High Strung Loner

This is mostly for long-time readers of High Strung Loner and it’s former, more X-Rated, incarnation which now appears to be offline. (I’m still working, slowly, to move older stuff to this new version. It’s a real slog.) Most of you, I’m sure, are not those people. I’ve gotten some messages over the course of the last few “missing” years asking why I haven’t been keeping the site up-to-date. The answer is simple and complicated, and I’m still working it out.

The plain truth is that I was in an emotionally abusive relationship  with an addict for almost five years. He wanted me to deny and erase my past and I, sadly, tried to comply.  I pretended that I was happy and that everything was “normal.” Things were terrible.

I’ve been hesitant to say any of this in “public” for a lot of reasons. My own shame about it is the major reason. I wonder how  I let this happen and why I tried to be someone I am not. I’ll be posting regularly as I try to answer those questions.

I realize that “coming out” about this issue—and, especially, writing about it—will make some friends uncomfortable. Some of them are mutual friends of mine and my ex-partner’s, so I can absolutely see their point, though I obviously don’t agree with them. On the other hand, most of them already know. I just can’t care about that anymore. It's a six of one situation at this point. Right now, all I want is to tell my story clearly and, hopefully, someday, I’ll stop being so angry. I’ve been in a deep, almost debilitating, depression for way too long now and I am desperate at this point to get out of it. It’s just so, so tiring. Posting to this blog will be part of the process. Keeping silent, without a doubt, played a large part in creating the situation that I'm trying to remedy. If you’re bothered or offended by any of this, I suggest you don’t read any future posts here in the “Relationship” category. (That will be most but not all of the posts without any pictures to make it easy, even though this one has a picture.)

I’m also sure that people will see this process as some kind of revenge on my ex. I’ve certainly used this forum to “get my digs in” in the past, so it’s a reasonable assumption. While I can’t say that I’m completely unhappy about that side-effect of posting here, it’s not my intent. This is for me. Also, if it helps another reader, that’s cool, but I certainly don’t expect it. After all, I don’t pretend to be Dr. Phil. I welcome healthy discussion in the comments but they’ve never been very lively here, so I don’t expect that, either.

I should have known, really, that it wasn’t going to work. After all, he was 21 years younger than me, an ex-Mormon, was married for ten years, had four pre-teen sons, and we were both drinking very heavily when we met. D'oh.

I have a lot more to say and the only way I can see it making sense to me is to tackle it a little at a time. Thanks for your patience. Sorry for being so serious all of a sudden. I hope I don’t totally bore you with my, you know, “feelings.”