"Let me 'splain...no..there is too much... let me sum up"

Wow.

How to condense years into a post.

This is where my "live gently and love more" motto originates...

"Buttercup is marry Humperdinck in a little less than half an hour"...

...that is probably a pretty good summary of my life.   Intrigue, betrayal and lots of Mandy Patinkin.
Okay, maybe not so much with Mandy.

But the eight years was wild.  And, come on...you KNOW I would refer to "The Princess Bride" as a reference.  It was a given.

I ran through Blue Vertigo (remorseless liar)......
....then Buzz...(soul-less cheater)....
....and worked my way through a few others who don't even warrant mention.

I spent four years with "Doc"....the brilliant PhD who almost had me tied down....until he admitted (after being engaged for five months....and dating for four years) that he wasn't ready to get married...and that he had only proposed because he was afraid of losing me.

...and, cue the huge, flaming exit (on my part).   I'm not proud of my behaviour during that period...but I learned some very, very valuable lessons:

• Treat others as you wish to be treated (i.e.  if you decide someone fits in only one area of your life, and you sequester them there....either ensure that they understand and accept it, or expect them to react accordingly to that rejection).

• Don't close yourself off from the unknown, the unexplored and the unaccepted. Everyone deserves to be accepted for who they are....if they will only accept it themselves.

• And, when it all falls apart, don't rely upon those you have known for years to either understand your reasons for doing what you did....or to support your stance when the pieces start crashing down.   Because self-preservation and social/political currency will always trump friendship.  

The late spring and summer of 2013 were very difficult for me.   I was trying to find myself after a very, very tumultuous fall and winter of 2012.  That being said, I made some poor decisions.  But, I chose to exclude my friends from those decisions.  What I did, I did with the absolute confidence that my closest friends would never be made aware.  Unfortunately, that wasn't honored by the other person...and then the mental/emotional consequences of those very decisions affected the manner in which I interacted with those friends.

And, then I betrayed a trust.  I never should have done so.  But, I did.  After ongoing discussion regarding how the interaction was unhealthy - I broke.  It wasn't my place to share or defend the other person involved.  But, I did it.

And, for that, I lost some of my dearest friends.   Did I deserve to lose their trust?  Yes.  I did.   Does it hurt that it happened?  Very much so, even to this day.  These were MY dearest friends.  They had been my friends for almost a decade.

But, I killed that friendship when I broke down and betrayed the trust of another.

I apologized.  To that person, multiple times.  And, I have been on the receiving end of their ire, venom and threats.   I deserved that.  They shared.  They trusted.  I betrayed that.  I will admit it.
While I could defend myself with arguments regarding their mental/emotional manipulation, as well as some very, very serious unresolved issues between the two of us...

I still betrayed a friend.

But, even moreso....I lost the friendship of people I had known for almost a decade.   The people who had seen me at my very best, and my very worst.  And those people still loved and supported me through those times.

But, this time?  I didn't have those friends to fall back upon....to say, "I made a mistake, and I only want to make it right and do my best to make things whole"...

...because the friends lined up alongside that other person.

Gut-wrenching.  Yes.  But, in all honesty....that other person not only wanted, but NEEDED the love and support of friends.  So much self-doubt, so much indecision, so much disbelief in their own worth. Even if I had not been the catalyst for my own destruction, there were so many times that I assured that other person that the "true friends" were there, and would be true...

Yes, the friends were there for that person. And, for as much anguish and pain as it has caused me in the past year...missing out on the 'touchstone' moments we have always shared...
the thought that someone was the recipient of the love and support they deserved to thrive?


....that is worth the price I paid, still pay...and will continue to pay every day via the loss of the people I once held most dear...

"Live gently, and love more" became my lesson.

And it came with some hellacious scars.