Through this whole thing, I have focused on the negative. The mistakes that I've made. I rarely focus on my accomplishments, and the positive aspects of myself. Lately, I thought I'd make a change.
You see, when I really thought about it...I realized, without meaning to, that I WAS becoming the person I was meant to be. I am goofy, and loud, and a little weird. Yet, I'm also intuitive and emotional - when I experience things...I REALLY experience them. I really LIKE who I am...anxiety and neurotic tendencies and all.
I am stronger, wiser, and much more resilient than I have ever been.
How do I know this? I actually paid attention to the contrary evidence of me being a bad, irresponsible, and weak person.
For awhile, I've felt so down about myself. I haven't wanted to post because I felt too raw. There was nothing I wanted to share because there was no skin over my wounds. When I was able to change the one thing I could control - everything started feeling better...and better.
It was my...perspective.
After my break up with Freckles - I sought out some sort of connection to another person. I WANTED to feel desirable and beautiful and...ALIVE again. I had been cheated on, run over, and squashed. yeah yeah yeah - I sought it out in another person and that's never a good thing...but our connections to others ARE a piece of who were are/become.
I'm not seeking to justify my choices...I'm simply going through the thought processes of my change in perspective. In life, we don't make mistakes, we get feedback.
I had the talk with my partner about being exclusive, we both were tested (although not completely out of the time frame for all of them - which was my first point of feedback from this), and we had a sexual relationship AFTER my husband and I were living in separate homes.
I focused on the fact that I didn't use condoms (we started out with them), I wasn't divorced, I didn't know the guy for a long time, and I was fresh off a separation (All major no no's in my moral code). I got caught in a guilt cycle and couldn't learn from these because I was caught calling them mistakes.
There were good and bad decisions in there. I learned so much from it all, and due to it - I feel much more equipped if I do enter the dating scene again or even if I did turn out to have contracted something.
You see...I learned that 1) through changing my perspective about my behavior, my actions were the best I could do with where I was at the time 2) I was very naive regarding sex, and STI's 3) There are no guarantee's, or mistakes...You just have to do the best you can and life will happen the way it does.
I know now...people will show you who they are. There is no protection. I went back to Freckles hoping to seek some sort of protection from the big bad world. It's like...forming some attachment to the person who has hurt you because, at the very least, YOU KNOW you will get hurt again.
Damn Fear.
I feel better, it may not last for long...but somehow through believing that I can contracted a life-threatening illness, it really helped me understand that this is the time to live for what I WANT verse delaying gratification to some later date when life circumstances will magically be different.
After all, only I can make my life circumstances different...as the poem Invictus says,
I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul
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*hugs*
ReplyDeleteYou have come so far, in a relatively short time period! And I think this is a huge case of hindsight being 20/20...with the whole dating (and sex) before being divorced and all that...sure you may regret some of your decisions, as do I in some of my datings as well, but rather than beat yourself up for it, you are learning from it, which is what I did too. I was focusing on feeling guilty for perhaps jumping into something sexual with a couple of the guys I dated, when perhaps it wasn't the best choice, but I learned, and now know what I will and won't do early into dating...long way of saying, I think you are learning, you are moving beyond guilt and fear, and that's just awesome. Onward :)
ReplyDeleteI also find myself second-guessing decisions I made years ago and wondering why the heck I didn't choose differently. It's been helpful for me to think about those decisions and uncover why I made those choices. With that knowledge comes a better understanding and acceptance that, as you say, I made the decisions at the time for good reasons. There was no way I could know where they would lead me. And they are part of who I am now.
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