My Journey, then and now

When you look back on how far you have come in your life, it takes you to this place within yourself, where no one can taint or touch your journey. I have been dwelling in this place the last few weeks. I cant tell you how many things that I wish I could go back and fix or redo, so many stupid mistakes and wasted oppertunties. But the sad fact is, you cant go back. You cant change the way you lived before. you can only control the road ahead. With that said, how do you take all that hurt, that anger and turmoil and push it aside without it dragging behind you the rest of the way like dead weight. I know that people make mistakes, that people regret the choices they once made. The way I felt then isent the way I feel now, I can let go and over come the disapointments and failures. But the problem is I cant forget. I get to this place where everything is in order, I do well in life and Im happy. And then on a dime, things change drastically. I loose pretty much everything and I have to start again. I try to see the best in things, I try to tell myself that it is just one more hurdle to clear before you find the right job. But then you get into a new job and you get your second career wind. You might work your ass off but all you lost is replaced or upgraded. Then bam, a kick in the career gut and time has run out again. It is a constant give and take, but thats life right. The hard has to come just as the good has to. Nothing in life is permanent and I think im really realizing that and it bothers me. It started off with little things, like my family changed traditions a little bit over the summer and I was surprised to find myself sad that things werent the same anymore. Most of my cosins and friends have famlies of their own now, so hanging out with friends gets harder and harder to do around everyones sceduals. People are working their asses off and becoming parents. Its a rough time for all of us. We suddenly realize that we are almost through our twenties and were supposed to have all these things done before we turn thirty. Then the panic sets in. It is really hard to swallow when your whole life has to turn on a totally different axis then your used to. I know that it is sort of childish to be melonchaly about growing up, but lets face it people, everyone knows the hard part of life is when adulthood is upon you.
I dont know what to do with my life. Im unsure where I should go from here. I dont know how to take everything i would like to accomplish and make it happen. I have completly lost my drive for life and that is unlike me. Im usually upbeat and opptimistic. I used to laugh and crack jokes all the time, I swear I havent smiled or laughed in weeks. I am loosing myself in the maddness and its frustrating. I know im stronger than this, im not the person that sits around and feels sorry for themselves. Well that is how I have been all my life. Perhaps its time i faced that im not super women and I cant do it all on my own. I do need to ask for help sometimes and I need to remember that the best way to get back on your feet is to admit that you have fallen in the first place. I need to grit my teeth and get back on the grind stone, but knowing that doesnt make my feet want to move.
There will never be a age in your life where you say, okay this is it, there will be no more hard things to face, no more tragedy or failure, deceit or pain. Its just not realistic, hard is a part of getting through life. I will always fight, but I wont always be strong enough to sholder the weight on my own. Im going to chalk this all up to a learning experience, I realized things about myself that I need to change, and if I dont ever want to be in this posititon again then I need to change what is broken..
When this is all over, and I can be myself again, I hope that I came through this whole. I dont know if I can continue on in my journey with chips or cracks or peices missing. Id give anything to feel whole again.
When I looked back I wanted to know where it had started to go all wrong, I needed to know what had happened that destroyed me so. I thought of my childhood. I have two older siblings, My mother and father were highschool sweethearts. My mother got pregnant in her senior year and walked the stage pregnant with my eldest sibling and sister Lorraine. They married after graduation and moved to Colorado to try and carve their own life together. Things got hard and with a little baby, they needed help. When they moved home things got better and they bought their first home. They had my brother Rickie. The marriage was hard on my parents, they were still kids themselves. They had never been on their own before, never had the time to go off to school or go off and travel. They sacrificed for their children and it caused a wedge between my parents and their marriage. My mom was a go getter, she had children that needed to eat and bills that needed to be paid. She went out and worked three jobs to provide for her family. My father was unsure of what he wanted in life, depressed because he wanted to do so much more with his life, and he felt trapped in a marriage he wasent even sure they were ready for. He counted on my mom because he didnt know how to step up and take the lead. He didnt have the drive or the confidence she had. They tried to make it work, but my father had a few affairs, my mother was angry because she was always taking care of everything on her own. Then my mom got pregnant with me, her baby brother who was suffering from leiukemia was getting worse and she knew she was loosing him, her marriage was falling apart, she was struggling to take care of her two children and she had another one on the way. She was ill with me, there was a lot going on in her life and I think she was stressed out. I came early and I was a premie, and had to have special care. My mother was a nervous wreck because I was born early. I was tiny compared to their other two children. The stress of everything finally snapped the marriage and my mom left my father. I have no memory of my mother and father together, I was one when the divorce was final. RIckie, my older brother was two and probably doesnt remember much either. Lorraine was four so Im sure she has some memories. I dont think we were affected as kids by the divorce because everyone knew that staying together would only have been misrable and too hard to bare. I think that my parents genineally loved one another and they were friends, I think they both realized that they were young and they had so much life left to lead, and they both deserved to be happy. It Broke them but in the end, deep down they know it was the right thing to do.
