Some thoughts

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!!!)