this never ending pain

Physical, emotional – all-consuming

No light can cut through to where I am

in this bile black darkness

No doors can be found to leave it behind

How do you go on when you just can’t go on?

How do you let go when you just can’t let go?

How to hold on to just one single thought,

when there are millions racing through your mind

every second?

I can’t see beyond this misery

No family, no friends, no one who cares

I’m facing this totally alone

God, I’m so tired

I just want everything to end

I just want to end

Goodbye

Copyright 2008 Michelle D. Wampole

Note: This is memory, not current… don’t worry about me, I got past this years ago.

the pain and tears you fight to hide

And so far you’ve hid it too well

Most don’t know what you’re going through

You keep your secrets from almost everyone

But you’re weary, I can tell

I want you to know that I am here

and I even understand

more than you will ever know

I’ve been at the crossroads

Do I stay or do I go? Right or Left?

Which is the way I should go?

I can’t give you the answers

You have to find your own way

But I can listen and let you cry

If I could, if it were in my power

to make everything perfect for you

You know that I would try

Hang on to only the good

Let go of all the pain

And know that I’m always here for you

and I love you, my dear friend

copyright 2008 Michelle D. Wampole

Then maybe it’s time we let go

I know I have tried everything I can think of

I guess it takes something I don’t know

It doesn’t help when you won’t talk

I can’t just read your mind

But I want to know how you feel

While there’s still a little time

So help me, tell me

How do we fix this?

I don’t want this love to end

But I’m at a loss, a crossroad

and don’t know where to begin

It was easier in the beginning

There were no angry words

You were, back then, and still are

my entire world

Talk to me, show me

what I need to do or say

There has to be something I haven’t tried

There’s got to be a way.

So help me, tell me

How do we fix this?

I don’t want this love to end

But I’m at a loss, a crossroad

and don’t know where to begin

So help me, tell me

How do we fix this?

I don’t want this love to end

But I’m at a loss, a crossroad

and don’t know where to begin

copyright 2008 Michelle D. Wampole

What should I wear? What book should I read?

Do I want fries with that?

Some aren’t so easy…

Which college do I want to go to? What do I want to be?

Are you the one I want to spend the rest of my life with?

And sometimes, it’s by default

By deciding not to choose, you have chosen.

But what happens when one of those important choices comes up

and you find it’s already been made for you by someone else

without your knowledge?

I got angry.

The hate I thought I banished came back

The forgiveness I had given, I took back

I became so jealous

Of everyone I knew who had what I wanted so desperately.

It threatened to destroy a lot of relationships

I had worked so hard to build or rebuild.

I spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to figure out why

Why, after everything else I had gone through,

was this taken from me?

I still don’t have the answer to that

But I know what I do have now

I still have my family and friends

Because I threw the jealousy and hate away again

I still have a great life in spite of all I had to survive

I may not have the children I always wanted

But I am a great Aunt

And I love my nieces and nephews

I live and breathe for them

I would gladly for die for them

So, you took away my right to choose

Do I have kids or not?

But you didn’t really take away my right to choose

I may not have given birth to them

But I do have my kids

And I wouldn’t change any of this for the world!

copyright 2008 Michelle D. Wampole

If it was all that I had left

If I had just one day

I’d spend each second by your side

I’d try to find the way

To memorize every detail

If I had just twenty-four hours

I’d see and it would all be perfectly clear

The way your eyes dance

when you laugh

I’d study every line as I held you so near

To hold on to your beauty

I’d really listen for the very first time

If all I had left were minutes

To every word, every laugh, every sigh

Every breath

Every silence in between, your voice in all of it

To keep you in my heart

If my time were measured in just seconds

I’d spend them touching you

Feeling you, body and soul

Exploring every inch of you

To remember your sweet love

If it was all that I had left

If I had just one day

I’d spend each second by your side

I’d try to find the way

To keep you with me for eternity

Copyright 2008 Michelle D. Wampole

The first is that I have this insane need to please everyone.

That’s right… My name is Michelle and I am a door mat!

