Life is sure an unexpected ride at times.
I find myself completely on my own,
alone and solely responsible for myself for the first time in my life. It is not a good or bad feeling
really. It is however very sobering.
It is a little daunting, and very… I want to say uncomfortable but that is
not quite right… new, like a new
pair of shoes you really want to like but they are a bit stiff in the
wearing. One hopes they will feel
softer and more comfortable as they get broken in.
I have spent the vast majority of my life being part of a
team.
I was my father’s daughter
for really the first half of my life.
While I was that I was also one half of a partnership that lasted for
many years.
For the last almost 20 years
I have been one half of a marriage.
One I loved and felt very comfortable with.
Even in the rough spots and those were unquestionably there
I still indentified myself as a wife.
I was Tricia but hyphenated with my husband’s name there as well.
There in lies some of the work I am
doing.
Discovering what it means
to be just me.
In the morning and
during the day it is an intriguing, sometimes fun and exciting journey.
In the evenings at times it can be a
lonely feeling sometimes verging on an overwhelmingly fragile and vulnerable existence.
I go outside and sit with the vast
natural surroundings that my house is situated in.
I listen to the crickets, and cicadas and marvel that it is
just me and…
THIS.
This life, this beautiful, precious,
vast and amazing but sometimes scary world and me… just me.
There are days when I feel part of a
whole, that we are all one.
I look
into people’s eyes and see us as all part of a big picture.
But then there are days when it is just
little me, and I feel very separate.
Who am I, what do I want.
What are my plans now that it is just me.
Big questions indeed!
If I should take the step in the future to mix my life with
another how do I not repeat the same patterns?
How do I stay Tricia, not Tricia and (fill in the
blank).
I read books like
Conversations with God by Neal Donald Welsh and he says that after the initial
intense coming together you should actively push the other away from you.
That to be needy and enmeshed is to be
unhealthy.
Be together but not. The Abraham-Hicks books take a similar
stance. This is a foreign concept to me.
In every other topic these books ring so true for me. I am just struggling with a bigger view
on relationships. There is an
intriguing aspect to the way they paint a healthy relationship. It seems right but how do you love
someone and not immerse your life with theirs. How do you maintain your separateness in your coming
together? I thought I believed in
a soul mate. Maybe there are several
soul mates… or none at all. I sometimes wonder if these are the young thoughts of a girl raised on faerie tales.
At the age of 50 should I think
otherwise?
I do believe in
powerful connections with others, familiar ones that feel old as the ages.
But what is a soul mate?
If we are all one then maybe everyone
is a soul mate.
I think of these
things to try to understand what happened in my relationship.
I don’t necessarily look at it as where
did we go wrong.
I am also trying
to let go of the notion of wrong and right.
But I do want to understand what happened.
I would like to be very conscious in my
life from this point on.
I thought
I was before but…?
I don’t know…
Life is just so big right now. I have so many desires, things I want to
do, projects, experiences I want to have…
it’s just… so huge. And it is just little me right now, and
sometimes staying under the bed covers and reading Tolkien is so much safer.
I have no family to speak of, no
children, husband or partner.
I
guess that could be considered a good thing.
I am just trying it on for size at the moment, not sure if
it is good or bad or neither one.
To
use the shoe analogy it just kind of pinches at the moment.
I do like the look of these shoes;
I
think they could be wonderful…eventually… I hope!
Do you know what I mean?
I think I am in a rather fanciful and pensive state of mind
at the moment.
Just curious about
your take on my ramblings.
Those
of you in happy long-term relationships, what are your thoughts?
I would appreciate your experience.
PS all pictures from Tumbler and Pinterest (just love them!!!)
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