Here’s my yearly report. I am alive, well, and relatively stable. I have finally found a job that I enjoy and become settled in this new-old city. I have now, two lovely fur children. I spend some of my time in constant conversation with a man who both infuriates me as well as challenges me to think critically about life. I pay for my own health insurance. I am finished with school for the time being. I still have the same old car I did before. I finally am in control of my bills. I started a new work out and joined a sports team. I decided I like cider beers and living in a small city. I feel good about where I am.
However, I will say, I still have trouble sleeping.
Back on the prowl. I am a huntress of work and I will not rest until I find it. This will not be easy. I expect to reach levels of despair before I begin to find hope in this season of wait. That is all I have to report to you today.
We've had a few snow days in my town and it's helped to jump start a new attitude toward life. I have been feeling pretty down from the amount of stress I've been experiencing in my work life that I almost forgot what a real "break" feels like. So on that note, here's to packing, here's to change, and here's to what comes next, whatever that may be.
I am in the strangest place in my life. It's not so much the physical place that I am in, but rather the mentality.
It's like this cat (did you ever read that book?). I had a plan, a very good plan if I do say so myself. I had this plan that once I finished graduate school, I would marry the guy that I was madly in love with and we would start the next stages together. We'd find a humble home, and it would fit us, our dog, and what little things we had accrued from our lives together thus far. We would have children, we'd raise them and they would be wonderful. We'd grow old together doing the things we loved, I would paint, he would play his guitar - we'd enjoy our life. But then things changed, because I realized that simply having a plan, or rather, "the" plan wasn't what felt right at that moment. See, the timing was off. We were very far from this place. I was very angry when I realized this reality and I did not want to accept the reality that it would be years until this became a reality. I lost patience and made poor decisions in a very anxious state. I rejected the plan, this dream I had, and I abruptly changed directions. In many ways it was very traumatic. I had felt an intense sense of security in believing I had found the one person who was the counterpart to my soul, and yet, I felt something was wrong.
To be honest, this will sound strange, I felt that I had found my soul's counterpart but I was missing the intellectual counterpart to my soul. I deeply desired not just an intensely beautiful love, but one that pushed me to grow and change - to challenge me to reach my potential and continue to grow. I felt we had everything perfectly matched, and then there was that. I could feel that creeping sensation when we sat at dinner, that part of me yearning to hear an opinion - a carefully considered and articulate verbalization of why he believed what he did or disagreed, or laughed when he did, or didn't. I was looking for explanations, self realizations, acknowledgements of regrets, truths, lies, depth. To many degrees we reached aspects of it. In others I felt that I was constantly... waiting. I was waiting for the moment in which it wasn't just me speaking, but listening to a counterpart that understood my soul as deeply as I yearned to understand his. I found myself pulling away from the perfectly crafted circle of friends that I loved, the life we had started, the familiarity of our families intermeshing. We felt married in many ways, and I felt lost.
I know that in choosing to love someone, you must learn to accept the things they are and the things they are not. In part, you must set yourself aside, your ego aside, and selflessly love unconditionally. He gave me his love unconditionally and yet I wanted more. It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, and when I write it here. Some people search for this their entire lives. I found it, I had it, I walked away from it.
I just didn't feel like "some people" any more. I just realized that I ached to build with someone who I felt was building beside me. I wanted to feel like I wasn't crafting this dream, this plan alone - and in many ways over the years I did. I wanted more than to be adored and loved unconditionally because I was afraid that over the years, the decades, I would grow to resent a partner I did not feel was growing alongside me. I lost my patience. I walked away.
I wrestle with a lot in my life. Making this decision was and is something that I will continue to work through for a long time. At the end of it, my gut tells me I was right but my heart says other wise. I feel like I have removed a part of myself, whether it was my limb, or a sliver of heart - it feels real, it feels painful, and it's a powerful sensation.
Despite this aching pain, this raw wound, I had to move forward.
