This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
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Dear Sara,

In all the years you have been my coach, this time interval between our calls has been the hardest, and the most challenging.
Even now I do not have a coherent story of what happened and why.

There is “only” one actual event I can pinpoint, which must have been the one that is bringing this all to the surface now.
And it can also explain for a Nightmare Before Christmas I had, as well as for the taxing months of October and November 2023, when I ended up needing medical help twice;
I even blame this event for the entire 2023 undercurrent that something was seriously off on a deeper level-
but because that suspicious feeling started after an intense crisis October 2022, one I never wrote about nor will I ever do that, I thought it were my own nerves.

So the only event I have to go by, is my lover breaking up with me in a sloppy way last December 31st, and then the entire 14 months prior to that dropped into place. I had been feeling something was off between us.
(2023’s mysterious undercurrent)
Even though nothing was visibly off between us!
Not counting the fact that he was energetically and then ultimately literally, moving away from me.

So the only thing predicting the events of 31 December were his energetically withdrawing from the “Us” that had been the affair for over 8 years.
And even on the day itself, he didn’t say what had happened until I kept asking very direct questions.

2023 was the first year I had started asking those because he was giving me absolutely nothing.
By asking the direct questions, I have forced him to lie, tell half-truths, which was still one half more than what I would have gotten if I had not asked anything.

So in a way you can say I broke it up for him, because I defined what he did as breaking up.
Something that should have made it easier or harder, but that I can find no emotional response to whatsoever.
Him, me, what difference does it make.

So now I am going to tie the beginning of this to the end of this;
Because I think, no I know, he was already moving away from me October, November 2022.
I know because I asked him on a date, and he agreed, yet I could feel it was getting more difficult for him to see me, but because I just had my crisis beginning of October 2022, I had a terrible feeling of not being good enough.
As if the crisis had been my fault, and it was either condemned or not understood by him.
I felt like I was falling short or disappointing him, October November 2022.

Then we had treacherous December and January where our affair seemed back to normal. My crisis had become manageable, and I had learned not to bother people with it.
Few understood it, and they just made me feel bad, just like he had.
The affair seemed normal and genuine, but it was like there was spice missing. We were not as adventurous as we had been in the bedroom.

But again:
Coming from seeing my life fall apart the beginning of October 2022, our dates were an absolute blessing.
Again, I blamed anything off on my own wobbliness. Not on what in retrospect were his first strides on his way out.

From February 2023 on, the current became apparent, very apparent! We no longer had dates, we had appointments where we could help the other out, cheered the other up. 
But they were all initiated by me.
And a good thing I did, because otherwise I would not have seen him anymore.

And also:
Now, in May, I had the chance to ask him if he wanted out.
But I didn’t ask it that directly (I didn’t get direct until the final months), and he used the room I gave him to ignore it, and as a cue to put in more effort and make our date (appointment!) more fun.
He did not use it to have a conversation and end things.

And then we have June to November 2023, where I understandably stopped initiating dates that were actually appointments, and it became Whatsapp check-ins around the same topics we once had appointments for and see each other in real life.

“Us”, was dying.

Until late November when I started being more direct, culminating to the 31st of December, when it became apparent he had moved himself physically, away from me.
Without ever telling me anything, and still not admitting the symbolical implications it had.

Even on the 31st, he was still behaving as if nothing had changed between us. As if there had simply been a change in real estate, that didn’t need any addressing.
A move by which he effectively denied there had ever been an Us;
His way, of ending things.

Okay, so those were the energetic ebbs and flows, covering 15 months.
And what I also want to point out, and this is the best place I can find in this blogpost because it really is a topic that has no place in this storyline;
But ever since 2022, maybe even sooner, I can “see” weird, extra-terrestial or paranormal things happening when I close my eyes.
I assumed it was an involuntary reflex to too much computer-time, like a song you can still hear in your head.
But I no longer think that.
The images are vivid, like a movie. They’re actually quite entertaining, but because of their “Hieronymus Bosch” like quality, and because I cannot answer the question:
“Can you prove you’re not looking into another dimension?”
And because this entire post is about taking a good look at anything, that can explain the what appear to be unseen, yet very active, forces, causing disturbances in my life and quite possibly having influenced how I have reacted, or how other people in my life have behaved, I did not want to leave  this possible open portal to hell, unmentioned!

