Kittens

For me the loss has been more than the man I loved, left my family and friends for and moved 1500 miles to be with. I loved living in the mountains, with trees all around. I also love(d) the cats and kittens, there were 13 in all. Yep, 13, three Mom cats, their nine kittens and the Pa cat that lived under one of the out buildings.

I named them all when I first moved here. The Moms were Momma, Boots and Cow Cat. The kittens were Stinker, Fluffy, Twin, It, Digger, Patch, Spot, Tiger and Hissy. Then there was Pa Cat, he was the daddy to all the kittens.

Spot was the most social. Stinker and Fluffy were adopted out. Patch, I was his girl. He was very shy at first. Then one day he adopted me. In the mornings, I would hold him on the front porch after breakfast. He would purr and fall asleep. Digger is the most beautiful cat I have ever seen.

One time I came home from work and Gerald showed me a new gun he had bought. I asked him what a person would shoot with that gun, he said "Cats." On my last morning there, I told Gerald I had a dream he shot the cats. I asked him if he was going to shoot the cats. He didn't answer. So, I asked him again. He said no. I told him I still planned on getting Patch fixed and taking him with me.

One night, I was talking to Gerald's friend, my landlord, about cats. I asked him if Gerald had shot the cats. He said not yet. I asked him what he meant by not yet. He said Gerald wouldn't shoot the cats.

I would love to go back to see the kittens. Patch is who I miss the most. I haven't gone back because I know I would cry when I left him again. As I told you, I lost more.

Is it forever already?!?

I wasn't prepared for an end. More than once, I had told Gerald I would not accept anything less than forever, and he said yes, nothing less than forever. I didn't know forever was so short!!

On my last night at Gerald's, I was there to pack the rest of my things. I had an ideal pictured in my head that we would talk. (Sometimes I really crack myself up.) He was out, as he had been most nights in those last couple of weeks.

When he came home, I was on the phone with a friend. I had the football game on. I hung up from my phone call. Told him hello. He went in the bedroom and changed clothes, then came out into the living room and laid on the couch. I could smell the whiskey from across the room. He fell asleep. I figured there would be no talking. No closure. No discussion about what made it end.

Gerald's big thing when we first started our relationship, was "communication". He had to be with a woman that was willing to communicate. Get outside help if things went wrong. All things I was very willing to do. During our relationship, we didn't communicate. We talked, but not about deep level things. I thought things were going well. Oh, we had our ups and downs, what couple doesn't?

Come to think of it, the only time we had deep level communication was when we would instant message each other, before I moved to Montana. We would talk on the phone, and not talk about the same things we talked about when we instant messaged each other. I still wonder why that was. I even brought it to his attention more than once.

I know communication goes both ways. I could have started some of the conversations I wanted to have. But, I think I realized early on, that it was about Gerald and what he wanted to talk about. And, maybe, just maybe I was afraid of what might be said.

The porch swing II

On Monday, November 3, 2008, I moved out. I asked Gerald (that's his name), if I could have the porch swing, since the cats and I were the only ones that sat on it. He said no. Without hesitation. Without a reason. I know him well enough to know the swing means nothing to him. It is just something for him to add to the rest of his "stuff".

He said he would make me another one sometime this winter. I learned how to tell when he is lying.

I live in a place where the porch swing would look great on the porch here. I could use it, instead of having it hang on his porch....unused. Collecting dust like the rest of his stuff.

Things I found out

I have been crushed by the lies of this man. In the months since I started this blog, I have seen that not only is he a liar, but he likes to drink as well.

Did I mention, he hadn't told me he was married before I moved out here? All he would tell me is that he had "trust" issues. He wouldn't go into detail before I moved to Montana. I can tell you we talked for hours, and hours, and hours. Never once did he say, "I'm married and have filed for divorce." He just told me he couldn't talk about the trust issues, until I was out here by him.

I was here a couple of days when I asked him what the trust issue was. He asked me if I was sure I wanted to know. I said yes. I know as sure as I am sitting here, typing this, that he would not have told me otherwise. Then he told me he was married. He told me they hadn't lived together since about August 2007. She had moved her things back to her house. He called her "Psycho Bitch". Said she was evil and had done the most vicious thing to him he had ever experienced in his life.

I was devastated. But, we were in love. So, I continued the relationship. We did a lot of things together. Picked mushrooms for hours, shopped, hiked, laughed, loved, gardened.

Seems like once his soon to be ex-wife came back to town, things changed between us. Oh, she had been in California fighting wild fires for the summer.

Another thing that seemed to change things between us was that I got a job. Not the one he wanted me to get, but it was good for paying my bills. I really thought my having a job would be a good thing. He had told me how is ex-wife, soon to be ex-wife and other girlfriends hadn't worked. I thought, how refreshing this must be for this man, a woman that works!! Silly me.

The porch swing

I told "him" about a song I used as an anthem on a quest I was on to find Mr. Forever. The song is "Drift Off To Dream" by Travis Tritt. In it there is a line about a porch swing. "He" went out and bought the CD. Said he cried when he heard the song. That it was his anthem too. He was on a quest to find Ms. Forever. And then he built me a porch swing.

My story is simple

Yep, it is simple. I met a guy, we fell in love, and I moved 1500 miles away from family and friends to be with him. Only for him to decide he wasn't in love with me. Well, it took him a couple of months to decide that. To say I was devastated is, well an understatement for sure.

I got the I love you like a friend, but I'm not in love with you speech. I want us to be friends because we think alike and like to do the same things. Huh!!??!!

I'll go back to the beginning. In January I joined eHarmony for what I hoped was the last time in my life. I had joined off and on for a couple of years. And, each time I joined, I got sick to my stomach....because, I dreaded the process. In January it was different. I felt I was going to succeed this time. I wasn't sick to my stomach.

The middle of February, I was matched with "him". I saw something in his face, his shy smile, his profile caught my attention. I had been matched over my time on eHarmony with almost 1,000 men. This guy stood out. So, for only the second time in my eHarmony history, I initiated contact. I wanted to get to know this man.

As with my matches that I communicate with, I checked other dating sites, to see if he was out there trolling. I found him on Yahoo Personals. His profile was kind of the same, a little more detail. On eHarmony he said he didn't smoke, on Yahoo Personals he said he smoked sometimes. I know that seems minor, but I have asthma and couldn't even think of being around smoke. He also said on eHarmony that he only drank a few times a year, you'll read later why this is important.

It took him a few weeks to answer my first set of questions. I nudged him, because I really wanted to get to know him. I felt he was the "one". And he lived in a part of the country I was totally in love with, Montana. Glacier NP is my favorite place on earth.