Quiet Reflections

I’ve felt rather quite lately.
I have had so much homework and work and feeling like I’m constantly doings something I *have* to do and I feel like my mind is slightly lost in it all. It definitely can be a wonderful thing to not think about the current state of your life and just go with the extremely busy flow. But usually by Saturday night it catches up with me and I feel this uneasy sadness that I wish I could make go away. I have friends, probably a bit too many pulling me in all kinds of directions. I have a family that has been more involved in my life the last year then in my life ever. I have lots of new nieces and nephews to ooo and ahh over and I love them to pieces. But then I ride the bus home and walk the four blocks home, and I can’t help but feel alone. As I go into my apartment and crawl into bed with my cat, I can’t help but feel alone.

The truth is this loneliness used to consume me. I hate to admit it but it did. I was absolutely boy crazy and wanting to prove some point that I was desirable and worthy of someone else’s’ affection. I suppose that is something cheating will do to you. You feel like something that is easily thrown away. Something that even after 10 years could be discarded so easily. It messes with your self worth and everything you thought you were. Well it can if you let it and I did for a while. I let that fear of being someone who wasn’t special enough or beautiful enough or good enough to want to be with, I let that fear or thought consume me. I had to prove it wrong. I finally figured out that somehow I had to let my self know that I wasn’t the problem, that the problem was him. I mean it was my fault for choosing a selfish little boy who could never care about me enough to not treat me like shit. But he’s decision to cheat and lie to me, that was all on him. There was nothing about me and who I am that made him do that; that is just who he is. I’m just the fool that didn’t see what he was capable of. But that is a story for another day.

Slowly that urge started to fade as time went by. I learned that I was ok on my own, that I didn’t need a guy in my life to make my life fun and complete. I realized that was truly in my own hands and I can choose to focus on that one tiny fact of not having that special someone in my life (that society/biology/everyone else in my life tells me that I should have and should strive for). Or I can focus on who I am becoming, how I want to live my life and who I want to surround me. I can choose to focus on what the aspects that are going awesome and let the rest fall away. I can’t control someone else being interested in me and lord knows I will never be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to be there. But I can control how I see my life and how I decide to live the life I have. It’s not easy sometimes and sometimes that loneliness tries to creep back in but I do my best to shut it down. I remind myself of how terrible my life was when I was married and how lonely I was when I was with someone. I remind myself of all the ways it can be horribly wrong and how awesome my current life is. Being with someone else doesn’t make it any less awesome.

So I have been quietly reassessing my life. Seeing where I want it to go, who I want to be beside me on my adventures and how I want to spend my free time. That is the nice thing about divorce, you get to make this new life anything you want it to be. This change is forced on you but you get to decide the end result. You can wallow in it and sulking in the shittyness that has happened or you can eventually pick up the pieces and piece together something great. It’s all a process and the great thing of being a year out is that I can clearly see some of those pieces and how I can fit them together.

A new kind of blog...

This blog has taken a lot of different directions since I started it. But a year ago it became something to help me find my way out of a painful divorce I chose not to see coming. It became something to help me find out who Buffy was again and figure it all out. To rebuild me into something better then when I started. But I think I was too scared to put it all out there and it was a shallow at best. I suppose I was too afraid I would hurt or offend someone else. But this is my blog and this is my truth as I see it. I know there are always two sides to every story and this is my side. This is my processing and I will not make any apologizes about that.

Over the last year I have made a lot of head way through a lot of feelings and I know that a lot of that is because of some awesome friends that would listen to me and to my wonderful Sparkpeople family that have been the most loving and supportive people I know. But that platform is a smaller and more restrictive platform and I want to spread my wings. So I’m working on my bravery and posting them here instead.

Divorce is a hard and devastating process. It messes with the very core of who you are or maybe rather who you thought you were. You have to start all over again and it sucks. I can only imagine how much more it sucks with kids. I was lucky to be conscious of the fact that I never wanted to have kids with the ex. To be fair I don’t think I ever want to have kids still (I feel a lot different about it now that he isn’t a part of the equation) but I knew I was never going to have kids with him. I knew he could never be mature enough to be a dad that I would be in that situation all by myself, so how did I ever think he could be a husband? That is why I said I CHOSE not to see it coming. I made up a lot of excuses to make his behavior and actions toward me somehow acceptable. Now I can see how truly miserable I was then and how much his actions affected me, even when I tried so hard to not let them.

One thing I have always tried to do with my life is to take responsibility for my life. Shit happens, I know that. But at some point you have to take your life into your own hands. You life, your happiness, that is all on you. I can rehash why the ex was a shitty husband but I would rather focus on why I let myself stay in such a lonely, unfulfilling relationship for so long. Why did I have such little love and respect for myself to make that kind of relationship to stay in ok? I feel like I started that relationship so young, with such low self esteem, that I never thought I deserved better. The problems started to become much more obvious when I was trying to improve my life and learn to love myself. It was that love that ended up carrying me through the process of the last year and I’m not sure what I would have done without it.

I think it is so important after a break up to take a step back, heal and find the parts in the demise that are your fault. A lot people are quick to blame others for what they did wrong and it is hard to turn the finger around at yourself but I feel like to truly heal and truly grow and to not make the same mistakes over and over again, it is so necessary. I wasn’t perfect and I had my faults too. Lots of them, I know that. But because I choose to see my fault in the relationship I can only hope that if I ever find myself in another relationship again that I will be a better girlfriend because I learned my lessons. Those major, tragic mistakes are often times the best teachers. Those lessons will stay with you forever if you take the time to learn from them.

Half-marathon!

I got a fancy new phone where I can actually blog from. Not sure how often I would but kinda cool to be able to :) So here I am quickly to update on my 2nd half-marathon on Sunday. I ran the entire 13:1 miles and came in at 2:22:29! I'm thrilled with how well I did.

My running partner asked if this was going to become an every year kind of thing....I think it just might be :)