It goes hand in hand with the need I have to be accepted and loved by EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE PLANET! Because if I’m not, I just know that I am going to lay down on the floor, curl up into a little ball and DIE an HORRIBLE death!

I know… it’s crazy… but I think, “if I do whatever this person asks, no matter how demanding, expensive, tiring, etc., etc.”, they’ll love me for it. Of course that isn’t the reality. The reality is “oh look… I’ve found a sucker who’ll do anything. How pitiful, but at least I know who to get to the crap I don’t want to do”.

So, now, I try to remind myself, that just because someone asks me to do something it doesn’t mean… 1. Their going to love me any more or less than they already do because I do it and 2. It doesn’t mean I have to do it, PERIOD.

It’s actually been a revelation to me to find that the world does not come to a screeching, flaming, bloody halt if I say the word NO.

And it’s been a lot better for me health-wise. Not being this crazy, stressed-out person running around trying to do EVERYTHING.

That brings us to another thing I have been working on. It’s also part of what I like to call the “Super Woman Complex”.

I also have an insane need to FIX EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE!

In fact, right now… it’s driving me crazy. You see, I have a couple of very good friends who are fighting… well, not fighting really… you have to be talking to each other to be fighting.

What I want (need…?) to do is  give them step-by-step instructions on how to fix their problems and be happy again (yeah, like I would really know! LOL)

And, actually, I did email one of them and say something along the lines of “if you’re both so miserable, you have to find a way to work things out”… but, I did not try to suggest just what it is she should do. I still feel like I overstepped some boundaries though and should have just left it totally alone. So… to that friend, I apologize.

My urge is to tell them both to go to their rooms and not come out again until their ready to talk things out like adults. And unless they both actually read this blog (and I’m pretty sure one of them will), they’ll never know just how strong that urge is. My “need” to fix everything is as strong as my need was for that next cigarette (before I was finally able to quit smoking for good) or drink (I was also a a problem drinker for a lot of years). It’s an actual physical and emotional compulsion with me. I pace floors, and get nauseous and give myself migraines because of it (though nowhere near the extent that I used to). But I know, in the end… this is something they have to make right for themselves. All I can do is sit back and hope that they can, and pray that they will.

And in turn, all of this makes me a chronic worrier.

But, this too is something I am getting much better at.

In the end… it all goes back to my insane need for control in my life.

But as I am learning, and as I said before, control is an illusion.

I just have to remember to follow one of my AA mottos: “Let go and let God”.

Class Dismissed!

I touched on it a little when I wrote earlier about carrying anger and hate around with me until it crushed me. But there’s a little more to this.

Not only would I carry around anger and hate, but I was also very good at carrying grudges and refusing to forgive anyone I thought had wronged me in some way.

By holding on to all the anger and the hurt and refusing to forgive, you just end up hurting yourself. Making that weight heavier and heavier.

I refused to forgive my abusers, and, actually, THAT is understandable. For wrongs that heinous, for some people, forgiveness is impossible.

But I’d carry grudges for the smallest of things.

I had a friend in grade school. You could say she was my best friend back then. But one day when we were painting for art, she accidentally spilled some colored water on the painting I was doing. That really shouldn’t have been such a big deal, right? She said she was sorry, I should have said it was okay, just an accident. I didn’t do that. I said I didn’t believe her and I stopped talking to her. My best friend and I refused to accept her apology. I never spoke to her again, in fact. A short time later we moved away from where we had lived at the time and I never saw her again.

I was like that when anyone ticked me off or hurt me, intentionally or not, for most of my life.

I think it all goes back to those control issues I wrote about earlier too. My insane need to make sure that nothing could throw me, or hurt me.

Another time I remember, where I held a grudge and lost a good friend, happened when I was working in Reno, Nevada at Circus-Circus.

One of the people I worked with was going through a major transition in his life and he was asking friends for advice. He had been going to school, studying criminal justice, and was going through a divorce. He had a military background and, even though he hated every minute of it, he was working as a change person to make ends meet. But he really wanted to be in any kind of law enforcement.