Picking up our story, we’re at Christmas 2023, when the portal opened into my dream world:
I had a terrible nightmare about an entity. It was so violent it woke me up, and I couldn’t go back to sleep either.
Which then turned out to be exactly as the Universe intended, because something happened that night, that was clearly meant for me to witness so that something could be done.

Again, just like October 2022 trauma, I do not want to talk about it, but it was super intense.

But now it comes:
After December 31, yeah sure, I cried a lot, the first day, but it was more of shock. Not because I was actually feeling the loss of a lover, the man who I consider the love of my life.
Although not without the disclaimer, that I may have been wrong!
Which is what this blogpost is about.

But anyway, of course, I was happy that I didn’t fall apart!
To me, it meant that I had grown not just since breakups with the two other men that ever really got to me, but also since the crisis of October 2022, which had absolutely floored me.

Clearly, whatever I had put in place as scaffolding in order to be able to deal with October 2022, was equally if not more effective, in preventing the walls coming down, after Dec31, 14 months later.

The house was standing tall, and so was I.
Nothing, revealed I had lost him.
And I felt like a frickin’ grownup!
Eat this motherfuckers, I am nobody’s bitch anymore.

Where I had once felt a strong connection to one man, or where I had once expected anybody, to be there for me unconditionally;
I was now at the point where the love of your life could leave me on the last day of the year, and I was fully recovered before the sun set on January first.

I called it progress.

Until strange and weird things started happening. I am still looking for the right words, but the best way to describe it, is like feeling your foot suddenly steps through the ice.
You expect something to be there, and then there’s nothing.

Instead of experiencing a meltdown, like I used to do when someone broke my heart, I now I experience “fallout”;
Entire parts of my life just no longer being there, because the thing that was holding it all together, was him.
No, “us”! (even worse)

So my genius mind, after its decision to never have one man, or one person, hold your heart in their hand ever again, had found a way;
They used our affair as the mortar, tying the entire life together.

I had hidden our affair, that had been secretive since day one, January 2015, into the very walls of my existence!
Where it had been dripping out off, since late 2022.

This week, every night, I can feel darkness within me. I remember having violent heart complaints in 2018, the year my cat had died in January.
I remember having them in 2008, when my lover had broken up with me. 
And I have them now, but not in the way I used to.

They seem to be tied to a darkness I have never felt. Tied to a rustling sound of the heart, a quickening not the numbness of 2008, and not the violent complaints from 2018.
This time it feels more venomous.
Like a literal blackness, of the heart, the way you sometimes see those pictures of tar lungs.

And I am reminded of Christmas night, a night so disturbing I cannot speak about it.
I am reminded of the dark current, underflowing 2023, and probably sooner.
I am reminded of the biggest personal crisis of my entire life, October 2022.
I am reminded of eight years with my lover that were never allowed to exist, where technically there was no Us.
The only place we were real was in my LS Harteveld blogs, like a fairy tale.

I am reminded of the pandemic, where I lost my faith in ever belonging in society, and accepting my fate of (hopefully) being able to serve her, but knowing I could not afford the price of being part of it.

And I also remember how incredibly light I had been,  before 2018.
That I had so many one-line diaries, where at the end of the day all I wrote down was:
“It was such a great day!”
Before I dropped into a blissful sleep, with dreams I did not remember.

I was an entirely different person, before January 2018.
I was light.

And I started counting and wondering when it had started, and I have to say I don’t know.
In 2017 my best friend left, but otherwise, I was still okay!
So if that is true, then my current state doesn’t have anything to do with my lover brought, or carried with him, that has been causing this darkness, because the affair started in 2015, years before 2018.

And yet, things that are denied to see the light, things that are not allowed to have a name, and to be known for who they are;
It would not be strange to assume our affair mutated into an evil, because denied, life form. 

What it has done, is that I am viewing everything that happened in a different light, and no longer assume so easily, that I know what was cause and what was effect.
I remember the ugliness of the crisis of October 2022, and thinking:
“Something more is here at play.”
The effect it had on me, was so incredibly forceful, like I said my whole world fell apart. I couldn’t believe this was due to whatever it was someone else had said or done.
My grief and falling apart, was disproportionate.

So the good news is: I did not fall apart, when my lover left.

The bad news is:
I have absolutely no idea what forces I am dealing with, where they are hiding, and what my fate shall be, if I do not figure this out.

But I do know it could cost me my life, if I don’t.

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~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living