My title for this week is in reference to an Andrea Gibson poem by that same title.  The video is here > > > > > > >












Unfortunately, my ending has not ended so well recently.  Made the decision it is really and finally time to disconnect with my partner of the last four and a half years.  I know I have been here before.  I have done this before.  I have said, "never again," before.  But this time things feel very different.

For the first time I truly feel at peace with my decision to be alone.  Not just not being with my ex, but being truly and completely alone.  When I started my "100 Days of Me," or whatever I decided to call it at the time, I think my heart knew where I was going but my mind just was not there yet.  Well, my mind is here now and I am working to truly embrace this.  I am going to spend this time alone, loving me, learning about me, building my own personal relationship with myself.

You see, something I realized was that my relationship has taken away something that I dearly love-the burning fire inside that makes me who I am.  Anyone who has known me for long enough will tell you that I am loud, outspoken, and maybe even a little crazy, but also that I am fiercely passionate about what I believe in.  Lately, though, I have not felt that way, and realizing that is what spurred me to make this change.

I want to feel the flames of passion inside.  I want to feel the excitement that comes with going to a job that you love and knowing that you are making a difference.  I have that, but I have been so disconnected from my experience in that.  It's time to make a change, and I am so ready.

Alla prossima, until next time. 

The last couple weeks have found me in an interesting situation.  Things were starting to get a little bit better in my relationship; we were communicating more and I was feeling better.  My partner visited this weekend, and things felt off.  Neither of us were feeling well, emotionally or physically, and we just did not feel super in sync.  I was not sure how to feel about the situation, and so I did not really say anything while he was here.

Speaking with my mother yesterday, though, I became a little worried.  I began to process what I was going through, and I was honestly feeling a little disconnected and uninvested in the relationship.  When my partner left on Sunday, I did not really feel anything.  We were also talking about Valentine's Day and how this trip was so draining that he will not be coming to visit then.  That did not bother me either.  After being used to feeling really ruled by my emotions, I did not know how to feel about this lack of any emotional response.

For class right now, we are reading Robert Kegan, specifically his theory about different orders of consciousness.  As I understand it, the second order of consciousness is all about having your own feelings and thoughts and recognizing that others have their own thoughts and feelings, the third order consists of recognizing that others have their own thoughts and feelings and also being able to accommodate those in your own thinking and beliefs, while the fourth order of consciousness is so much more.  In this area, you experience your emotions but they are not your existence.  As he puts it, you are able to have a relationship to what you are feeling, not just be ruled by it.

I wonder if, as I'm reading and learning about this concept, my mind is trying to apply it to my relationship.  The fourth order, which I initially thought sounded cold, does allow for much more freedom it seems.  When you are not just your feelings, I feel like you are free to interact with those feelings and claim much more ownership over them, thus allowing you to control them more.  Perhaps that is what I am doing?

On the other hand, I worry that I just don't care about these things because I'm disengaged from the relationship.  I would like to get to this fourth order of thinking and would love to have a partner that is there as well.  The way my partner talks, though, he is very much in the third order of consciousness.  Everything is about feelings, his, mine, others, and what those feelings mean.  I understand that, and can empathize, but I would like to move beyond that.  I just don't know if he is the person to do that with, because he seems quite caught up in feelings.  The way he sees it, he can't control how he feels, he is entitled to experience how he feels (which I agree with), and also that others should accept responsibility for his feelings.  The first and last point I totally disagree with.  But I don't know what that means for us, or at least for me right now.  I don't know, it's a lot to process.

Also, school is a lot.  Right now, I'm struggling because I feel like I'm spending a lot of time just getting things done so I can check them off my to-do list rather than really taking the time to engage in my learning process.  This is graduate school, and a program in education, so I am particularly troubled by this.  I am getting to a place where I will be able to contribute more time to my studies, but this semester came on so hard and fast that I'm not quite there yet.  My professor told me today to just keep trying, that that is all I can do, but in a way I don't feel good about that.  I feel like I should be doing my best, going deeper and deeper at every chance, not just getting things done.  But maybe what I really need is to cut myself some slack and do what I can when I can.  Right now I'm swamped, getting ready to go to a conference, and really sick.

I think it's time for bed, but this is what is on my mind.  Thanks for helping me process!

Alla prossima, until next time!

Never gonna let you down, never gonna turn around, and hurt you...

That song has been stuck in my head all day.  I've been thinking a lot about this whole fucked up situation with my partner.  Emphasis on the fucked up part.  The more I think about it, the more I feel like I'm being punished and how amazingly wrong that is.  Do I think that what I said was right?  No.  But, I did not mean for it to come out, I have done nothing but apologize since then, and I've done my best to be supportive of my partner's healing process.  But it does not really feel like healing from my end, it feels like avoidance, and that is not OK.

