kml, great quote on love! My XGF lit up parts of me like nobody before or since. We have to accept our ex's were uniquely wonderful in ways our next partner will not be. And, of course, our next partners will light up different parts of us and be uniquely wonderful in other ways.
Originally Posted by kml
“Think about how much you’ve grown since the event you thought would end you”
Had a nice visit with my second son yesterday, spent a couple hours just floating and chatting in the lagoon by his apartment. Sadly, a big chunk of the conversation was about how fraught his relationship with his father is. It’s really sad, and although my ex made a concerted effort not to be like his own father when he was younger, he has pretty much turned into him anyway it seems.
Going today to visit with some old high school friends. Nice to have friends who have known me since age 14!
Had such a fun visit with my high school friends. I was so lucky to be part of this friend group in high school, innocent smart nerds. We weren’t the cool kids but we didn’t care at all about that.
One friend brought some old letters she had saved. Apparently, after we graduated high school, we were pretty good at writing letters to each other (for you youngsters out there, long distance phone calls were way too expensive and the internet hadn’t been invented yet, so we had to actually put pen to paper and put letters in the snail mail to keep in touch after we scattered to different states and countries). The letters were clever and funny, testaments to friendship that has survived all these years since.
Half my friends are retired now. We’re getting older, and sometime soon I imagine we’ll start losing people, which is a sobering thought. Cherish the people in your lives.
FB has been showing me videos and photos from a really cool gig I played 4 years ago. This was only a couple months after CMM and I started dating, and pretty much right after I returned home from that short tour is when he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
I look chubbier in those photos than I remember being (I'm slimmer and fitter now, as eating healthier and exercising is easier when I have no one to take care of but myself). I thought I had gained most of the weight while caring for him (and being fed by him!) but I guess I started out chubby. I guess he fell in love with me that way - he always made me feel like a goddess.
I'm just posting this for the women out there second-guessing themselves and their weight. I'll never be as skinny as I was when my exH met me - it wouldn't be a healthy weight for me anyway. I personally would like to weigh what I did after my divorce, which is about 20 lbs higher than the underweight girl I was in my twenties, but still well within a normal BMI for my height. I'm well on my way there.
But plenty of men have been attracted to me skinny, chubby and everywhere in between. Men of color have been MORE interested in me than they were when I was so skinny in my twenties. Women are so much harder on themselves than most men are. (My fat-Nazi exH was the exception, not the rule!).
You may not be every guy's cup of tea, but there are many guys out there who WILL find you attractive. Confidence, sense of humor, sexiness - are attractive and don't depend on your weight.
Well, well, well! I just found out that my friend who ghosted me just before I met CMM - lives!!!!
For those who don’t remember - Spa Guy was a guy I saw occasionally, starting from before I met Crazy ExBF. He lived about 90 minutes away and made it clear from the start that he “didn’t DO relationships”. Having dated a couple Love Avoidants before, I found his honesty refreshing. And because he was smart, and sexy, I was happy to see him once in a while for a “weekend at the spa” as my BFF called it, with zero expectations, when I wasn’t otherwise involved in a relationship. Once I started dating Crazy ExBF I stopped things, although he would call me once a year or so to catch up.
After the breakup with crazy ExBF calmed down, I visited Spa Guy a couple times. It was great and relaxing, as always. He’s really great intellectual company, interested in music and film, well read.
Then he ghosted me. It was a little odd, but then, he’d always been an inconsistent communicator, and I knew he sometimes had periods of severe depression. It was even possible he’d gotten into a relationship. I wasn’t too concerned at the time. I met CMM a couple months later, and figured I would probably get one of those friendly chat phone calls in a year or so. But nothing…. Crickets.
I started to get worried he might be in one of those black depressions, so every few months I would send him a text, maybe a song I thought he would like, or a book recommendation. I never heard back. Last year I did some internet sleuthing and figured out he must have sold his loft and moved to a neighboring state.
I still sent him a text once every couple months - mostly because I figured if he was really doing poorly, at least he would know he still had a friend in me. I could see that he read them, so I figured at least he wasn’t dead. And if he didn’t want me sending him anything, he would block me, right? I’ll admit, I started to imagine maybe he’d had a stroke, or some other incapacitating event. Or else maybe he’d gotten married, like Mr Big Lots, who knows?
Well today, after 4 years, he sent me a music video! It’s something only I would like, so I know it wasn’t a blanket text. (Check it out - Lo Fidelity Allstars doing Battleflag). In the olden days, he used to burn CDs for me with songs from his collection that he thought I would like.
I have to say, I feel so relieved!!! I had honestly started to worry he was incapacitated in some way. I let out a huge sigh of relief (and danced around to that song, it’s very danceable!).
I don’t need anything from him, no explanations, I just reached out occasionally because I wanted him to know I was still his friend, in case he needed a friend. My mind is at ease now, even if I don’t hear anything else. Phew! I’m surprised at how relieved I feel.
Also - if you want a laugh - my last text to him a week ago was a YouTube clip of the fight scene from the movie Twenty. Look it up for the funniest use of a Nilsson song in a movie!
Just finished a very fun, older (2007) classic k-drama - Coffee Prince. It's surprisingly progressive for its time. The basic story is about an androgynous tomboy who gets hired to work in a coffee place staffed only by handsome men. The (straight) boss assumes she is a boy and she has to keep her true gender identity under wraps because she really needs the job.
Eventually the straight boss falls for her but struggles with it because he's not gay and to the best of his knowledge, she's a guy! Meanwhile, one of the coworkers is a young actor (who went on to become a well-known leading man) who is straight but prettier than any of the women on the show, wears nail polish, and whose idiosyncrasies are put down to him being half Japanese. Lots of gender-bending and role reversals going on.
kml, you're truly on a Korean binge lately! I'm curious if you're learning any South Korean, and even more curious if you're cycling while you're watching. :p
Yes! I'm up to 60 minutes at level 6 on my exercise bike, I ride it every night while I watch my k-dramas. I'm also on a 40 day streak with Duolingo, I don't know many words because I'm focusing on learning the Hangeul alphabet first, but I'm getting good enough at that that I can read some place names (like Itaewon) and the names of the actors in the credits!
