Treading Water

I'm back in Stellenbosch again. Flew in very briefly for a day conference and I'm now, once again, sitting in the gardens of a beautiful wine farm with a few minutes to spare and think and touch base with myself.

I have time because I got stood up for my lunch date. Well, sort of stood up. Bachelor number 2 is down here at the moment and we have had some playful back and forthing again about getting together. He's landed another job after being retrenched, and so I think seems to be more comfortable about engaging with me again. Although I'm not completely sure about that - we made a very firm date to get together today, and I even booked my flight out later in the evening to create some time to be with him and he bailed on me late yesterday afternoon anyway. Said things were just too pressured right now.  Maybe they are....?

And I get to this conference and here is Mark at the same conference - wasn't expecting to see him, and yet here he is. Nice to hang with him a bit but feeling a bit distant from him. We had a conversation a while ago where he talked of playing with other 'unavailable' women - I'm too available and the risk is a real relationship or something.....?  Agh. Fkn hate that. I'm keeping my distance and giving him space to sort out his marriage and he uses the opportunity to play with other chicks. Aaaagggghhhhhh. So stepping the hell backwards from that! My heart is too vulnerable for him. Need to keeeeep awaaaaayyy!

My Tasmanian is somehow at a distance from me too. We're in some kind of weird relationship where we have slept together twice and have some sort of understanding that we're lovers. But in that space he gets more and more distant and communicates less and less with me. His 'Acquisition Game' is clearly much better than his 'Retention Game'. He's not trying particularly hard to keep me. So I'm not trying particularly hard back. He disappears almost completely on weekends while he's with his live in partner, and I'm so not enjoying just hanging around the edges. I'm finding myself moving to seeing it as a connection of convenience, where I connect with him every now and then but am not giving myself any expectations that my heart and soul could be held in that place. Maybe I can play there a bit. Explore my sexuality in a mutually rewarding sexual space. But my heart? Nope. Not safe there. Only safe with me.

And how weird for me that is. That I'm allowing myself to be in this quite distant, yet physically intimate space with him. Because I didn't know I could do it like that. But it seems I can right now. So I am.

And Berlin and I continue to dance around each other, chatting daily on WhatsApp and just sharing the minutiae of our lives. Haven't seen him for more than a month and just living with that.

And I'm trying to just be OK with being in limbo. Trying to unlearn those not very useful patterns of getting all needy and sad around men, just aching for their masculine energy and trying to hook them in deeply to me so I can feel held. That's the stuff that made me vulnerable to Narc Mindfuckery and I'm determined to bullet proof myself against that kind of attack forever.

Sunday the 17th will be my 1 year anniversary of D-Day from John the Narc. The day I caught him cheating on me. The day my whole fking world crashed around my feet. I'm going to celebrate it by going to breakfast with the woman I caught him cheating with - Debbie. We'll both have a very private ceremony of escape from him. Only she and I will know really what that means. Sore. Still broken in places. Trying to put our lives back together.

Sigh. Longer road than I ever would have thought.