Sick ramblings of a blurry mind...

Tired and sick. Can’t decide whether to paint, draw or write. Consequently, I’m really doing none of the above.

My dear friend, Anna, commented that my blogs have been a bit cheery and bright lately and she was wondering what was going on. I laughed.

What is going on is this – I’m getting settled, I’m getting happier about my life. After two very long years, full of confusion and chaos and disarray, I feel like maybe things are finally settling down. I feel like I can kind of see my future, I can feel the beginnings of feeling the future inside me. For so long, I’ve struggled with figuring out a future without someone at my side. Now I’m accepting that my future is that – mine and will probably not have anyone in it, at least for a while. I need to plan without holding out for someone to be there. I need to take the last vestiges of my life off hold and finish the leap I started.

That doesn’t mean bright and cheery every day. Maybe about half the time. It’s still hard every day, particularly living with my folks. I love them dearly but, good god, sometimes I miss the chaos of living with Tiffany and her two crazy dogs.

Communicating with my first husband has put some things in perspective for me. Makes me realize a bit more about what I want.

I want that kind of love again. I want to love without hesitation, without fear, without panic. I want someone to take my breath away. I want to feel that thrill in my chest when he walks into the room. And I want to do the same to him. I want to see that in his eyes and hear it in his voice when he says, “There she is.” I want that first time love again.

And I’m pretty sure that’s impossible.

Partly because I still don’t have my heart back from OOMA. Yeah, I know that’s a dead-end. Yeah, I understand all the things you have all told me over the months of obsession and fixation. But the heart is a muscle with very stubborn memory retention and it hasn’t decided to come back to me yet. I don’t pine anymore. I miss his presence as I don’t see him as often as I used to and I know he’s been struggling with his own pile of crap lately. But there is a melancholy echo inside me where my heart should be and until that echo finally fades, I’m not sure I can reach out to someone else yet. The heart doesn’t always listen to logic, damn it.

And until my heart is whole again, there won’t be that potential for the kind of love I want. And I guess I accept that. Because I won’t settle for less than that. Maybe it’s nuts but I watch the women around me who I adore who are with men who don’t make them happy or don’t fulfill them or just don’t… And yet, they hang on to them because, I guess, they’re afraid of what would happen if they let go. So they settle for less than because it’s better than none. And I won’t do that, after fighting to get so much back into my life, I won’t settle for someone who doesn’t totally and completely curl my toes. That doesn’t mean I expect a perfect relationship to fall into my lap with no arguing or fighting or disagreements. That’s part of the fun of relationships. But it’s about the times in between, when things should be good. They should be GOOD. Even after fighting, I should want to make up as soon as possible so we can get back to the good stuff. I don’t want to waste more time just passing time with someone because I don’t want to be alone. To me, that would be worse. That would be like reliving the last five or more years of my marriage, where I was pretty much staying because I couldn’t see any other way.

I won’t waste that time again. I don’t consider the time focused on OOMA as wasted because it helped me define what I do want. And I think there was a window there where I could have maybe had what I wanted but I wasn’t ready to make that very scary step. I think partly because I was afraid of what would happen if we got together but I think I was also worried about becoming involved with him just because he was there and ending up like my friends – being with him because there isn’t anyone else in the immediate vicinity. I was so afraid of the “what if” with him that I chose to not even try. Maybe that’s as bad as being with someone unfulfilling, I don’t know.

And communicating with my first husband makes me know that, in 20 years, I don’t want to be here again, wondering if the man in my life is the right man. I know my first ex is struggling with something right now, he’s suggested that maybe he’s ready to walk away from his marriage of almost 20 years, and that makes me sad because he left me for her and I’m sad that his life hasn’t been happy. I would hope that he left me for something better. If he didn’t, what does that mean? He left me and ruined his life? I can’t believe that. I believe that we follow a path that is set before us and we choose when to veer off that path. If he veered, there was a reason. It’s up to him to find what will bring him back to the path he’s supposed to be on.

Okay, I’ll admit, the above paragraph had a point when I started it but my head cold is making it hard to remember why I was going there. Oh, well, most of my posts are blithering rants, why should this one be any different?

So maybe it comes down to this – why can’t we be happy? Why can’t we find what we seek and why are we afraid to seek that which can make us happy? Why do we tell ourselves we don’t deserve that happiness? Why do we fear that happiness?

I guess if I had the answers to that, I’d have my own best-selling book and my own talk show. I just know that I don’t want to settle for less than all the happiness I deserve and I may spend the rest of my life looking for that happiness but I won’t settle for less, even if I never find it. At least I’ll know that I did my best to try to find it.