ponderings

Love is such an odd thing. I've never really understood why it's so hard for a couple to be happy when you both ultimately want the same thing. How do two people who want to be in love and want to be happy screw it up so badly? It's not that hard to figure out really...there are egos to contend with mostly. Both people thinking they know the way things should be, and being convinced that anything other than that is some sort of personal attack on them.

I was thinking the other day..how odd the concept of selfishness is. In a significant other it's about the worst thing you can be, but then I look at my daughter and she is the most selfish being on the planet. But that's to be expected, she's a toddler. However, my reaction to her selfishness is entirely different than my reaction to the selfishness of her Dad. I can't really figure it out, other than to say he should know better. But what do his knowing have to do with how much effort I have to put forward? I put more effort into taking care of my daughter than I put in to fulfilling his needs, and I don't resent her for it even a little bit. What is it about the way that I process it that makes her selfishness endearing and his appalling?

I guess it comes back to my view of relationships in general. There are very few I trust wholeheartedly. My daughter, I trust. No matter what goes on in life, we will be there for eachother, I refuse to believe any other way. My sibling, my parents...I trust. My fiancee? Sort of? Romantic relationships just seem so fickle. And in truth, he will never have the history I've had with the rest of my family. I've known him 3 years...I've known my family for my entire life. It's weird to think that I would be able to put him on the same level of trust as them when I've got a fraction of the history. To say otherwise feels coerced. I feel like there's something wrong with me admitting this, but in viewing it logically, it seems odd that anyone could claim otherwise. I'm not saying I won't ever trust him entirely, but it'll take time.

I guess I don't really have any conclusions to my rambling this time, just some questions I'm trying to sort out in my head.

It's been a long road to find some sort of stability in my life. I've been operating under the believe taht if I held in their long enough eventually we'd come out the other side. And we are. So there's that.

I'll probably get married in the not horribly distant future, and my views on it are less than romantic. Some see that as a problem, I see it as a strength. Being in a relationship is a commitment to me, it may not be a lifetime commitment (which I will still refuse to make), but I don't take any of this lightly. There are a number of people besides myself involved in this, and hurting any one of them is not something I would do without an immense amount of thought and planning. Married or not, it would make no difference. As for a lifetime commitment? It's a silly thing. To me, it doesn't seem horribly different than swearing when I was 10 that I would never ever like mushrooms. And I meant it with every ounce of my soul, but what 10 year old me neglected to take into account is that 20 year old me would have different tastes and views on things entirely. In that same vein, saying at 30 that I will love you and be happy with you for the rest of my life seems just as silly. I might, in the same way that I might have always hated mushrooms, but in this case I ended up growing to love them. I'm not saying it's impossible to be in love and happy with someone for your entire life, I'm just saying that predicting that far into the future is impossible, and I see a danger in sticking with something you're miserable in purely because you made a promise. It's ignoring the fact that we are all evolving, and 40 year old me will not care about the same things as 30 year old me. And same with the man in my life. The only thing we can hope for is that 50 year old him, and 50 year old me have changed in a way that matches each other. That although our priorities have changed from our priorities at 30, they are still in line with each other.

So I hope that makes sense. I'm not anti-monogamy, nor am I anti-marriage, I just feel that being honest with yourself about your changing needs and priorities is an important thing. I also don't want this to be construed as me advocating for ending a relationship when the road gets rough. I aim for relationships that have a deeper love than that. It's very easy to hate someone for a moment, but simultaneously love them. My sister is my best example. We have been through rough times, and she has driven me insane, but at the end of the day I knew I still adored her. Would I ever do anything to jeopardize my relationship with her? Not knowingly. But even with her, I would never promise a life time commitment. It's almost an insult to our relationship to need such a thing.

That turned into a ramble. Sorry. In short, I will get married because it makes sense. And I will promise to love him and to be there for him, but there will be no lifetime commitment to any of my promises. I believe in sincerity, and I could not sincerely promise a lifetime of anything to anyone. The truest relationships in my life have never needed such a promise, to promise that in this relationship would seem out of place.

