I haven't been going to COSA meetings recently -- I'm on my 9th Step in Al-Anon, and I'm writing an amends to myself, and it is like pulling my own teeth to get myself to make amends to myself -- and the local COSA meetings have kind of fallen apart. One of my regular buddies, J. went back to college for the school year, so she's no longer around. A., the other regular, I think was about ready to divorce her husband about a month ago, and we stopped seeing her. I started working a new job, and I had a huuuuuge learning curve in terms of new programming languages to learn all at once, so I just haven't gone. It's been all I can do to make sure I eat right, go to Al-Anon, go to bed on time, and get to work the next day.
But something major is coming up. I'm going back to [City] at the end of the month for a friends' wedding. My friend is friends with one of the women that [The Ex] may have acted out with (she was really friendly for a long while, and then suddenly started being weird and snarky to me...), so I have apprehension about that. About seeing her. I'm probably about 10 years younger than her, and 3-4 sizes smaller than her, and the comments that she's made about me to my face make me think that she hates that. So I've gotten a devastatingly gorgeous dress, demure, lovely, and vintage, so no one else will have anything like it. It stands out, but its in a soft color, so it does so with quiet power, and won't outshine the bride. It is in its own league. I've also invited as my date my hottest guy friend in the area. I'm not interested in him as a date-date, just as a buddy, who happens to be super hot. I had a lot of these in college, and now that I can stand having men around me again, I want more of my super hot guy friends around. He's very tall and masculine, and strangers go up to him and tell him that he looks like Clive Owen. So a) he's hot, b) he's tall, c) he's well-educated (we were college buddies at my fancy-schmancy college, and he also has a fancy-schmancy JD, meaning that), d) he's a lawyer, and e) he's from an even older, richer, and fancier family than [The Ex]'s family, which is only old, rich, and fancy by [City]'s terms, which is small potatoes, relatively.
There's a little (perhaps a lot) of self-will in my decision to pick him -- he's super hot, smart, and credentialed, buuuuut...he's also newly divorced, and going out on lots of bad dates and telling me all about them, and is prone to creating drama. I, as a codependent who has been working a very rigorous program in a small, forested liberal town, have not been around any of my drama-queen chaos-producing friends in quite some time. And I worry that the codependent part of me will want to fix his life, and I'm trying really hard not to do that.
But his attractiveness is my talisman against evil women who hate my guts because [The Ex] wouldn't leave me for them, and also against [The Ex].
Dear [The Ex], as evidenced by photos posted on Facebook of me having a fabulous time with an incredibly gorgeous, rich lawyer, please note that I am very much over you, and although I never, ever, in this lifetime want to lay eyes on you ever again, if I do happen to perchance run into you on some set I'm visiting while in town, or at the gym we used to have a FAMILY pass at together, or if you happen to be there when I stop by to see your cousin, who is like a brother to me, and will likely be family to me much longer and more truly than you ever were, or if we even need to talk about logistics, say the books and furniture you are storing for me, I am obviously totally cool and chill and sanguine about that, and can totally be civil and cordial and a cool cucumber about the fact that you are a dirty, lying bastard who put me at risk for deadly diseases and makes me want to vomit, but I am enlightened and over it, and have moved on, as you can obviously tell, as I am very tall, young, smart, and hot, and in the company of a very tall, young, smart, hot, and oppositely-gendered person, who, I hope, is quite threatening to you and your masculinity, and I hope he makes all your dumb little chippies that hate me already, hate me even more for being able to have such a fine masculine specimen as my escort, even if he is a bit crazy.I'm obviously still quite angry, and very much not over his incredibly dirty, nasty lying ways. He texted me a few weeks ago, two letters: "V8!" Meaning not that he was enjoying a refreshing tomato and other-vegetabled drink, but that he had manage to complete a bouldering (free-climbing) problem at the V8 level of difficulty. (I have only ever completed a V4, and the highest I have been able to hold on is a V6.) I saw the letters, and where once my codependently-attached person would have written back, "That's so great!!! I'm so proud of you!!!" and then burst into tears and felt loathing for both him and myself, I deleted it, felt angry for awhile, and then played online scrabble with a friend. Progress.
But I have incredible anxiety about going back to [City] and the possibility of seeing [The Ex]. This is playing out by me preparing the most devastatingly sexy-but-classy wardrobe, and by planning out all of my activities in advance: climbing at [gym] with male friend S., brunch with male friend M., shopping with T., dancing with C. and S. in [neighboring city], attending one of V.'s shows and/or one of L.'s shows, as they are now minor local celebrities, eating at W., going trap-shooting with K., and if we feel like it, then to the driving range for a full day of "dude activities", then eating and drinking at B., possibly a reunion there of friends still in [City], the next day brunch at b. with S. and other friends, then the WEDDING with C-my-hot-guy-friend (awesomeness), then photoshoots with W., perhaps A., and definitely with M. before I leave (meaning no beer, chips, or cake, and I cannot bloat pre-photoshoot). Dinner, drinks, dancing, fabulous clothes and gorgeous men. Oh. Yes. Talismans against unpleasant feelings.
What's codependent here is me making my date choice not about me, but about [The Ex]. Hmm...
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
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