Learning from the Past

I believe that every relationship and friendship is a learning experience.  No matter if you were friends when you were young or if it only lasted a brief time.  Single serving friends can also be a learning experience.  You not only learn about someone else but you also learn about yourself.  I don’t believe in chance meetings, I believe that you are meant to meet the people you do.  I have had a few experiences where there were times I was in the same place many times with a person and hadn’t met them until it was the right time.  I thought about how many times our paths crossed in life and it was only by weird circumstances we actually met and became friends.

I want to share with you guys some things I have learned recently.  I was in a relationship with this guy; his name is changed for privacy reasons, in case he reads this. I will call him Rupert, because I always make Fight Club references in my posts and I already made one in the first paragraph.  Rupert is a nice guy. We had an odd but interesting relationship. He made me laugh so hard, I probably was snorting most of the time. We sang together. I could be a total dork and be myself with him. I was a total airhead sometimes. I would send him chip pictures that looked like animals. I was completely comfortable with him.  I just felt like he was so amazing and I did my normal thing by pushing him away. I did the whole jealous thing once.  I told him about my issues but at the same time, I failed at stopping doing it.  I finally realized that my problem was that I love whole heartedly but at the same time I didn’t know how to be loved.  I didn’t know how to relinquish control and just let myself be loved. I guess my heart had been guarded for so long that I wasn’t able to let go enough. That moment was a total epiphany.  I learned how to let a guy love me. I know that sounds completely ridiculous but at the same time, it made sense.  I feel like guys have loved me before, but not completely.  From that moment I stopped pushing him away.  I just was drunk in his love and it was amazing.

I also learned from Rupert was that it is ok to be a total complete dork and that they will love you anyways. I am prone to airhead moments. I wish I could remember what they were because they were so funny.  From the beginning I wasn’t afraid to be total self. Everyone in the beginning of a relationship wears a mask or hides something it seems like. I threw all my cards on the table. I had never done that before. I just felt a connection to him.  He was a dork like me and it worked. I could talk to him about the silliest things for hours and never have one of those moments of I want to stop talking and do something else.  It was weird but amazing. I couldn’t wait to talk to him every day.  Just felt so good and so right.

I learned that it was ok to trust someone and that not everyone is out there to hurt someone.  I learned that nice guys exist and not just in my family.  They are out there but they are rare.  I felt like a queen with him. I remember we were going to dinner and he remembered that my favorite food is Japanese. So, he looked in his GPS for a Japanese restaurant. We got lost and ended up at a Chinese place and I suggested we go to Panera since it was right there, he wouldn’t have it.  So, we kept driving to a Japanese restaurant.  I also learned I was a bad fibber. He always knew what was wrong even when I said nothing.  I know that I can’t lie if my life depended on it, but he could read me like a book. We finished each other’s sentences.   We definitely had a great time together. He was so kind and caring.  I had a really nasty cold and he is an RT and so he offered to listen to my breathing and see if I needed a breathing treatment.  Either he wanted to make sure I was ok or wanted to torture me by jamming a breathing tube down my 

throat, kidding of course.

We had our share of arguments too though. I think they came from misunderstandings and issues we both had. We were always able to forgive each other. It wasn’t serious stuff. Most of them were ridiculous things.  Both of us being divorced and heartbroken before caused extra things that were not really worth an argument for, usually my insecurities were the blame.  I learned to be more secure in who I am and that it is perfectly fine to be a dork.  I am not saying I am totally comfortable in my skin but I am a lot more comfortable than I was 6 or 7 months ago.  Life is always a work in progress. I am continuing to work on breaking out of my shell and not worrying so much. I am a worrier by nature, I always have been. I have spent a lot of time worrying about ridiculous things.  You can spend all day thinking about what if’s and miss out on moments in life.

I also learned that I am not a morning person. I already knew that though.  I am one of those people when I wake up I will probably wave at you instead of saying good morning until I am able to wake up some. I don’t like to be teased in the morning, and I was rude and I felt so bad about it and it was not ok. I am working on becoming a morning person.  I will never be perky in the morning but I am working on my decorum and learning to accept light morning teasing and my morning sarcasm.

I am listening to music and I will Remember You by Sarah McLaughlin came on, I love this song. It was my sister’s graduation song so I have been listening to this song for a long time.  One of the lyrics is, “So afraid to love you more afraid to lose clinging to a past that doesn’t let me choose. Once there was darkness deep in this night you gave me everything you had oh you gave me light”.  I feel like this song explains it.  I feel like the things I have learned from Rupert, totally changed my life and how I think and feel.  I thank him for these important lessons I have learned.  Even though we are no longer together, I am very grateful that we were at some point and I was able to learn some of the most important life lessons from him.

