Friday, July 29, 2011

Is it the end or is it the Beginning?

I did something tonight that needed done. I had to do it. I essentially ended a relationship of over 5 years. I thought, at first, that I was giving up. Now I see it as finally accepting the truth. Some things just can't be fixed. Especially if pieces are missing. My life has felt like a thousand piece puzzle with half the edge pieces missing. No matter how hard I've tried to get it together I just couldn't. You can only work on half a puzzle for so long before it starts to drive you a bit bonkers. If you don't have the pieces, can't make the pieces and cant buy half a puzzle, what do you do?

I'm scared. I'm relieved. I've no idea what the future holds. What I do know is I could not keep living the way I have been. Not if I want to live. I have changed so much in the last two years. I have embraced my issues, I have challenged myself to work them out. I feel like I am a completely different person than I was 5 years ago. Stronger, braver and working on being happier.

I finally accepted that I can not make her happy nor she me. We are two very different people. Opposites may attract to a point, but oil and water don't mix. We get along. We share a wonderful child. But our relationship, it just isn't ever going to work, not the way we both need it to. It feels very odd, to be at this point. Even more odd to feel the way I do about it. I guess that is a good sign it was the right decision. I actually feel better. I feel hope, for me, for her, for our daughter. I want her to be happy, I'm just not the person who can do that for her. I want to be happy.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

A swirling mass of chaos

My mind, my thoughts, they're swirling like a great boiling cauldron in the middle of a deep storm tossed sea. So many different things swirling past. Some moving quickly, past in a blink and gone. Others seem to pass in front of me over and over again. I'm trying to calm the storm, or at least weather the storm. Until is calms, somewhat. Or I manage to build a bigger ship to sail the seas. A ship that stays off the rocks and makes way in the wind, with full sails instead of dragging anchor.

The thoughts that are floating past me are about the past, the future, the choices I've made in my life and those I still need to make. Thoughts about how I ended up where I am and how I move forward. I have the right to be happy. The only one keeping me miserable is me. I finally realized that last night. I have convinced myself over the years that I didn't deserve anything, that I was not worthy. Always an excuse. Why I didn't get the job or the promotion, why I have no friends. Reality shines a very harsh light when cast upon ones self.

It's odd how all the therapy, the self reflection, the antidepressants, they helped me simply survive. Until suddenly, like fuel to flame, a simple conversation with a friend lights me up from the inside. I finally, after many many years, I feel things again, I care about things again, I feel alive again.

waking from a long dream

That's what I feel like. As if I'm waking from a long slumber. Coming out of the fog, back into the light. I've been so numb for so many years that didn't even realize it anymore. Suddenly, a voice from the past wakes me up and brings so many things into focus. Suddenly I'm wondering, what took so long. What is it I've been doing for the last almost 10 years? Hiding.

Hiding from life, from feeling, from thinking. It's damn near killed me. I quit enjoying life, hell, I quit living. I've simply been surviving, for most of my life. And what has that got me? Fat, nearly dead, depressed, on medication, in therapy and most of all, quite miserable. In the last 5 years I have gained over 200 pounds trying to fill a void in my life. Trying to enjoy something. Instead it's made me unhealthy and unable to do many of the things I want to do. It's made me even more miserable.

It's so easy to be numb, to not care, to just go with it. Easy to a point. Going with the flow is all well and good until the flow takes you over a waterfall. My waterfall makes niagra look like a leaky faucet. Being emotionally numb has kept me alive, except now it's killing me. Feeling nothing is not a way to live, it's a way to survive. It's a way to hide. It's a way to avoid. I felt something tonight I have not felt in a very long time. Hope. Something suddenly changed inside me. I suddenly feel so many different emotions that I have locked away for so many years. Emotions I haven't dealt with, haven't let out.

I'm very practiced at being negative. Very good at it. Very good at convincing myself I just don't care, or that there is no point or that it just doesn't matter. Tonight I realized that it does matter. If I am miserable and hate my life, how is that affecting my children? When I am so tired of my life, of my body, of everything around me that I regularly contemplate suicide, what is that doing to me, what is that doing to my daughter. While I may not be putting a gun to my head, I have been working on slowly killing myself for many years now. With the food, with the lack of exercise, with the lack of feeling about anything. I've been sitting here on my ass waiting for death to come knocking and not really caring if he did. Suddenly I care.

I have so many things to figure out, to think about, to do. I have to figure out just how to start, where to start. I feel some life altering decisions are coming soon and that scares the hell out of me. But I know, without a doubt, that I can not continue the way I have. I don't want to continue the way I have. I want to be happy. I want to want to live. I want to enjoy life again. It's scary to me, to feel these things after so long.

So now comes choices, decisions, actions. Should be fun.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Silly thoughts

I have been fascinated by religion most of my life. Funny thing for an atheist to be fascinated by I've always thought. The different religions of the world, the staggering number of them and how thoroughly the catholic church tainted so many of them. Religion existed long before Christianity. Jesus is a fairly new concept in the grand scheme of things.

They all stemmed from the same need, the same desire of humans to explain that which can not be explained. Or at least, 3000 years ago couldn't be explained. And also a fear of death. A desire for something to be after death. There has always been some version of heaven and hell, long before God and Jesus.

I see all the evil and hate in the world today, every day, and it makes it difficult to understand the faith people seem to have in some all powerful being. 80 children murdered in one day.