{"id":1866,"date":"2014-02-02T20:31:47","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T01:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/?p=1866"},"modified":"2014-02-27T01:50:43","modified_gmt":"2014-02-27T06:50:43","slug":"its-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/?p=1866","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mask\"This is mostly for long-time readers of High Strung Loner<\/strong> and it\u2019s former, more X-Rated<\/strong>, incarnation<\/a><\/strong> which now appears to be offline.<\/strong>\u00a0(I\u2019m still working, slowly<\/em>, to move older stuff to this new version. It\u2019s a real slog.<\/strong>) Most of you, I\u2019m sure, are not<\/strong> those people. I\u2019ve gotten some messages<\/strong> over the course of the last few \u201cmissing\u201d years<\/strong> asking why I haven\u2019t been keeping the site up-to-date.<\/strong> The answer is simple<\/strong> and<\/em> complicated,<\/strong>\u00a0and I\u2019m still working it out.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The plain\u00a0truth<\/strong>\u00a0is that I was in an emotionally abusive relationship<\/strong>\u00a0 with an addict<\/strong>\u00a0for almost five years. He wanted me to deny<\/strong> and erase\u00a0my past<\/strong> and I, sadly,\u00a0tried to comply.<\/strong>\u00a0 I pretended<\/strong> that I was happy<\/strong> and that everything was \u201cnormal.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0Things were terrible.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been hesitant<\/strong> to say any of this in \u201cpublic\u201d<\/strong> for a lot of reasons. My own shame<\/strong> about it is the\u00a0major reason.<\/strong> I wonder how \u00a0I let this happen<\/strong> and why I tried to be someone I am not<\/em>.<\/strong> I\u2019ll be posting regularly<\/strong> as I try to answer those questions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I realize that \u201ccoming out\u201d<\/strong> about this issue\u2014and, especially, writing about it<\/strong>\u2014will make some friends\u00a0uncomfortable.<\/strong> Some of them are mutual friends<\/strong> of mine and my ex-partner\u2019s, so I can absolutely\u00a0see their point<\/strong>,<\/strong> though I obviously don\u2019t agree<\/strong> with them.\u00a0On the other hand, most of them already know.<\/strong>\u00a0I just\u00a0can\u2019t care<\/strong> about that anymore. It's a six of one situation<\/strong> at this point. Right now, all I want is to tell my story clearly<\/strong> and, hopefully, someday, I\u2019ll stop being so angry.<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019ve been in a\u00a0deep, almost debilitating, depression<\/strong>\u00a0for\u00a0way too long<\/strong> now\u00a0and I am desperate<\/strong> at this point to get out of it.<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s just so, so tiring.<\/strong> Posting to this blog will be\u00a0part of the process.<\/strong>\u00a0Keeping silent,<\/strong> without a doubt, played a large part i<\/strong>n creating<\/em> the situation that I'm trying to remedy.<\/strong> If you\u2019re bothered<\/strong> or\u00a0offended<\/strong>\u00a0by any of this, I suggest you don\u2019t read<\/strong> any future posts here in the \u201cRelationship\u201d<\/strong> category. (That will be most but not all<\/em> of the posts\u00a0without any pictures<\/strong> to make it easy, even though this one has a picture.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also sure<\/strong> that people will see this process as some kind of revenge<\/strong> on my ex. I\u2019ve certainly used this forum to \u201cget my digs in\u201d<\/strong> in the past, so it\u2019s a reasonable assumption.<\/strong> While I can\u2019t say that I\u2019m completely unhappy<\/strong> about that side-effect of posting here, it\u2019s not my intent.<\/strong> This is for me<\/strong>.<\/strong>\u00a0Also, if it helps<\/strong> another reader, that\u2019s cool,<\/strong> but I certainly don\u2019t expect it.<\/strong> After all, I don\u2019t pretend to be Dr. Phil.<\/strong>\u00a0I welcome healthy discussion<\/strong> in the comments but they\u2019ve never been very lively<\/strong> here, so\u00a0I don\u2019t expect that,<\/strong> either.<\/p>\n

I should have known<\/strong>, really, that it wasn\u2019t going to work.<\/strong> After all, he was 21 years younger<\/strong> than me, an ex-Mormon,<\/strong> was married for ten years,<\/strong> had four pre-teen sons<\/strong>, and we were both drinking very heavily<\/strong>\u00a0when we met. D'oh.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>a lot more to say<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>and the only way I can see it<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>making sense<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>to me is to tackle it<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>a little at a time.\u00a0<\/strong>Thanks for your patience. <\/strong>Sorry for being so serious<\/em><\/strong> all of a sudden.\u00a0I hope I don\u2019t totally bore you<\/strong> with my, you know, \u201cfeelings.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is mostly for long-time readers of High Strung Loner and it\u2019s former, more X-Rated, incarnation which now appears to be offline.\u00a0(I\u2019m still working, slowly, to move older stuff to this new version. It\u2019s a real slog.) Most of you, I\u2019m sure, are not those people. I\u2019ve gotten some messages over the course of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Where I\u2019ve been http:\/\/wp.me\/p2ccTA-u6","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,288],"tags":[289,524],"class_list":["post-1866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gay","category-relationship","tag-abuse","tag-relationship"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ccTA-u6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1866"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2359,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions\/2359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.highstrungloner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}