A Hard Parenting Moment

I recently wrote a post about letting people go.  Well, several nights ago Noah and I were talking, it was late, he had a cold and he started talking about my dad.  It broke my heart, without going in to personal details, basically he was saying things like I wish I could meet Grandpa. He is almost six and has never met my dad. He lives in England with his new wife and it just is far away. I haven’t seen my dad since before I found out I was pregnant with Noah.  Noah kept saying things like where is Grandpa? How far is England? Why haven’t I met him?  I didn’t have the heart to say anything. He went on to make a plan to go see him. He calculated every detail of the trip out to me.  I just went a long with it.  I felt the tears falling down my face because it made my heart hurt so badly.  We have never had the best relationship and again without getting in to all the personal details he has hurt me many times in my life, more than I can count. I had known this for a long time and it is who he is, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.  I was really hesitant to let him back in my life and now Noah’s life back in 2007.  It is really hard because he’s my dad. My five year old doesn’t know, it is sad that he hasn’t met him.  I already have seen him disappoint Noah and continue to disappoint me. I used to wonder if I did something wrong, if I wasn’t good enough growing up? I wondered if it was my fault. 

So, what do I say? I mean I am definitely not going to say the truth to my five year old. I don’t want him to know, if that makes sense. I guess I will just have to go along with it for now and not make any promises. It is not like he has made any effort to see us. He invited us out there when Noah was two.  That’s a long way from home and I would be worried something would happen and we would be on the streets in England to fend for ourselves.  He has never offered to come here once. When he was living in the states, he never offered to see us.  We actually moved to be closer to him and he took off to England.  He has never heard Noah’s voice other than on videos. He doesn’t call, Skype or anything. Noah has seen two pictures of him.  It makes me so sad, because who could want to not meet my sweet little boy. He is amazing and so smart.  It has really turned in to a very stressful and hurtful thing for me so I decided to just let him go. Let him have his life in England and all that and hope he is happy, but I can’t let him hurt us anymore. My heart can’t take it, I don’t want Noah’s heart to hurt or ever feel unloved  by him like I did for almost my entire life.  It just really stinks because Noah is asking about Grandpa all the time now and I know he is genuinely just a kid wanting to see someone he loves.

Sometimes You Just Have to Let Them Go.....

One of the hardest things is letting go. It is important to let go those that have hurt us repeatedly. Those people who do not have your best interest at heart, those that think of only themselves.  Unfortunately, I have a big heart. I say unfortunately because as I am aware it is a great thing, it is also a curse at the same time.  I look for the good in people as I have mentioned before, but sometimes you can’t find good in everyone. There are bad people in this world that want to hurt you, that don’t really care about you and it sucks.  Sometimes you just hit your complete breaking point and you have to just cut your losses, cut ties and hopefully learn something in the process.  Losing someone is never easy; you end up mourning the loss of a friendship or a loss of a relationship with a family member.  You go through a grieving period and it hurts. I will always care about those people, but my heart can’t take the pain that they caused. It is really hard for me to stop caring about someone.

 Sometimes I wonder if I gave too many chances, maybe I would see a difference, maybe they would change. The truth is you have to accept someone for who they are, not for what you see them to be. I really need to stop looking at a person’s potential and see them for what they really are. I guess I expect more in people, and when I find out I was wrong, I become disappointed in them.  I don’t expect much, I expect someone to be caring, compassionate, loving, and kind. It is so hard to know what kind of person someone is. You don’t want to push everyone away because people have hurt you in the past, but there is no way of really knowing.  It would be a lot easier if I had an eggdacator like in Willy Wonka, that would tell me if they were a bad egg or not.  If only I could line everyone up and have them step on the machine and see what happens.  If they were a bad egg, like Veruca Salt, down the garbage chute they would go.  I have learned there is not good in everyone. Something must have happened to make them this way.  Some people are just bitter jerks.  It has taken me a long time to learn this.

The worst feeling in the world is when you find out a family member is this way.  Especially when you have given your all to make things work, devoted so much time and energy to be there and when you find out who they really are, it is just like a slap in the face. Maybe I had hoped you changed, and it didn’t happen. There is just so much pain you can take before it eats you alive and you just can’t allow that person to hurt you anymore.  I guess you get to a point where the emotional pain is normal; it really messes with your other relationships and human dynamics.  Hope is a funny thing, it is good to have hope, but sometimes too much hope can distort your reality and make you hurt in the long run.  Some say you are in control of how you feel, and that you only allow someone make you feel a certain way, that is true, but there are a couple exceptions to the rules, one being when it comes to family. You spend your whole life looking up to someone, loving them, trying as hard as you can to have that relationship and bond with them and then one day you come to find out that they never cared and it was all a sham.  One of the quotes from Fools Rush In that I think about is “Love is a gift, not an obligation.” That basically means if it is a gift to love someone and be loved, not something you do because you have to.  I just feel like they were obligated and all those words and memories were a lie, because actions speak louder than words.

 I am not sure I can remember a time where I thought wow, he really loves me, I am sure there was one but it is just weird I can’t remember it.  I think that is the hardest truth to understand.  Now, it is time to let go of all of the pain and the hurt and the sorrow.  It’s time to live a happy life full of laughter and love, and put all that suffering behind me and leave those who have hurt me behind, no matter how hard that might be.  I am at peace with my decision, it probably is something I should have done a long time ago, but that little imp called Hope was playing a trick on me again. It’s good to hope, just don’t hope yourself in to a bad situation, see people for who they are, not what you potentially see in them, use caution and set a limit and once the limit exists be brave enough to just let them go.

I will instead of becoming a bitter person, and giving up hope on humanity, and losing my faith in those kind people, I will still take those chances and open my heart up; I will be a little more guarded about who I associate with.