Drifting Away

Photo by Rick Sampson

I feel myself pulling away from you. I’m not sure why and I’m not sure when, but I definitely am.  I don’t feel as close to you.  The love is still there, but the emotion is not. 

I have this strong sense right now that I need to focus on me.  I need to be all about me.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that I can’t have you around or that I don’t want you around, but I can’t continue to focus solely on you.  I have to start living for me.

I’m so exhausted and worn out with my life—I need to start doing things that make me happy, that bring life back into my life.  And right now, you are dragging me down.  I’m so concerned with your issues and your problems, that it’s consuming me and my disposition.  I feel as though I have your same issues and that’s not the case.  At least, I can’t let it be the case. 

My emotions have no time to be carrying the burdens of two people.  I have enough happening in my own life that I need to start paying attention to.  We can’t keep having two people focused on you and no one focused on me.  That’s not fair. 

I need to get my life back to a level of fairness…I need balance.  I need to be happy. 

Being without you does not make me happy, so that’s not what I want.  But I’m not sure how to get happiness in my life when I’m focused on you.   

So I’m going to need to be selfish for a while as I focus on the things that I enjoy.  I’m going to start saying “no” to people and start doing what I want to do to bring me joy. 

I need to pull away from you a bit and start pulling in more of myself.

The Mystery We Call Love

Love is a mysterious thing—it cannot be explained, it cannot be defined, it cannot be rationalized, it cannot be described.  Love is a feeling—it just is.  It’s just there.  Love has no timeframe.  It has no constraints.  Love is just present—it just shows up; sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes unknowingly, sometimes unwarranted, sometimes unmotivated.  Love doesn’t follow the rules; in fact, it often breaks them. 

Love doesn’t make sense.  It doesn’t make common sense, but somehow knows what’s best for you.  Love looks past the superficial—love doesn’t care what a person does, what a person looks like, what a person’s goals are, what a person’s background is.  Love only cares about who a person is today. ..how it feels about that person right now. 

Love cannot be summed up in words…so when my boyfriend asks me why I love him, it’s hard for me to answer, because it’s just a feeling—it’s what is.  It’s hard for me to describe to him the feeling of comfort I get when he’s lying next to me.  It’s hard for me to explain the feeling of loneliness when I haven’t seen or talked to him in a while.  It’s hard for me to explain the confidence I feel when I look at him. 

I can’t explain a feeling, which sometimes makes it hard to tell others why I like him so much or why we are still together, or why he is the man for me. 

Love doesn’t allow for why’s—only who’s.  Love chooses the person to attach itself to and tries not to let go.  Love finds the object of its affection and doesn’t have time to explain it, describe it, rationalize it, or define it.  So I’m going to stop trying. 

Who I choose to love is a mystery—let’s just leave it at that…

All About Me

Today…it’s all about me and celebrating who I am.  Today, I’m not someone’s girlfriend, I’m not someone’s friend, I’m not someone’s daughter.  Today, I’m me—all by myself!  

Today, I say “I do what I want!”  I go where I want to go, I say what I want to say, I live how I want to live.  Today, I don’t do anything that my boyfriend wants or doesn’t want to do.  Today is about me. 

Today, I don’t have to worry whether I was too mean or too nice, too quiet or too loud, too excited or too calm. Today’s I don’t have to worry about how I come across to other people.  Because today—I truly don’t care.  Today, I care about me.

I care about who I am, what I like to do, what I like to eat, and what I like watch—all of it.  Today, I’m only surrounding myself around the people I want to be around.  I’m not playing nice today and I’m not being someone I’m not.  Today, I’m being me.

Today, I’m going to be confident in who I am as a person and not try to live up to other people’s expectations.  Today, who you want me to be and what you want me to do doesn’t matter.  Today, the only person I listen to is me.  No one else has my best interests in mind like I do.  Today, I only think of me. 

Today, I remember all the unique qualities of me.  All the things that make me different versus everyone else.  All the things that let me know that I was created for a reason.  Today is the day that I embrace those qualities, those mannerisms, those traits. Today, I embrace me.

Today is the day that I feel so blessed.  Blessed to be me…with all my flaws, all my weaknesses, all my blemishes…just me!   

Bittersweet Temptation

While on this journey of living in love, I find that more and more hurdles come my way. These hurdles are often in the form of men. Other men may cross my path, causing me to look away from my end goal, which is my boyfriend. I don’t actually venture off the path and start following this distraction; I just glance over that direction.

But sometimes that glance is enough to divert my thoughts.  I begin to lose focus of the end goal and start thinking about other possibilities.  I don’t actually want to pursue those other possibilities; I just like to think about them.  They are harmless thoughts…just enough to make sure that my end goal is definitely what I want.

It almost enables me to appreciate the end goal a bit more.  When I’m fully aware of the other men that are out there, I can better affirm that the one I have is the right one for me.  It lets me know that my boyfriend is not just great because he’s the only one out there and I love him, but he’s great because he’s better for me than anyone else that is out there.

But I must admit, sometimes it takes me a moment to realize that these distractions aren’t better than the end goal.  In the moment, sometimes I forget that my boyfriend is really good for me, and I allow myself to get distracted by men who are not-so-good for me.  But these distractions are so tricky—they disguise themselves to be more than what they are.  So once they take off their mask, you find that they are not who you thought. 

What I keep learning is that my boyfriend—in all his flaws—is better for me than all the distractions (even the cute ones).  So while it’s okay to look, it’s definitely not worth while touching!

Finally on the Same Page

I wonder what the rest of this story holds...

We are on the same page, we are reading the same book, we are telling the same story.

My boyfriend and I are finally seeing eye to eye in our relationship.  I finally understand where he is coming from and he finally gets what I’ve been feeling.