For two weeks, I have been pretty much ignored.  I got texts occasionally throughout the day.  But our conversations are minimal and banal at best.  There is little to no emotion from him.  Then, when I was having an awful day and just wanted him to be decent, that was too much.  I did not even ask him to try to make me feel better, I just asked him to act normal.  Apparently, though, that was too much, because he suggested we just get off the phone and I take the night to relax.  

As you can probably tell, I'm beginning to move into the anger phase in this situation.  Like I said, I get needing time to heal.  But shouldn't we be doing that as a couple, as partners working together?  Where do you get off cutting me out, ignoring me, and doing this by yourself?  That is not how this is supposed to work.

And what happens later on?  What if, down the road and we've got kids and a family, something traumatic happens?  Does he cut us all out, or just me?  What does that mean for the kids?  How are they supposed to cope?  How do I?  It's a lot of uncertainty that I really don't feel is a positive indicator in a relationship that you expect to build an adult life off of.  

Right now, I'm continuing on as I have.  I'm going to be patient, hope for things to get better, and go about loving me.  But that is not going to last forever, and when the time comes I'm going to have to give my partner an ultimatum.  I hope I don't have to; I truly hope that he will snap out of this and we can come back together to heal and grow.  If that is not the case, I'm going to have to put my foot down, set my limits, and if he isn't willing to work with that, walk.  I cannot, and will not, live like this forever.  It's putting a damper on my happiness and that is something I will not tolerate.  

Alla prossima, until next time.

Today I am starting a new project, a personal project, and I am calling it 100 Days of Me.  Since my last post, I have fallen into a bit of a funk.  Communications between myself and my partner have been strained at best and it is beginning to worry me.  That aside, though, I've been confronted with the fact that I have fallen into an old, unhealthy mindset.

I spoke with my Mom on Sunday about the issues I've been having.  Long story short, she told me I needed to love myself.  Regardless of what else happened, I needed to learn to love myself because I was putting to much of my happiness into this relationship.  It was a pattern I did in many of my relationships, I'm just one of those people that relies on those around me.  The more she spoke, though, the more I began to agree that it was not healthy.

So for the next 100 days I'm going to start spending time with me.  This period is going to be all about loving myself, practicing honest and nonjudgemental awareness, and learning to find strength from within rather than through my relationships with others.  I mean, I don't want to be that guy.  That guys is weak, he drains energy from those around him rather than creating a beautiful, two-way relationship.  That guy is a vampire, a soul-sucking fiend.

I know the next 100 days are not going to be easy.  This is only day one, and I have had plenty of weak moments.  My partner has not texted me or called me at all today, and that definitely threw me for a loop.  Rather than running to him, begging him to acknowledge me, I decided to sit with that discomfort.  Eventually, it led me on here to make my first post.  Honestly, I already feel better, but was a little disappointed that one day in and I was already having a bad day.  My goal is to treat myself with compassion in these moment and remember this is a time for discovery, love, and growth, not beating myself up.  For now, I'm going to meditate and sit with this for a while.  I'm excited to see what the next 100 days brings!

Alla prossima, until next time!

This week I did something I frankly never thought would happen-I hurt someone I love so much in a way I can't fix or take back.  I didn't lie, or cheat, or even physically harm this person.  Worse than that, I made a careless comment, without even thinking, regarding an incredibly painful part of this person's past.  While the moment preceding this comment was not in any way negative, the comment flew out of my mouth before I even realized I was saying it and I immediately knew the damage was done.

The person I have hurt is my partner.  We have been together through a very rock, off and on relationship for nearly four years.  Feelings have always been there, it's the logistics of a relationship that have always eluded us.  We haven never communicated properly, especially in conflict.  Neither of us have had particularly successful adult relationships in our lives to learn from, so this isn't exactly surprising.

However, this time around truly has been different.  Yes, I know how cliche that sounds.  My undergraduate degree is in social work, so i get it.  This sounds like one of those relationships.  But honestly, I don't care.  Things really have been different this time.  I moved a state away to pursue my dream while my partner is pursuing his own, and he still wants to put in effort.  That's a big deal.  We've also had much more productive conversations than ever.  For the first time I feel able to express whatever it is I'm feeling and be heard, even if I'm not agreed with.  My partner says he feels the same.  

Now the issue.  I won't go into specifics about the comment or what it triggered because that is not my story to share.  However, I will share my experience since.  Mainly I feel like shit.  What I said triggered something huge in my partner and has caused him a lot of pain.  I have a done nothing but apologize, rightly so, and yet there is nothing I can do to fix it.  He has made it quite clear that this is something he needs to work through and, though he's not sure how yet, all I really can do is wait it out.  I feel powerless, out of the loop, and like I have potentially ruined our relationship for good this time.  Potentially irrational since my partner says he loves me and doesn't want to quit over this, but as my Mama always says, "feelings are the least rational thing on this planet."