I always thought falling deeply in love was part of the whole deal. That everyone fell I love at least once, and that if you did, nothing would change that. While I'm still a romantic at heart, my views have changed a bit.

Not everyone falls in love. I have met people that are quite a bit older, and I don't believe they've ever truly been in love with anyone. I'm sure they've loved people, but not in the change your entire world sort of way. I've been in that sort of love, but it didn't work out. That's the other part of this I'm trying to come to terms with. Sometimes (most times) life doesn't go the way you always thought it would.

I am madly in love with my daughter, and that might be the only sort of true love that ever really works out for me. I'm starting to think I'm ok with that. Life is far more complicated than you can understand when you're young, and it's easy to believe the love should conquer all, but that theory ignores the different types of love that are out there. Love for a child. Love for yourself. Sometimes those trump everything else.

I hope my daughter finds the real sort of love in a partner, but if she doesn't I hope that she finds it in her siblings and her children. It may not be the love that makes it in the fairy tales, but it's probably a much stronger sort.

Rebuilding

It's slowly but surely getting better. My life has been an effing soap opera lately, and by lately I mean for the last decade. I've lost control more times than I can count. Part of my wonders if maybe I am just more comfortable rebuilding than I am coasting. That if I'm not focused on fixing something I focused on breaking it. Granted, a lot of my struggles in the past decade were well beyond my control. I didn't cause my parents divorce, give myself cancer, or cause my own stroke. But I did plenty of self damage during that same period. I have fallen for guys that are lost themselves, that have plenty of broken elements in their own life, and maybe I enjoy that because it takes the focus off of my own personal issues. I have generally thrived in havoc. My best grades, my biggest successes, generally game during these periods of disaster. But at some point I have to get past that. I lost a lot of time surviving things, so to expect that my life would stay on the track I envisioned while I grew up is a bit absurd. I think I'm ready though. Ready to forgive myself for the stupid shitty things I have done to people in the past, to acknowledge that some of the people I care about most in this world have done stupid shitty things to me, and that I didn't deserve them. That must be the part I don't totally believe yet. It's the part that makes my heart drop. I probably did deserve them.

Nobody sets out the be the "other woman". I never even justified it being an ok position to be in. I ignored it completely. That doesn't make me a good person, and it doesn't make it ok. But should I really beat myself up for it for the rest of my life? I was wrong to believe someone who I truly thought was my soul mate. I fell too hard, I believed love conquered all, and I thought that in the end everyone would be happier. Because it was so clear to me that what we had was that true, fairy tale love that conquers everything else...and if that's what we had, that's what everyone deserved. But that wasn't my call. And I didn't know the other side. And I caused a lot of pain for people that didn't deserve it. And I am really truly utterly sorry for having done it. I'm apparently the only person that holds myself to this standard. None of my friends or family have labeled me bad. Nobody thinks I deserved to have my heart broken the way it was. So why can't I agree with them?

I need a new foundation, and I'm working on something stable. Not quickly and not well, but at least I'm recognizing what I'm susceptible to fall for. We labled this year the start of the great decade, and nothing worth having ever comes easy, so I guess I'm off...to start building this great life that I truly believe one day I'll deserve. I am sorry. To everyone I have hurt.

The right guy

I have been through a fair amount in the last 6 years. Having my heart broken was by far the worst. I even hate typing that, because on the unbroken side of my life that thought would have made me roll my eyes. I had cancer and I had a stroke, and neither one was even fractionally as difficult as this particular challenge has been.

