MAKES ME LOSE MY BREATH AND SHAKE LIKE A LEAF

It has been a while.  I have been working very hard to get my life back on track.

• The nightmares and night frights have decreased.  I am still unable to enter a dark room or take a shower without being in fear. I can't be in the house without the alarm on at night.  I am thankful I have two dogs.
• I have been moving things around in the house.  I took down all the photos and memorabilia of the two of us.  I have the frames laying on a bar and I have to take them out of the frames.  Baby steps.  It is hard to see the two of us together and smiling.  It is hard to explain it to people.  I am not sad about us not being together.  I am sad that it ended the way it did.  I am angry that I am left this way.  I am furious that I am having to go through domestic violence.  I moved my office into the room that she used to watch HOURS of TV.  I got rid of the couch that she spent HOURS on.  It is now my office.  I made my office into a guest room and I bought all new furniture.  I bought myself a new mattress that arrives in two days.  
• I took some pictures to be framed.  I wanted to put up pictures/art that reflects me.  It is making me smile.  I bought a map of the world and had it mounted and framed.  I took out the glass and now I can put in pins on the places I want to visit.  Fun!
• I planned trips.  I already went to Oregon.  Next I go to Vegas were I am going to meet my siblings.  Then I am going to Florida in a few months.  In Florida I am going to Disney World, I am going to see two friends and two relatives.  
• I put up security cameras and they broke and now I bought new cameras.  I have to put them up this weekend.  I like having the cameras even though they go against my privacy concerns.  I need to feel safe.
• I have been working on fixing the things in the house that need to be fixed.  I could not have workers in the home with Tracy so now I have to fix one thing after another.  Little by little.
• I bought some clothes that fit.  I have been wearing clothes that are too big for a while now.  I lost a bunch of weight in the last year due to a change in diet.  Now my clothes hang on me.  I finally went and bought some clothes that make me look good!

I have run into Tracy.  I found out she is living one block away.  I was walking down the street and Tracy was walking up the block and saw me.  She didn't veer away, she just walked right by me.  I could have reached out and touched her.  She just glared at me.  The same "if looks could kill" look that she gave me in court.  A neighbor had mentioned that she lost some weight.  I was shocked when I saw her.  Well, not really shocked but surprised.  Either she is not eating or she is using drugs again.  She looks like she dropped 40 pounds since June.  I have seen her other times like when I am in my car I see her walking and she glares at me.  It still makes me lose my breath and shake like a leaf.  I just want to run and lock myself in my house.

I report it to the police each time she violates the restraining order.  I went to the DA to try and get them to do something about it.  The DA will not press charges.  Even after she walked by me on the street and called the house.  

My frustration with the system is beyond.  I can't begin to tell you.  

I am trying to move in a direction where I become an activist and try to help change the system.  It just takes one person to make change.  Isn't that what they say?  I could be that one person.

more to come...

PACKING BOXES

To get ready for the court date, I needed to pack up all Tracy's belongings so she could come collect them.  Once the temporary restraining order was granted, I had three weeks before I had to go back to court to request a permanent restraining order.  Once the permanent restraining order is granted, Tracy could arrange to come get her belongings.

I wanted to be ready for when she wanted to come pick up her stuff and I didn't want to live in a house staring at her belongings for a month.  So, I hired someone to come and help me pack up her belongings.  I told Sally, the girl I hired to help me pack, that this was going to be a tough job.  Tough because Tracy had A LOT of stuff but also it would be hard on me emotionally.  Not because the break up was hard because breaking up was not hard for me.  It was going to be hard because the process was going to make me angry and frustrated.

We started in the garage because despite the years of me asking Tracy to go through the boxes in the garage, she never did.  The boxes were full of crap.  Just a lot of junk.  A bag of keys, a bag of rocks, boxes and bags of toys (she has no kids), containers of art supplies (some never opened or used), boxes of clothes, and tons of crap.  It was so sad it was funny.  She was a hoarder and it was so much worse than I was aware.  Then we moved indoors.  She had tons of shoes and ties and sweaters and audio books and jackets.  It was overwhelming.  Then we moved upstairs and there were books and a whole box of National Geographics.  She had no kitchen stuff and no furniture.  Even so there were 80 boxes.  Eighty Boxes!  It takes up half my garage and part of my dining room.  It took the two of us two days working 8 hours a day.  We had to pack the boxes and inventory and photograph the contents.  Exhausting!

Only once did I get really upset. That was when I found a bag stuffed in the back of the cabinet in the bathroom.  It had Tracy's medicine unopened still in the pharmacy bags.  I was frustrated that she didn't take it but also frustrated that she didn't tell me and let me keep buying the medicine at full price and stuffing it under the sink.  Since she had not met her deductible, I had to pay the full price.  I can think of better things to use that money for that buying medicine she was not going to take but hide.

It felt good to box it all up and get it out of the house (almost!)

more to come...

IMPOSSIBLE LIVING SITUATION

For the next few months things with our relationship went downhill.  Tracy began obsessively cleaning.  She would get up at 5 am and start cleaning.  But only cleaning certain things.  She cleaned the kitchen and swept the floors.  Every day.

Then she started de-cluttering. I would come home from work and things would be missing.  One day a plant would be gone.  I found it in the compost bin.  She decided it needed to go.  Another day the wine rack was gone.  Not sure what happened to the wine but the rack and the wine were gone.  It sort of became a game each day when I came home, what is gone today?  I tried to talk to her about it but she became incensed that I questioned her decisions.  After the first time, I just let it go.  Whatever she got rid of, I can replace.  My friends were upset that I was letting her throw my things away but it was not worth the argument.

To help Lulu the dog with her behavior problems I got a baby pen.  It was a 3'x3' pen that went in the living room.  Tracy was furious that I bought it and that it was "cluttering" up the house.  She flew into a rage about how it was cluttering up the house.  She was screaming and crying that the clutter was making her anxious.  This behavior went on for weeks.  She complained about that dog pen every day, many times a day.  Crying, screaming, yelling.

If I left anything where she didn't want it, I heard it obsessively.  If I left the toaster open after toasting a muffin, she would come in the kitchen and yell that I was so selfish that I would leave the toaster open and now she needed to make her breakfast and the toaster was open.  It would not be just one outburst but a continuous rant about how I was so irresponsible and selfish.

If I left a crumb on the counter, I never heard the end of it.  How could she make her meal with this mess on the counter?  There is no place for her to make her meal with all the mess on the counter.  I would never do this in anyone else's house, why would I do this in our house?  Over and over again for 30-60 minutes.

If she called m cell and I didn't answer, she would say she was not as important as my clients.  I always picked up the phone for my clients.  Why didn't I think she was as important as other people?  She would go on and on about how I didn't answer the phone and leave repeated voicemails about how I didn't answer the phone.  Her original call was about something like: was I going to be home to feed the dogs or guess what was on TV or we got the People magazine in the mail.   Nothing important or Earth shattering.

It was becoming an impossible living and working situation.  Something had to change.

more to come...