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.