My Dad told me when I was younger that there were 2 types of wrong relationships to watch out for-the wrong guy at the right time and the right guy at the wrong time. The right time guy can be far more damaging in the sense that I think this is the one many people marry, but the right guy at the wrong time is excruciating. I hope that I look back on this in a few months and realize that I'm wrong, that this was not the love of my life that I'm still mostly convinced that he was, but even though I'm doing the right things (i.e. not talking to him, staying busy, dating, etc.) it sits in the back of my mind and when I'm weak or tired it's all consuming. I wrote this at one of those moments:

Sometimes I forget to forget you. When I’m really tired, and I’m stripped of my guards and my logic and my memory of the reasons why we can’t and don’t work, I forget the reasons we can’t be together. I know when I’m stripped of these things, because the first and biggest urge I have is to see you and talk to you and be with you. I think it’s when I’m functioning on a purely cellular level, because we were more than a physical match, and more than an emotional match. I feel like you were literally a part of every cell of my body, and they never knew they were missing anything, until you were here and then gone. And when I lose my ability to think beyond a very basic cellular level I remember that there is another part of me, that there is nothing I can do to bring back. It doesn’t make sense that this was an instant connection, because I don’t miss something that was new to me, I miss something that I feel like has always belonged to me. I’m not sure you are my soul mate, but definitely my cell mate. Because somehow the very essence of me belongs with the very essence of you. I don’t think the relationship would matter, you could be my mom, my sister, my best friend, but in this life you were my boyfriend and as much as I try to move on, and succeed when I have the strength to remember all the reasons you’re not, I fail when I am weak. I hate that. But it’s beyond me. It’s not love, it’s not lust, it’s not even like, it is purely a function of losing the cells that could have just as well been a part of me as they are a part of you. And when I’m tired I forget to forget that.

Everything in my life has gotten better with time, and I believe deep down that eventually I'll move on, but it's so hard to imagine a time when I'll feel any different. 

Greatful

I know that's not the way that's spelled, but it makes more sense to me that it should be spelled that way. Since today is Thanksgiving it seems only fitting this post be on the side of appreciating what you've got. I think it's kind of insulting to appreciate what you have because some people have it so much worse. It sort of defeats the purpose. You should appreciate what you have because you have it, not because someone else doesn't.

As I've expressed in other posts, I'm not in the spot I expected to be at this age, but in assessing that I realize there were so many aspects of my life I had no expectations for at all. What sort of kid worries about paying bills, being loved, have a work life balance and feeling fulfilled? Not many. They may have plans for a job, a husband and kids, and if you were fortunate enough to grow up in a loving household the rest of that is pretty much assumed to just come with it. I had a stroke and I had cancer, and I turned out alright. For that I am very grateful, but not because it could have been so much worse, but because I got a glimpse of my mortality without much in the way of lasting effects. I learned a lesson most of you won't learn until you are much much older. I had my heart broken, but I am grateful that I know what it is to truly and deeply love someone, and to know that I can survive without them. My parents got divorced, but I am grateful that I know that living in an unhappy marriage is something I never want to do and that life goes on for everyone no matter how messy it gets.

I think I've been wrong in thinking that I'm lost. I know who I am and I know what I want, I'm not in search of a path, I'm on one and I've just lost the patience to keep going and see where it leads me. So as of today, I am grateful that my path has led me here, in all of its flaws it is truly a fortunate place to be. Here is my Thanksgiving day list, hopefully something I can keep with me when I inevitably hit another rough patch:

I never planned what sort of relationship I would have with my siblings, but today I can say that I am extremely grateful that my brother and my sister are truly my best friends.
I didn't plan for work life balance, but today I am grateful for a job that gives me the flexibility to worry about things beyond paying bills.
Health wasn't something I worried about when I was young, but today I know how fragile it can be, but that I am a person that can handle health concerns without becoming a victim.
I wanted to be married by now, but today I am thankful that I know who I am and can take care of myself without any assistance from someone else.
I didn't worry about how many people would love me, but today I know without a doubt that I am loved by many.

I love my family, my friends, and my life-even the rough patches. My life is truly ful of great.

The path

I have a long rant, so bear with me.

I don't know how I got to this point in my life. It's not a spot you envision getting to, nothing about this is the way I ever saw it going. Nobody pictures cancer at 21, and even when you get there, you don't picture an unrelated stroke at 25. I pictured a perfect marriage at 28 with perfect kids shortly thereafter. No medical history. No retarded drunken regrets. Not the girl that gets dragged along. Over. And Over. And Over. Or the girl that seriously considers being a fuck buddy. Not sure what reason I'd consider that, still trying to figure out what's driving that. But nobody envisions being here.

