Love and Underwear

Welcome back to the wild ride that is my life.  Where nothing changes and the carousel spins faster.

I've had a lot - and I mean A LOT - of alone time lately.  I should be writing.  I should be cleaning out my refrigerator and dusting my knickknacks.  But mostly, I have spent a good portion of that time thinking.  And really being confused.  And not knowing which direction to go in.

But I think that's a good thing.  Because confusion is just one way to grow as a person.  It makes you sit back and take a hard look at your life.  To identify the myriad of mistakes that you have made and analyze them in order to not repeat them.  

Finally I have come to the conclusion that maybe I am not cut out for this love thing.  Every time, I get hurt and disappointed and used and betrayed.  And that isn't a ploy for sympathy, it is just a fact.  I end up falling for the most irresponsible, unavailable, insane and potentially sociopathic men that are out there.  I let my walls down and then BAM, I get blindsided by some bullshit.

Don't get me wrong, I am definitely not a man hater.  It just seems to me that I am a magnet for the wrong guy for me type.  I always fall for the broken or needy or counterfeit man, instead of the emotionally stable, supportive, loving man.

Point in case.  I was in a relationship that was not good for me.  By the end of our time together, I sear to God, I didn't know which way was up.  I was so confused about what was going on in my life and my feelings for that person that I couldn't see that he was slowly destroying my independence and self-esteem.  All of my emotions were tied up in HIS feelings and HIS wants and HIS needs.  I became an extension of him instead of a partner in his life.  I was so afraid of losing him that I failed to see all of the other things in my life that I lost because of him.

That is over now.  Thank God.  And do you know why?  Because he finally returned my underwear.  Real life is stranger than fiction and one day, I received a thirty pound package in the mail.  It was all of the stuff that he failed to return to me when we split up.  In that box was a bag with 43 pairs of underwear in it.  What the fuck?  Who keeps someone's underwear?  And if that sounds strange, there are so many other weird stories that I could share, but I'll leave that for another time.  But what the package allowed me to do, was to close a door on that part of my life and hopefully heal and move on to better things.

Since then, I have been able to rebuild some of the relationships that I lost because of that person with my friends and family.  I have looked at myself and found that I really like who I am as a person.  I am flawed and fucking fabulous.  I have talent and drive and determination.  I have the ability to look at people and find the good in them.  I can take mistakes and heartbreak and turn them into learning experiences.

I have also found out that I love LOVE.  The ability to take your own feelings out of the equations and just be there for another person.  For a partner, or a friend or a family member.  It doesn't have to be a romantic situation.  But love in and of itself is a thing of beauty.  Whether it's your child picking wildflowers for you, or getting frantic phone calls from your family because they haven't heard from you in 24 hours and are making sure you are still OK, the ability to love and be loved is a wonderful skill to have.

One thing I am refusing to do right now is fall in love.  I need a break from the insanity.  Because as great as it is to love someone, it is also equally as painful in my own personal experience.  If it's out there, it's out there.  If it's not, so what?  Who cares right now?  I feel no pressure to jump back into a relationship with someone just to be in a relationship.  I would rather work on the people in my life now who are important to me and be able to grow in my relationships with them.  To give more of myself to the people who matter to me like my children and my friends and family and work on my career.  I want to practice yoga, quit smoking, get in shape, learn to play the guitar, fly a plane, dance until I can't breathe, get caught in a rainstorm, feel the sun beat down on my face, cry when something makes me sad and laugh every single day.

And since this post was a bit fucking maudlin, I am going to leave you with some quips that I have come up with that make my friends laugh:

• I have never claimed to be a slut in this life!
• The %&(# clan war just went supernova.
• If we aren't in 7th grade anymore, why does your hair look like Justin Bieber's?
• You can melt anything with a hot enough flame. (not a good one, but I was a bit drunk at the time)
• w w w dot mustache rides dot com - where cougars go for a great time
• AND - my favorite - I only answer to two people in my life.  Me.  And Jesus.

I don't know if those are funny our of context, but I'm leaving them up to remind me of the times I came up with them and how much fun you can have when you let go of something that wasn't real to begin with.

All of my love!

Autumn