Reflections

Okay, the laptop has cooled off a bit, and I’ve been reading things that have me thinking. This post will be kind of stream of association and more of a journal entry than something I want my readers to know, so bear with me.

I think/believe/feel that I’m a pretty happy person. Of course, I have moments of disillusionment, sadness, cynicism, worry, and even pessimism, but by and large, I am happy. I’m very aware of the many blessings in my life… health, friends, family, pets, work, all of my basic necessities met as well as most of my wants.

One of the things that has made me unhappy as I look back over my life and the way it has turned/is turning out, is that I have been in several relationships…six in which I’ve said I love you to someone significant. In two of those relationships, I did the leaving. In three, I was left. And in one of those three, my confidence in being a good partner, my ability to trust another person with my heart, my belief that love can be deep and powerful were all shattered. Unfortunately for the two people who followed that relationship, I was not the person I needed to be for them. I had little to give.

It’s been over three years since then. I’m finally able to look back at the good times we had without an unhealthy desire to reconnect, and look back at the hard times without pain. It is just a part of my history now, part of who I am.

I never set out to be a serial monogamist, but that’s what my life has turned in to. I’m not ashamed of my past. I’ve never been unfaithful nor treated any of my partners badly, but they’ve just never worked out for a myriad of reasons. I admire the people who find “the one” and have a shared history of so many years, assuming they’re good years. But I know many more like me, who haven’t had that be the pattern of their relationships. 

And while it is what it is, the “pattern” puts a nagging thought in my head, even at my most deliriously happy times in a relationship…the thought, the question of whether my past is my prologue…if history will repeat itself. 

Kimmy tells me to live in the moment, to string together the tomorrows until they turn into years. Good advice indeed, but hard for a worrier like me to live by. I’m more prone to wonder like Emily Saliers in her song “Come on Home,”

I realize that some things never are made right
By some will, we string together here
Days to months and months to years
What if everything we have adds up to nothing.

I’m sure that the devastating relationship it took me so long to get over makes me bend toward a kind of free-floating fear of losing love, of having to pick myself up and start over again.

And yet, despite all of the pain, and the twists and turns, the mistakes I’ve made, the choices I thought were mistakes that were not, despite all of that, I really like where I am now…in my life, my work, my relationships with friends and with Kimmy.

While I’ve had some good relationships, obviously, they’ve not been “the one,” at least not in terms of lasting. And I can’t see the future here either, but it feels different in ways and for reasons that are too personal to publish. And for today, and at least for tomorrow, I’m truly happy.