It doesn't matter

It doesn't really matter how great you are,

how much you accomplish,

how much you overcome,

who you become.

It doesn't matter.

You'll always be your past.

And that's it.

I don't care what they think

What if I said that I love, love. Would that make me less tough? Less cool? I don't know. But I have felt for so long that I couldn't or maybe shouldn't be so excited or so giddy about love, weddings and even my impending marriage.

But in reality, if you stop and think about that for just one second, that is absurd. I mean, really?

I should be allowed to be ridiculous and silly about my love. He's amazing, and I adore him. I should be expected to be pouring over bridal magazines and, nowadays, pinterest, in search of that perfect dress, that perfect veil, those perfect flowers that will all be icing on the cake that is the day I marry the man I love.

The man who knows my heart and has taken it and promised to care for it. He is my dream. And I love him and I love our love. And if someone has a problem with that, well whatever, I don't care.

Because I'm happy. And I'm getting married. And this time, it's to the man I love, and to the man who loves me, my friend.

To those who will never be enough

Somewhere along the way, someone told her she would never be enough.

Never enough to be loved.

Not as she was...not as she could be.

Because she could never be enough.

There would always be some flaw that proved too much, insurmountable.

She couldn't blame them when they walked.

She knew. She wasn't enough.

Some lasted longer than others, but the end was always the same.

She was never enough.

What was it? What about her didn't add up?

She wasn't sure. And yet she knew all the same.

And she knew it would never matter how much she ever became, because it would never. be. enough.

It became her identity.

"Hi, my name is...and I'm never enough."

She longed for the day when one, at least one, redeeming quality would over shadow a flaw.

That day never came until....

....she decided she was enough for herself.

She knew she wasn't perfect. No one is.

And if that guy, or that teacher or that friend doesn't think she's enough, well, they are the ones who aren't enough for her.

But she was enough. She IS enough.

Junk drawers and lost thoughts

I've had so many thoughts running through my brain the past few weeks/months. But I haven't been able to put them together, or make sense of them.

The thoughts seem very sporadic and incoherent, hence the reason I can't successfully catalog and organize them.

I guess that's why people have a junk drawer.

I need one for my brain.

A place for all the random, possibly useless...and yet possibly useful thoughts. The thoughts I don't quite know what to do with.

There's just no place for them.

Maybe what they really need is some time in the sun. A day. To walk around and stretch their legs.

Perhaps then they'd be able to find their place.

But airing a thought out or two or twenty can be daunting, exhausting.

Looking at all the ins and outs, analyzing...

But then, I guess if I were doing that, I'm not actually letting it walk around, I'm taking it for a walk.

I need to take the leash off and let it be.

Be the thought that it is.

Perhaps if I stop resisting it, stop trying to tie it down, the lost thought will find it's way home.

Maybe I'm just curious where it will end up.

Conditioning...rinse, but do not repeat

Divorce, or rather, marriage has a way of conditioning us.

We begin to think that things are a certain way. And weird becomes the norm.

Not always.

But in my experience, when weird does become the norm, divorce eventually follows. Not always right away, but soon enough.

It's when we discover that we've been "fooled" into believing the weird is just how life is, just how life should be, that we throw in the towel.

No one wants to be the fool. Not me.

Looking back, after being divorced for just over a year, I laugh now.

How could I have accepted those strange things as the norm?

It's incredible.

And yet, the conditioning doesn't completely fade away...or maybe a better way to describe it is that the conditioning mutates into another freakish monster.

Let me explain.

I had been taught in marriage to accept that a man will not have eyes for just me, and that expecting a man to love me, and see just me was a wild and ridiculous notion.

What I had been taught was what was really ridiculous.

But in searching for love, post being fooled, the mutant took form.

It seemed impossible that I could find a man who would look at and love just me.

It's true, one gentleman (though I can't hardly call him that) I went out with would comment on the appearance of every woman who walked by, on every date. I felt invisible. He didn't see me.

The mutant belief began to turn into cement.

But.

Then there was him.

The one who taught me, is still teaching me, that he sees only me....that he loves only me.

Last night we were together, and a woman passed by where we sat, and I mentioned something about her appearance.

He hadn't noticed her.

A strange concept.

A beautiful woman could walk by without being seen?

Incredible.

But to him, he had a beautiful woman right in front of him. Why look elsewhere?

Another strange concept.

All those years of being conditioned to believe that men were a certain way, and that it was because I was not enough...all wrong...or rather, weird. That weird concept had become the norm.

And now that weird norm was being shattered.

There are men who actually want one woman. And who love the one they're with. And women can be enough as they are. They can even be beautiful. In fact, a woman will really blossom under such conditions.

Strange concept. Not strange. New.

A new concept I am really taking to. I think this is how it was suppose to be.

Maybe this is part of healing too.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Giving up your heart

"I know it ain't easy, giving up your heart..."

I heard those words in a song the other day. How true that is.

What is it about giving up our heart that is so hard?

Well, for those who have given up their heart before, and had it crushed, usually the thought of giving up their heart again is more terrifying than death.

I guess I can't speak for anyone else, but myself.

Sometimes I feel like I sit on the fence when it comes to love. Straddling, I have one foot on the side of giving up my heart, and one foot on the other side, ready to run away.

Why do we, why do I, do this to myself?

Maybe the better question is, why would anyone hurt someone to the extent that they feel the need to straddle?

Why do we damage each other's hearts?

If we feel we can't properly care for another's heart, why not, instead of causing irreparable damage, simply say what is? "I care for you enough to walk away, I can't care for you, the way you need."

Why are people so cruel?

I hate straddling. I hate being hurt.

Why is this fear of hurt so monumental?

I don't know.

I just know it "ain't easy, giving up your heart..."

It ain't easy for me to give up my heart.

But everyday that I find myself on the fence, I just have to push myself to other side.

The side where I trust.

The side where I open up.

The side where I give up my heart.

It ain't easy.

Giving up my heart.

But I try, every day.

I hope you know that.

Can't shake it

Sometimes you just feel like crap. And you can't shake it.

It's not that you're sick or anything like that.

It's just this thing that seems to be sitting on your shoulders, weighing you down.

And what's worse, is often times you just can't place it.

Where did this feeling come from?

If only you knew, then you could tell it to get the hell out and go back to where it came from.

But you can't put your finger on it.

So it sits, crushing your shoulders, like a mischievous imp, laughing at the fact that it has conquered you. (For now anyway.)

Maybe it's just the time of year? Maybe it's the holidays? Maybe it's missing my mom? Maybe it's dealing with an ex who just won't see reason? Who knows?

But it's there, and for whatever reason, it wants to stay.

I suppose if I can't place it, I can at least let it be. Pretending that I'm not feeling what I am feeling has never really worked.

So I can say, yes, this is how I am feeling, I don't know why, but it's there all the same. So I'll invite it in, let it walk around in my head for a time, rather than fight it. And then because it doesn't have to fight, maybe it will just walk on out.

Path of least resistance.

Hopefully that will work.