So this is where I'm at.  For now I will do nothing.  I will act normal and be there for my partner.  I have to constantly remind myself that this experience, while hard on me, is about bringing my partner some sort of healing.  If that means I have to sacrifice a bit of my own comfort in order to be there for him, so be it.  Learning that I can't always fix things on my own timeline is not fun or easy, and it definitely doesn't feel fair, but currently it feels right.  I will commit to this and hope for the best to come about as soon as possible.

Alla prossima, until next time.

It's been a while since I've blogged.  My brain feels like it is going to explode with all that is running through it and I just do not know what to do with it all.

Grad school is hard.  Seriously, the Struggle Bus is a thing.  I feel like I am constantly playing catch up.  I have three classes that require group/partner projects and they make me want to scream.  My partner for one class is absolutely awful, and she is in one of my groups for another class.  She never wants to do things in a timely manner; I'm pretty sure her middle name is Procrastination.

It all feels like too much.  I'm trying to keep myself afloat and I always feel like I'm two strokes from sinking under the waves.

My job is not helping either.  I'm so frustrated with it I can't believe it.  I never thought I would be one to say this, but this University has no business having an LGBT Resource Center right now.  It is completely and utterly needed, but administration did not set it up for success.  By extension, I was not set up for success.  And on top of that, my supervisor basically ripped me a new one that he does not like the way I am doing things and needs me to be better.

That was all I needed to decide to look for a different position while I get through my grad program, but it makes me sad. I wanted to be the trend-setter, the ground-breaker.  I always told myself that I needed to be the one fighting the good fight.  Now I feel like I am selling out.  I just can't do it anymore.  I'm exhausted with the work I'm doing, I am endlessly frustrated, and frankly I'm tired of having to be the one that is always angry.

Why should it be me?  Why can't I have something that I do just because I enjoy it?  Everything always has to be justified, explained, deconstructed and molded into something so obscure that it doesn't even make sense to me anymore.  All in the name of creating Something Better.  I get it.  I really do.  But I'm so tired of working towards Something Better, I just want something Good Enough.  At least for now.  I'm not saying I give up, but I need to find more balance.  And this is part of that.  So I'm going to step off my soap box, keep my head down and my nose clean for the rest of this year, and start up again next year in a position, hopefully, that makes me happier.  We shall see.

Alla prossima, until next time.

I have got some major emotional blue balls, and it's beginning to drive me nuts.  OK, maybe that's a little much to start off with.  Too vivid an image, perhaps?  I don't know, let me take a step back.

A few months ago, it was decided that I would be breaking up with the only boy I've ever loved.  (For the sake of ease, we will call him Jeff.)  Jeff and I had a ridiculously passionate relationship; we played hard, we fought hard, we loved hard and we broke up hard.  He was my best friend and my worst enemy.  During the three years we were together we both grew up a lot and learned a little more about ourselves as individuals, which eventually meant that we decided we just weren't good.

Granted, this "revelation" had been a long time coming.  We had been through more than one breakup with each other, so this really wasn't shocking.  I think what hit me harder than anything was the finality; this time just felt different.  When he left the last time I saw him, I could feel in my heart that I was likely never going to see him again.  Probably good for my sanity, but still hard to take in when saying goodbye to the person you have been madly in love with for the last three years.

Fast forward three months, and now I'm here.  I've moved 250 miles away to go to grad school.  Since we split I've been sort of floating by on the high of major changes.  New city, new job, new school... It is a lot to take in!  I've really enjoyed my "new life" and been settling in to all the changes.  But that transition time is over and "real life" is starting to set in.  Part of that is me becoming hyper-aware of just how alone I am.  It fucking sucks.

Mostly, I just have a lot of feelings.  I got so used to having someone around to kiss, to cuddle, to go to when I was having a rough day or to take care of when he was having a hard time.  No longer being able to do that is starting to take its toll on my overall happiness.  I think many would say that that's a sign that I SHOULDN'T be in a relationship, but who knows.

Is it really so wrong to enjoy having someone in your life?  People simultaneously say humans are social creatures and we need others, then say it's wrong to need a partner.  Well, which is it people??? I like to think I'm not stunted because I need someone in my life to give my love to.  I have a lot of it and I need to expend it on something.  Does that mean that I don't love myself and can't really love someone else?  I don't think so!  But who am I to say.  There's so much I don't know, maybe this is just one thing to add to the list. 

And the worst part is, I really miss Jo... I mean Jeff.  Harrumph.  

Well, now that I've confused and depressed myself, I think it's time for bed.  In all actuality, I enjoy getting all this off my chest.  It helps me process.  Eventually I'll have to make some sort of meaning out of my ramblings on here, but for now this is good enough.  So good night for now!

Alla prossima, until next time!