I know what you are wondering - how can you move on so quickly when you still have suffered such great loss and trauma in your life? My answer is this - because a part of my growth and my journey in this life did not stop when my previous relationship did. I did not feel that I was replacing what I had lost, but moving in another direction. I could not grow in the relationship I was in, and I was terrified that I would replicate the relationships of my predecessors. I refuse to be entrapped in an idealistic relationship based on comfort and familiarity because I wanted to adhere to a safely laid plan with a man I loved more than myself, when I felt he was not growing with me. I did not want to be safe, I wanted to be uncomfortable, I wanted to push myself to the furthest possible point and to persevere. I was born resilient, and this in many ways was my chance to grow. I could not refuse myself that opportunity. This may make sense to some, and make no sense to many.
Where does that leave me now? It leaves me with the person I am with at this point in my life. While we may not have much in the ways of monetary things (I said farewell to my former gilded life), we have each other, we have our dogs, and we have our tiny budding careers. We do not have the whimsical fairy tale beginning, nor do we strive to - we have the knowledge that when we wake up in the morning and look at one another we have our shared intellect, our passion for life, and a respect for the shared drive, ambition, and dedication to building this life alongside each other. I appreciate this extremely self aware individual and how in turn he challenges me to acknowledge myself, my truths, my self deceptions, and my humanity.
I suppose this is what it boils down to. Not what you think you need, but rather what you need. This is where I leave you now, cat, with the knowledge that I am alive, well, and making it in a very uncertain time in my life as best I can.
I haven't been sleeping very much the past few weeks, and months even. I guess I just didn't realize how exhausted I have been.
I was sitting in the kitchen with my s/other and said something like: maybe you're my spirit animal that is suppose to help guide me through what may be one of the most challenging points in my life. I don't know what is going to happen next and I can't guarantee anything but I do know this point was made to be a test of some kind. A journey of sorts.
I have just been feeling very lost and lonely in this new life.
I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.
In the process of perusing Christmas posts on facebook I came to find that I have gained and lost some people from my friends list.
One person in particular stuck out more than others, not because they were particularly close to me but because of how close they were to someone I used to know. For some odd reason I thought that despite the things that had happened this past year, they out of all people would understand and not feel it necessary to unfriend me. However in that same logic, I understand why they did. I suppose when we've all made enough mistakes we learn not to associate ourselves with others that hurt the ones we love.
I get it. Sometimes I get it so much that I am tired of getting it. It is both a strength and a weakness that I understand the invisible social rules that govern us all. Self awareness is both a gift and a curse.
After many years of avoiding this modern convenience, I finally caved and asked for an electric toothbrush for Christmas. The consensus?
It was kind of awesome. Every time I go to brush my teeth I feel like I have a tiny dentist professionally brushing my teeth for me. Unfortunately I did not realize the necessity for keeping one's mouth closed the entire time you brushed, and ended up with toothpaste all over the bathroom. Lesson learned.
I am unbearably, gut wrenchingly sad. Every day is agony in your absence and yet, it is not. I am both alive and dying simultaneously.
I often have no one to say this to, so instead I will say it here. Where in the vastness of space I have but a tiny shard of identity.
I have hit a bleakness in my life that I feel slowly dissipates with time. I have been cut adrift from the motherland, and away I float. What I'm floating toward, I do not know, I just keep one hand moving over the other as I swim toward what I hope is a coast.
It is truly strange and heartbreaking to divorce yourself from the life you formerly knew. Many will not understand and some might. I wrestle with the choices I have made, but am coming to terms with the life I have chosen.
Some nights however, I wake up in a panicked sweat because I can't for a split second remember where I am and what's happened since the last time I can remember feeling comfortable, safe, sound.
Often, in love, we hurt the ones we love because at the time we think we understand what is necessary. Other times, when we think not of pragmatism, but love, we think of what we want and let it settle like a fog around the life we are trying to build. It is possible to have both, but when both partners are willing to work for it - not always together, but apart, and if ever in reunion: in tandem.
Sometimes in love, we make great sacrifices for the greater good. It is very difficult to understand when you're in the present, but for the sake of posterity to do so. The hardest part of preemptively attempting to preserve something is that sometimes you must break it first.
I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)I want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)
janainaart
discoholicmusic
dededos
jacobvanloon
baratheonpilled
andulkaphoto
izzy806
areudirty
