Also...

The realization now is that the first person to admire is the one behind my eyes.

Thank you

I am so over all of the people I obseessed about. When I think about it, it seems really embarrassing. But, it was how I felt for a good number of years. It defined how I viewed romance and even sex. It seemed so external, the person appeared to represent what romance was or could be. I have to acknowledge an indoctrination. I remember asking a friend what she thought about a boyfriend I had when we were in our early twenties. I remember her asking me why I saught her approval. At the time, I had a great come back answer, I stated that she had asked me the same,many that it was normal to want ones friends to like the boyfriend one picked because of all the time that would be spent with each other's friends. I am not writing this this morning to criticize myself, but to observe how dramatically some things change. My last encounter, I stopped it cold because I realised that I was following expectations that were not really mine exclusively, and the person could not be even remotely what I would ultimately want, even though so many things make us compatible.this is a major thing for me, because I had to confront the possibility that I was not moving forward because I might be still hung up on my ex-husband. I now know that what I was actually doing was growing closer to myself and my idea of intimacy, and in a way, I mean an intimacy with myself. The men all had something that captured my interest, of course. Now that I think about it, I believe that a large part of compatability lies in someone saying, me too, I like that too, or finishing your sentence or laughing at your jokes...those things make you feel a closeness and as though that person is so much like you...after all, they like the same things, but they are apart from you. That is where projecting starts. You are always looking for yourself within another person. When they click with you, you are projecting your most favorable traits. When they war with you, they are connecting your most challenged issues back to yourself...because it is always, always...YOU. You fall in love with your reflection. So in a way, everyone is homosexual. Lol. My neutrality on those people that I inprinted my affection onto, could have gone on forever, but it has ended because I have challenged it. I felt it's faulse facade, it's weakening walls,as it were. I think it became apparent when I chose to pull back my expectations and observe the people individually for themselves. Who was really pushing an ideology forward? Who was really trying to work on something lasting? No one! Not really. This was most acute with frequent flyer who made me feel that he was making a big step and then just stopped talking to me about it, and never saught to tell me anything. That one is really awful. There is a wonderful saying by Bob Marley about playing with a woman's feelings and then not really wanting the woman at all. It really did a number on my ego. But on closer observation, I have experienced a lot of that. Men who tell me all the right things, appeared to be part of my mirror, but really, they had no fortitude to save their lives. I asked myself for a long time, did I create that scenario? Was I sub-consciously sabotaging my good? I thought that I might have been? But that was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I was creating a pattern based on my own Mirror...a deeper archetype as it were. One where I set up an admiration, not the pedestal that I have to my ex-husband, but one none the less, because I held my breath and expected them to be beguiled,to want to form something more concrete with me, although I knew that somewhere down the line, they would not satisfy my real expectations. They wouldn't because the dynamic has always been as my child mentioned to me today... A superficial one..a gut reaction..an alleged chemistry. All of this needs to be looked at even more closely. Now that I know that I am no longer tethering myself to something that is so shallow, even though it lasted over a decade, I am now more interested in seeing what this breakthrough will do for me.

Revelation time

There have been a few regrets stewing inside me, that I have found it difficult to transcend. Tonight though, I think that I got a handle on one big one. I have felt that other peoples' lives are somehow a testament to better decisions than my own. I felt this acutely when my neighbor kept waxing philosophically about her ex in a way that practically sainted him. She went on and on about what good choices they made for their children, and what a great relationship they share now...it was a bit hard to take, when she has nothing good to say about my ex at all. Not that I hold her as a standard of virtue, or as someone who has made amazing choices...but I do not want to get side tracked...her opinion led me to think about the things that I believe I have not had the opportunity to experience because of the things that have happened in my own relationship. I feel as though I have lived with more misery than joy. But then, the turning point came for me when a series of small things occurred....sending a message to a few people on Facebook.looking at so many " friends" looking so glowingly happy with their significant other in heir costumes for Carnival, and my little one watching Superman and telling me that this is the new interest for them. It dawned on me that I have the liberty,and the power to make my life my own,on my own terms. It woun't look like other people's lives. But I can certainly fill it with love and anticipation, beauty and my idea of success. I almost laughed out loud. Of course. It was so easy to be dragged along by what the world insists is the way that things should go. But is that really the only way? Of course not.

Of late

Thinking on my mistakes is something I do often. Of late, I have been looking at people in the street, friends, acquaintances, and pictures online, on Facebook and elsewhere, questioning my own expectation for a good life. So what is a good life? It is a simple answer for me. It is a life where I am either doing everything I could possibly want to do and be financially secure. Or, if there is someone in my life, that that person is so in tuned with me that thinking on their issues make me feel that I am part of something that is also of value to me. I still feel a bit queezy to admit that companionship and love is something that matters a great deal to me. But enough of that, I am writing about ambition in this entry. It's time to focus on ambition in a way that I have not. I have of course had goals. But ambition...apart from my college dreams that I fulfilled, I do. Ot think that I have thought of myself from a position of superlatives that I want to tick off on a notepad. I have been so fed up, that it has become easy to say fuck it all. I must create and now, if I don't agree to it, I may as well be dead.

Triumph

It has been a long road, but this time, it is set off on with me feeling truely that what is up ahead is set up by me. For so very long, I looked at life from a place of pessimism. I did not intend it. But there it was. So I would make plans, make great, detailed lists. Always hopeful, but deep down, I would be Squamish, I would be doubting. It took as I said, a very long time to move beyond that. It took lots of reading spiritual books, articles and notes I have made over the years to get here. It took disappointments, it took having good things happen. It took my observations of what was going on in my life. Not just writing about it, but analyzing what I was feeling. It took many low feelings. It took grief. It took pains of all types. It also took great anger, despair and need for rest. I am so happy to finally know that my journey is mine. So what this says now is this....L I F E. I. S. B. E. A. U. T. I. F. U. L. My interest now is to watch myself think and believe that I am in control and then watch how life unfolds. This does not mean that I do nothing. I have my goals. Over the last few months, my list is my goals that I write over and over again. I do this to keep it at the forefront of my mind. I stray...I focus on my goals. The focus is extremely helpful now, as what is focused on does promote more such focus. I see and feel the pleasure down to my bones. my timeing is getting better. Stronger. The mist is clearing. I can see way beyond whatever the fuck was keeping me stuck. Mute. Paralyzed with fear. Once. Once, I needed a label to put on what I wanted to be doing. I kept looking for validation. Even when I was making things independently. There was a want for approval. Thank goodness I had the instinct to create anyway. Thank goodness it was always inside me.