I can't decide if I'd change any of it though. I mean there are obviously the "I shouldn't have called him", "why did I say that" regrets...but do I seriously wish I'd taken a different path? The reason I question it is that deep down I sort of like what drove it. I am a believer of true love, of fate, of optimism. And knowing that those are the things that drove me, I feel like to change my path would be to change my beliefs. And as naiive as they are I'll take them every day over the alternative. I am the kind of girl that believes that the guy I met and instantly fell in love with (probably overdramatic, it is now and has always been a crush) was maybe meant for me. And when I find out his phone number ends in my birthday, I don't believe that's a random coincidence, I believe it's a sign. It's retarded. Most of you probably think so, and I can't argue that it probably is. But I like that I believe that. I like that I believe when "our song" comes on when I'm questioning our relationship that it's a sign. And I will take believing it, and being heart broken by the reality of it over and over again over believing that everything happens by random chance.

I am heartbroken at the moment. Because I have believed these things to be true. About the love of my life. And about the guy that I had an instant connection with. And they have both failed me. It's the inevitable end with my lifestyle, I will be heartbroken repeatedly until I truly find the one that was actually meant for me. Finding that requires a lot of failure, because it's an exceptionally high standard. I truly believe that exists, and I hope I never change that. The love of my life chose not to believe me and not to stand by me and I am truly heart broken by that reality. Because it doesn't fit my vision. It's not what the love of your life should ever do. In my world of fate and true love that doesn't happen. And the other guy? He wouldn't give me the closure I needed, and I feel like he feels sorry for me. That I believe in this. That I put myself out there and asked for closure and he wouldn't give it to me.

 I've been in this spot before. More times than I meant to, more times than I should have been. I'm not a girl you date. I'm either the girl you fuck or the girl you love. There is no in between. I'm that girl that most girls hate. Not because I get the guys I want, but because the guys they're with want me (but are never with me). That sounds exceptionally cocky, and it's not how I mean it. It's not because I'm hot (I'm not-I'm reasonably attractive, but not the girl you'd be jealous of..ever), in fact I really truly don't know what it is. I'm the girl that your drunk boyfriend will confess to liking, to thinking the world of, to wanting...but that they never end up with. I want to hear one of them end that thought with "but I love my girlfriend". But that's not how it ever ends. It does end with them getting married (and it remains to be seen, but I would predict inevitably divorced). They are left with the life I want and I am left with the reputation. "How dare you tell them you like them when they have a girlfriend". It's never the other way..no "how dare they say the like you back when they have a girlfriend". I want a relationship where a girl they like can tell them how much they love them, can throw themselves at them, and I can trust that they will say "you are a fantastic girl, but I love my girlfriend". Maybe those guys don't exist. But I promise I am not out to steal anyone. I don't want anyone else's guy. I want my own. And I want it the right way. But I don't know what anyone is supposed to do when the guy they have always liked tells them they like them, or kisses them, or asks them out during the 5 hour span that they've broken up with their girlfriend. Am I supposed to say no? Probably.

I have a history of putting everyone above myself. Not in a selfless way, because honestly it's the way I operate naturally, it's how I feel most comfortable. I don't say things that would make me feel better because saying them would hurt someone else. I keep secrets that would benefit me to tell, because they wouldn't help anyone I care about.

I am at a major cross road. To give up on the first person I could ever see myself with for eternity, to give up on my first "love at first sight", and to give up on the guy who came back in my life after being my first real crush ever. I need a new scene. With new people that don't know me, that don't have expectations of me, that haven't already labeled me. What I do not need is more people who "truly care about me" that are selfish enough to keep me open as an option when all I ask is for closure. The question is, if I admit I'm lost enough times will someone come along and help me find my way to a different path? And if not, can I possibly find my way there on my own?

Enough of the rant, if any of you read this and don't hate me I comend you, but again..this writing is my release-to say the thoughts swirling in my head that I can't find a way to get out without a word dump. Hopefully the next time I write will be from a different path (with a similar view of the world).