Well, out of the blue one day, one of the other hotel-casinos in Reno called and offered him a job as part of their security staff. He’d earn a couple dollars more and hour, but the hours would pretty much require he drop out of college. He asked everyone what they thought he should do. All of his guy friends saw the better pay and more work hours… just more. I told him that I thought that two dollars more an hour and a couple of extra hours a week, while it seemed nice on the surface, wasn’t going to pay off nearly as well for him as staying in school and getting his degree would. That, while being a security guard in one of the major properties in town was sure to have it’s perks, being a police officer was what he said he had dreamed of since he was a little kid. He should stick it out until he got his degree.

What did he do? He took the job as a security guard, dropped out of school, got his divorce and ended up paying through the nose with the alimony and child support his ex-wife asked for.

What did I do? I got offended. He asked for my advice and then he totally blew me off and didn’t take any suggestion I made seriously. How dare he? Well, I’ll show him! And, I did. Again, I stopped speaking to him. Never gave in, not even a year later when he called me out of the blue and told me I had been right all along. That he had left that job after just a few months, went back to selling change, got back in school and, at the time, only had one more semester to get his degree. Instead, I did a “fingers in my ear, la-la-la I can’t hear you” routine and then added a huge “I told you so” at the end of it. Another good friend I lost because I couldn’t just let go.

And in the end… I was the one that lost out. I was the one hurt by my behavior. They were too, I’m sure, in the short term. But, they knew how to let go and did just that. Let go of me as a friend and went on with their lives, while I was stuck dragging the anger and grudges and past along with me.

If I had been able to just say, “You know what, it’s okay. Yes, you hurt me, but I know you didn’t mean it, so I forgive you”… things might be a lot different for me now.

What I forgot while carrying all that crap around was that I LOVED my friends. They meant the world to me and I would cry for days… weeks… because I no longer had them in my life. I made myself absolutely miserable and none of it was necessary. All I had to do was forgive.

I didn’t get that figured out though until I was much older and had been in therapy (inpatient) for some time. That’s when I learned that, for me, the only way I would be able to move forward again, and really start to heal, was to forgive the two men who had made my life a living hell.

And forgive them I did. Though, in my grandfather’s case, it was a little too late. He passed away before I could tell him that I forgave and loved him. I’ll probably always regret that, too.

I’m going to close this blog entry out with a lyric that I think is pretty relevant.

If you really love someone… no matter how boneheaded they may act sometimes, no matter how much they may have hurt you at some point… if you really love them… You have to forgive them and then let it go…

If Tomorrow Never Comes

Sometimes late at night
I lie awake and watch her sleeping
She’s lost in peaceful dreams
So I turn out the lights and lay there in the dark
And the thought crosses my mind
If I never wake up in the morning
Would she ever doubt the way I feel
About her in my heart

 
(chorus)

If tomorrow never comes
Will she know how much I loved her
Did I try in every way to show her every day
That she’s my only one
if my time on earth were through
She must face this world without me
Is the love I gave her in the past
Gonna be enough to last
If tomorrow never comes
‘

Cause I’ve lost loved ones in my life
Who never knew how much I loved them
Now I live with the regret
That my true feelings for them never were revealed
So I made a promise to myself
To say each day how much she means to me
And avoid that circumstance
Where there’s no second chance to tell her how I feel

*chorus*

So tell that someone that you love
Just what you’re thinking of
If tomorrow never comes

And when October goes
The snow begins to fly
Above the smokey roofs
I watch the planes go by
The children running home
Beneath a twilight sky

Oh, for the fun of them
When I was one of them

And when October goes
The same old dream appears
And you are in my arms
To share the happy years
I turn my head away
To hide the helpless tears
Oh how I hate to see October go

And when October goes
The same old dream appears
And you are in my arms
To share the happy years
I turn my head away
To hide the helpless tears
Oh how I hate to see October go
I should be over it now I know
It doesn’t matter much
How old I grow
I hate to see October go

Where You Go – Bruce Sussman

Where you go
I will go
Where you walk
I’m beside you
My love, where you are is where I want to be

Where you go
We will go
Maybe scared
But together
With you, I’m prepared the rest is destiny

When it starts
Take my hand
And whether it’s through hell or to the promised land
God knows where
I’ll be there
Where you go

