As breakable as I feel like I can be

I’m not.

There are amazing souls that appreciate me.

I used to be one of them.

I should have been more of them than I had been.

I don’t know if I could have remembered that as strongly

If I hadn’t left that night.

In the midnight hour I still dream of you

Of the person I believed in you

Of the love that I hoped would return to me

Of the happiness that I thought might appear again

But likely couldn’t…

if I hadn’t left that night.

And the texts keep coming

The answers are painful

So very very painful

And knowing might be half the battle but it still hurts wondering

Would it have been different?

Would we have been different?

Would I have been different?

If I hadn’t left that night.