I Threw In the Towel, And He Keeps Tossing It Back.

I'm not sure if I have a question, or if I just need to vent but regardless of my motives, any advice, suggestions, guidance, a point in the right direction would be appreciated.

I'm a 38 year old woman with 3 daughters - 1 left in the house, the others' in college. I'd been with the same man for 15 years (daddy to my youngest kid). He's gonna be 53 this year. He's ummm... Quirky. I'm questioning my own sanity because of this quirkiness.

I'm fairly certain he has "some" sort of mental disorder. For as long as i've known him he's been a storyteller. Most of the time, they're harmless but as of late they're a little crazier. I referred to our relationship in the past as "walking on egg shells" and from reading up on this, we seem to have a passive aggressive thing going on. I broke up with him in april, and he moved out in may.

I cracked. Even considered it a midlife crisis. A friend of mine came down with terminal cancer, and in gathering the people from our "crew" from back in the day (the 80's)to visit with her. I spent alot of time with my old friends, and they were questioning me as to why I was not "myself." i'd become weird to them, and the truth is, I became weird to myself. I used to be fun, spontaneous and genuinely happy and now I have become a pessimistic lump who doesn't wanna do anything - until march when my friend was diagnosed. She'd been telling me how she wishes she could do this, and that... You know, the shouldacouldawoulda thing. I decided that I didn't want to end up laying in a bed telling my friends all the things that I shouldacouldawoulda done.

I started thinking about the last 15 years of my life being spent with a person which i've always known to be a little =off= and how i'd spent so much time dancing around his moods, and making everything "ok" for the sake of sanity, when the bottom line was everything wasn't ok. He hopped from job to job, he was about as emotionally unavailable as a man could be, unless he "needed" something, there was absofrickenlutely no stability - except for the fact that I knew that tomorrow would be the same. There was a "sssshhh, don't say anything until I can see what kind of mood dad's in" or "hmm, I need to discuss this matter with him... Is now a good time?" sort of atmosphere around here 24/7, and my friends didn't want to come over because when they would come in, they'd feel as if they'd walked in on something - when nothing was going on. We rarely fought.

So, during the trips to the hospital to visit my cancer friend, I spent alot of time with an old boy "friend" named hmmm... Sam. (sounds good) we had a "thing" back when I was like 16 but it never materialized into anything significant but we'd always kept in touch over the years, mostly thru his mom. (she was the check point) sam's a very intelligent man, speaks multiple languages, works like mad, is thoughtful, considerate, kind, and cares about everything I say. We talked for hours upon hours about my stagnant life, and though he was not the cause of my break up, he was certainly the catalyst for it. Try to explain that one to the ex. Oh,and no... I never cheated on him....Ever.

So, me and sam hooked up after the x left. Sam's still the thoughtful, caring guy that he always was, though he does live an hour away and works ridiculous hours so I see him maybe once/twice per week but now it's starting to feel like we've been together for a hundred years.

(here comes the drama part)

on two occasions, me and the x had... Hmmm... A booty call (i guess you'd call it that). The first time, I made sure that he understood that this didn't mean that we were gonna get back together, and it was what it was. It was fun but the post drama was a little freaky.

I started hearing "stories" about myself, and how I stalk him, call him all the time, somehow hacked into his cell phone call list and called the girl he was seeing and threatened to beat her up if she didn't stop seeing him, there was even a story about how my friend and I showed up at his work and he and my friend had a fight and he threatened to slice her throat for meddling in his business. I never did anything of the sort. No fight between he and my friend. He's completely fabricated entire scenarios - not even embellishments on the truth... Just complete inventions!!!

And with all of that absolute craziness, I still find myself incredibly' attracted to him. Booty call number two was hell on me. I'm sitting here questioning my own mental faculties. As looney as he is, look at me! i cant seem to cut the incredibly' cord! I have a new boyfriend who is nice, kind, loving, emotionally "there" 100fricken%, my daughter loves him, my friends love him, my parents love him, you'd think i'd just be happy with that! Hell no. I'm fairly certain that i'm as much of a nut job as he is.

(takes breath) it's taken me a half hour to write this thing, and god bless you if you've made it this far. Thanks for reading my rantings anyhow.

The questions that come to mind that someone might ask me after reading all of this crap is, "do you love sam, or the nut job. My answer is this. I apparently have absolutely no grasp on what love is, though I was sure I did. I can define the word. Intellectually, I know what it means. I've seen people "in" love before. I know they both love me. I know if I said to the x that I want him back - he'd come back. I do know that is not what I want. The only thing that i'm positive of is that i'm very happy to live alone.

Ok, so you budding shrinks, and armchair psychologists... Have at me. Lord knows i'm exhausted from trying to do it myself. Oh, and pardon the typos, the spell checker thing here turned most of my caps into lowercase and i'm too tired to do it again. =)