No matter where we go
Take my hand
And whether it’s through hell or to the promised land
Where you go
I will go
Where you lie
So will I
And I’ll stay
I will stay
‘Till the day
That we die
‘Till the day we die

Not What You See – Barry Manilow

Wait a minute baby
I’ll be right back
I just gotta talk
to a friend
for a couple of minutes

I see you looking
at the two of us
and what do you see
the oldest couple at the Mayflower
Esther and Me

I push her in the chair
I know she’d walk
if she could
she says “Take your pills”
as if they do any good

I’ll bet you think
that what you’re looking
at is all we are
two old people forgetting
the way we were

Sonny, no one is
what they look like
everyone’s so much more
Sonny, no one is
what they look like
and we’re not what
you see that’s for sure

You should have known her before
you should have known her before
legs she had legs
that made the guys drool
and her waist was as small
as your neck
and the face and the hair
and the rest of her
and when I look at her now
I still see her young and beautiful
she’s my girl and I’m her Joe
and we’re not what you see

In a minute baby I’ll be right back
I just got some more to say
to my young new friend here

Esther just turned 80 and I’m 83
the oldest couple at the Mayflower
Esther and me
I knew that when I saw her
we were meant to be one
she says she didn’t notice me
but don’t you believe her

I’ll bet you think that what you’re looking at
is all we are
two old people
stumbling through the days
Sonny, no one is what
they look like
everyone’s so much more
Sonny, no one is what
they look like
and we’re not what you see
that’s for sure

You should have known me before
you should have known me before
hair, I had hair the girls
loved to feel and a built
watch out Joe Poluka
I could see I could hear
I could run a mile
and when I dream of us now
I still see us young and beautiful
she’s my girl and I’m her Joe
and we’re not what you see

I guess I better go now
she’s my family
the oldest couple
at the Mayflower
Esther and Me
I’ll help her with her bath
and then I’ll kiss her goodnight
and sometime’s we dance
in the early moonlight

I’ll bet you think that what
you’re looking at is all we are
two old people
watching the days go by
Sonny, no one is what
they look like
everyone’s so much more
Sonny no one is what
they look like
and we’re not what you see
that’s for sure

I’ll be right there darlin’

All The Time – Marty Panzer

All the time I thought
There’s only me
Crazy in a way
That no one else could be
I would have given everything I own
If someone would have said you’re not alone

All the time I thought
That I was wrong
Wanting to be me,but needing to belong
If I had just believed in all I had
If someone would have said you’re not so bad

All the time, all the wasted time
All the years, waiting for a sign
To think I had it all
All the time

All the time I thought
There’s only me
Crazy in way that no one else could be
I can’t believe that you where somewhere too
Thinking all the time there’s only you

All the time, all the wasted time
All the years, waiting for a sign
To think I had it all
All the time

Paradise Cafe – Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman

The night is new
The faces are friendly
So have a few
And let me play
Some new songs, some blue songs
The mood is always right
Every night at the Paradise Cafe

The world outside
May make its own madness
But here we hide
The world away
No headlines, no deadlines
We’ll make them disappear
While you’re here at the Paradise Cafe

The room is kinda smokey
The phone ain’t workin’
The same old broken keys don’t play
But no one seems to mind it
’cause someone’s buyin’
And we’ll all get through one more day

Just me and you
Around the piano
Not much to do
But dream away
So stay on I’ll play on
I’m all yours for a song
All night long at the Paradise Cafe

Forget the one who loved you
Then lied and left you
Forget the love you almost had
But if you must remember
The way it left you
We’ll make it feel good to feel bad

Just me and you
Around the piano
Not much to do
But dream away
So stay on I’ll play on
I’m all yours for a song
All night long at the Paradise Cafe
All night long at the Paradise Cafe

When Love Is Gone – Lisa Sennett

When love is gone
What good is candlelight
Each lonely day
Becomes a sleepless night
No one is there to share the rising dawn
And so it fades away when love is gone

When love is gone
Life’s just a hollow shell
The stars don’t shine
The moon has lost its spell
That old familiar ache
that makes the night so long
just seems to linger on when love is gone

When love is gone
There’s just the memories
An empty heart where love once used to be
Those lonely blues refuse to let you carry on
It’s just that way each day when love is gone

Was the sun shining, was there rain?