We are becoming one in Christ and because we are letting Him become our foundation, things are clicking.  We understand each other because God allows us to understand each other. 

We just had a wonderful weekend together and it was focused on all the right things. We were in tuned with each other and in tuned with God.  That intermingling of spirits truly allowed us to love.  Our spirits were finally connected, which was the last and final thing that needed to come together. 

My boyfriend and I had connected mentally at first,  then physically, then emotionally…we needed our spirits to be one.

We’ve finally united and it’s a beautiful space to be in.  This space is filled with purpose, with meaning, with destiny.  We are predestined to be in this moment at this time—we don’t know what’s going to come our way or what’s about to happen , but we are ready to face it together.  

Life is funny—it can be fair and unfair at the same time.  It can throw hurdles your way while also giving you learning lessons.  My relationship with my boyfriend has been a learning lesson.  It has taught me perseverance, it has taught be patient, it has taught me humility, it has taught me selflessness, it has given me confidence, and it has taught me how to love.   

I patiently awaited a real love, a deeper love, a fulfilling love and I finally got it…we are finally in sync!

A Dangerous Cycle?

I feel schizophrenic.  I’m all over the place.  One minute I’m super annoyed with you and the next minute I can’t get enough of you. 

You are my drug.  I drink you in.  Even when you are annoying and bad for me, I want more of you.  I can’t get enough of you.  I’m addicted to you, to how you make me feel.  When I take you all in, I get high—highly in love with you. 

But I’m afraid to overdose for fear of being dependent on you.  I can’t let you take over my whole body, my whole being.  I must only take you in moderation so to not totally give myself over to you.

So as soon as I feel myself slipping into dependence, I pull back.  I try to wing myself off of you.  Try to handle things by myself. Try to find love, satisfaction, joy from myself.  I withdraw from you, which pushes me into—withdraw.  The absence of you makes me low—lowering my desire to love. 

I become mean, angry, bitter—my heart closes and hardena to keep out the vulnerability, to keep out the dependency.  But being in this state is lonely…and miserable. 

So I begin to open up my heart again.  And on and on it goes.  I’m high then low, up then down, afraid then lonely.   

I don’t know how to even out my temperament.  I don’t know how to live a balanced life in a state of calm.  It’s like I get a rush from the randomness.  I enjoy the adventure.  I depend on the drama….

Maybe that’s my bigger drug—drama.  Maybe I need it to thrive, need it to function.  Maybe I need drama to make my life a bit less mundane.  Sometimes relationships just go through the moments, maybe I create drama and seem all over the place because I crave the noise, crave the obstacles. 

My relationship is up then down, up then down—is it my fault?...

The Shadow over My Happiness

Happiness is relative. Happiness can be determined by other people’s happiness. Happiness can be momentary. Happiness can be fleeting. Happiness can be…overpowered. Yes, it can be overpowered by loneliness, insecurity, mistrust, frustration, doubt—essentially any negativity. 

Recently, I’ve been letting those things affect my happiness. I’ve been letting these outside forces affect my mood, affect my view on life, affect how I operate.

I’m not happy right now and I need to be. I’m fairly happy with myself, but not happy with my boyfriend.   I love my boyfriend, but in this particular moment, I’m not happy with where we are. 

I feel like we are fluttering around trying to get to the next landing and can’t seem to make it. Where we are trying to go seems further and further away, which makes us lose hope. My hopelessness is causing me to put a little less effort it, try a little less hard, care a little less than I used to.

I want us to make it…I’m in love with this man. I just don’t know why it has to be so hard. Why do we have to work so hard to be happy? Or is this a test? Maybe we have to work so hard now to prove that we can make it in the future—“if you can handle this, you can handle anything” type thing…

Maybe I’m failing the test. Maybe my happiness is supposed to endure the low points.  Maybe my current mood is evidence that I give up too soon. 

I want to be in it for the long haul, but this current portion of the journey is taking a toll on me…

Our circumstances are tearing me down.  He still has faith in us; I just hope his faith is enough for the both of us.

Doubting a Good Thing?

Is it natural to doubt your relationship or is it a caution flag of something to avoid in the future?

I find myself wanting to live in the same city as my long-distance boyfriend, but doubting it will actually ever happen. We’ve dated off and on for four-and-a-half years and during that time, we’ve always lived in different cities. I just don’t know what it would have to take before he or I would transport our lives to a different city. 

If it hasn’t happened yet, why should I expect it to ever happen? What magical thing would happen that would actually make us feel differently about moving, because right now, clearly neither of us wants to be the one to move.

And to be perfectly honest, the only way I ever see us living in the same city is if I make the move, which I don’t think is fair. I don’t think it’s fair that I’m the only one proactively thinking about how we could make our future together a little easier. I don’t think it’s fair that I’m the only one making an effort to visit the other. I don’t think it’s fair that  I’m around guys all day and can’t flirt or anything with them because I have this man that I might see once a month that I call my boyfriend.

Why do I have to be the one to move my life just so our fantasy of living in the same city can become a reality? I’m not saying I’m not willing, I just don’t want it to be forced upon me without even looking at the possibility of him moving. 

It always seems to me like the woman is the one willing to invest in the next step in a relationship before the man is…but I just don’t know how long that is supposed to last. It seems to me that after a while that should even out and we both should be investing equally into the relationship.

Or is it my pride talking? Should I care more about what is best for our relationship versus what is fair? I guess it doesn’t matter who moves as long as we can be together. In the long run, if we are meant to be together, we won’t even remember what we had to give up in order to live together because we will be getting so much more in return.

I guess if I want something to happen, I’m going to have to do it myself…