The One About Going Off The Deep End

So, I have been pondering for days now. I have been thinking about how I wanted to start this one. How I wanted to get it just right. But revisiting this area of my life has been good for me. It's painful, still, even after all these years though. God was really with me during this time in my life, otherwise, I wouldn't be here right now to tell this story to you. I know for sure that an Angel visited me one night when I was at my all time lowest. It's something I have never shared before, but I will be now.

So the year is 1995, it's February and I am getting ready to celebrate the BIG 3-0. Life is sort of becoming normal for me again after losing my Dad 3 months earlier. Still hurting inside, but looking forward to new beginnings in my life coming soon. I still had a wedding to plan and I am loving the life I have with the love of my life. I remember the events of the night like it was yesterday. Funny how something like that stays in your mind, like it's imprinted forever in time. I came home from work and was welcomed with a fabulous dinner, chocolate covered strawberries and some really nice gifts, one of which was an adorable bird house that, at the time, I was collecting. We had a perfect evening to say the least. I was in total bliss and I was thinking to myself as we lay in bed ready to go to sleep that night, that I really might just be the luckiest girl alive. I remember telling him that I couldn't love him anymore if I tried. That's when it happened. Out of nowhere, it came at me like a tidal wave. He looked me in the eyes and said, "I have been thinking." Something in the pit of stomach told me whatever he had been thinking, it wasn't good.

I remember sitting straight up in bed and saying, "And....???". But there was silence, complete and maddening silence. Then finally after what seemed to be an eternity, he let out a heavy sigh and said to me. "I just don't think I am the right person for you. I think you deserve to be with someone who will treat you the way you deserve to be treated. I think we need to break up and I am moving out, there isn't going to be a wedding". Anything he said after that I am really not sure of. This is where things got really fuzzy for me. I remember feeling like I wanted to vomit right there on the spot. Did he just say what I thought he said? Is this really happening to me? How, say wha, where, wha? I remember asking him to please repeat what he just said. He did...he said it again. He was moving out and wasting no time about it. It was happening the very next day. I remember crying so hard I could barely breathe. I kept asking him why? He never really could give me an exact reason why though. I felt like I was breaking up into a million little pieces. I couldn't even feel myself anymore. I felt like I was in a dream watching from some other dimension. Watching the events unfold. Next thing I know it's morning. I am drained, exhausted and have VERY swollen eyes from crying all night long. Was this a dream? No, he confirmed for me the next morning that it was very real and he was leaving me. It. was. over.

I remember going into work in a zombie like trance that day. When I walked into my office, my coworkers immediately knew something was wrong and after they asked, I told them. They laughed and thought I was joking. We were the perfect couple they said. He was The Guy they said. The guy that sent me flowers for no reason at work every so often. The guy who called in the middle of the day just to say he loved me. The Guy that was doting and tended to my every want, wish and need. Yep...that one, that Guy. Only That Guy had broke up with me and at that very moment, I wasn't quite sure how I was ever going to live through it. NOTHING and I mean nothing had ever hurt so bad to me in my entire life. Somehow when I returned home from work that night, he had cleaned out all his belongings in one day and was gone, just like that. It was over, just like that. It was like it never even happened. Four years down the drain, just like I never mattered. And when I say he left me and cut the ties, I mean he really cut the ties. No calls to see how I was doing, just disappeared out of my life and stole my heart and took it with him like a thief in the night. Gone...poof. Like it never happened and I never mattered. It was like flicking off the light switch. I couldn't understand how it was just easy for him to walk away like that. Still to this day, I can't understand how someone does that.

To say I wasn't taking the news well was pretty much an understatement. Days strung into nights and nights strung into weeks and I was having trouble keeping track of time or remembering if I even ate that day. I was going through the motions at work. I spent a lot of time after work sitting in the darkness staring off into space and trying to find the reason for why he left me. I was not coping with or dealing with this at all. I hadn't moved an ounce since the break up and it was approaching April. For two months now I had been going through life without any awareness of my surroundings at all. All I knew was this: there was a hole inside of me the size of The Grand Canyon and I needed desperately to fill it with something. I needed desperately to know why this happened to me and why he didn't love me anymore. Finally a good friend told me that in order to survive, I needed to put my big girl panties on and move. So, I did just that. I decided that what I needed was a second part-time job to keep my mind off things in the evening. There was a new bar in town that seemed like it might be a fun place to work, so I applied and got the job.

This is when God was really, really looking out for me because during my time here, it was my all time lowest ever. The best of me but the worst of me. I discovered that while working here, I had an alter ego and her name was crazy drunk bitch. Yep, not something I am real proud of, but the simple truth. Sometimes the truth hurts, but if I can't claim and own who you were at the time, you can't acknowledge it, correct it and move on. I am not going to say anything more on this other than, I spent the next 2 years filling the Grand Canyon with the likes of  bottles and bottles of Coors Light and countless shots of Hot Damn and a few men that meant nothing to me. After surviving these years, I can tell you with certainty that beer, liquor and men cannot fill the Grand Canyon no matter what. Just isn't going to happen. Ever.

Now I know you are thinking ok Lisa, it's just a break up, why is she all strung out like Lisa Rowe (too freaky right?) in Girl Interrupted? Get your shit together woman. Well, that's because I am leaving one teeny weeny, litle, tiny detail out of the break up story. That will come in the next post. Betcha can't wait, huh?