I’m trying to remember what it was you said

Was it just a simple hello, did you say your name?

I’m trying to remember what it was you wore

That old college sweatshirt, faded jeans

I’m trying to remember how it all felt

Thinking about losing that feeling and what it means

Where did it all go wrong?

Why did we break our hearts?

Why does hearing our song

feel like my whole world is torn apart?

I’m trying to remember you want it to be over

I can’t just turn this off and walk away

There’s got to be something we haven’t tried

There just has to be a way

I’m trying to remember how to save this love, to start again

To heal the hurt in our hearts

To pick up the pieces and tear down these walls

That are keeping us far apart

Where did it all go wrong?

How do we get it back?

We have to fight to keep this love alive

We can’t just give up on all we’ve had

So what is it you’re going to do now?

Make up your mind to leave or stay true

Tell me you love me, tell me you hate

Or tell me you’re trying to remember too.

copyright 2008 Michelle D. Wampole

I had absolutely no control over what happened to me when I was a kid. I just had to do the best I could to get through it all and just move on to the next chaotic event. This all went on from the time I was… well, I remember as far back as age 4… until I was 16 and finally found the courage to stand up to the two men who were abusing me.

You’d think everything would have been just fine from thar point on, right? Well, it’s a nice thought, but it isn’t reality. My life remained in a constant state of chaos… and it was all my doing.

When I finally got the abuse to stop, I decided that I would decide what would happen to me from that point on and I became obsessed with making sure I was in control of every little detail of every single minute of every single day of my life. But there’s a problem with doing that. Let me see if I can explain.

When I was still being abused by my step-father… one of his favorite things to do was wait until some point in the middle of the night and then drag me out of bed and proceed to kick the shit out of me until he got tired, I couldn’t move anymore, or both. I always knew it was going to happen, I just never knew exactly when. So, it got to the point that, in order to see when it was coming, I’d stay awake until he came into my room and did whatever he was going to do. Then, once he was finished… I’d go to sleep for the few short hours left before school or whatever. I “controlled” the element of surprise, so he couldn’t use it against me anymore.

Problem is… once the abuse stopped… I couldn’t shut that off. I could not, for YEARS, close my eyes to sleep at night. ai’d be awake at 3 or 4 in the morning feeling the same dread I always did.

Another thing I used to control was when or if I wanted anyone around me. It didn’t matter who it was. Family, friends, anyone.

One minute I would be nagging them with a hundred questions… where you going? What are you doing? Who are you with? Just being obnoxiously clingy and needy.

The next minute I would pushing them away. Get the hell away from me I don’t need you!

That behavior destroyed my first marriage. My husband, Mike, got tired of never knowing what to expect from me, and he ended up turning to someone else. It totally sucks that she happened to be my best friend, but looking back… I don’t blame him a bit.

I also held tight to my control over how I felt about my step-father and grandfather. I won’t lie, I hated them both and wished they’d both just drop dead. But, the longer I carried all that hate and anger around with me, the heavier it all got until it had me totally crushed and unable to move forward anymore.

I finally got to the point where I just had to let go of all of that and give up my “control”. I had to forgive. If not, I’d never move forward again.

And that’s when I discovered the truth… t control is an illusion! You can’t control your life… all you can do is keep your reactions to and feelings about it in check.

Once I stopped hanging on to the hate and anger… the chaos in my life slowly went away. I woke up one day and realized that for the first time in my life, I slept a full eight hours and didn’t dread going to sleep. Then I realized that when someone raised their hand to wave at me, I didn’t flinch and shrink back waiting for a blow to land. Little things, to be sure, but HUGE steps in my recovery and ability to take my life back.

I now know that control is an illusion. Life is going to happen whether we like it or not, whether we’re ready or not.

Instead of creating chaos by trying to control it now, I just let it happen, try to learn from any mistakes I make, and just keep on keeping on.

And that’s about the best any of us can do really.