When my parents split, my mother became involved with another man a few years later named Tom. My father took off and for the most part only came around when it was convienient for him. He was dealing with the divorce and he didnt know what he wanted to do with his life. For a long time Tom was my permanent father figure, he cooked me dinner, put me to bed, played with me and took care of me. My mother moved us into his trailer in the country, it was some of the best times in my childhood. I was a happy kid and I was happy with Tom and my mom as my parents. I knew my father and I saw him from time to time, but it wasnt the same. My mother got to the point where she wanted more children. Tom didnt want to have anymore since they had the three of us. My mom wanted to keep her children close in age and have them while she was young. Eventually that was the one thing that broke them apart. I believe that Tom and My mom loved each other very much, I think that seprating hurt Tom deeply. He was in it for the long haul, we were his family. But my mom wanted more and she had met some one new. This is where the journey first introduced pain. I hated my mother for leaving tom, i hated her new boyfriend and I was mad that Tom never came back for me. I would have gone anywhere he took me, I know now he couldnt, I wasnt his child. But as a child, I was his kid and I wanted to be where he was and have everything go back to the way it used to be. This is when I learned that nothing in life will remain the same. Not even your own parents. As my mom was raising us, she was growing up herself, she made mistakes with us that she maybe shouldnt have, but she was a single mom who did what she had to do to keep us together and healthy. This is also where my trust issues with men began. How easily they could forget you or toss you aside, it was a page turner in my life.
As years went on my mother had two more children with the man she left Tom for. His name is Dan and he is the father of my sisters so he will always be considered connected to the family. Dan and I have had a long road. We had many years where we didnt get along. I was angry for the wrongs he did to my family by being a drunk. I was mad for having to see my mother struggle yet again. I learned a lot in these years. I had two baby sisters that I had to help take care of, so I learned a lot of valuable motherly things. I learned a lot about people with addiction and how it can destroy family life. I learned that happiness is something that is precious and doesnt come without hard work. During this time I had to go and live with my father. It was a difficult time for me, I was taken away from my siblings, and forced to start a new school. I was a teenager in a new place in a new school and I wasnt happy about it. I gave my parents a hard time and did a lot of bad things. I dropped out of school and got into the wrong crowd. My life spirled out of control. I fell in love for the first time and for the first time got my heart broken. This is where it all went wrong. This is where I first lost my way. I dropped out of school and wasted years traveling around and struggling before I got my butt back to school but that was only one of the problems. My heart was hurting. I was an abnormal child, I believed fully in falling in love and making sure everything is perfect. I tried to do everything right and I thought that I couldnt love anyone more than I could love the person I was with at the time. I dedicated my soul to a realationship. I was young and a bit of a dreamer, I had all kinds of unrealistic plans and goals. I believed we would be together forever and I would be happy. And as quickly as the love sparked, it ended. There was never closure or any reason why it had to end and that is something i will have to live with for the rest of my life. I broke inside on the day my life as I knew it ended. I had a dream and it was squashed, I was in love and it wasnt returned. It took years to bounce back from that, years I didnt date anyone or let anyone in. I began to shut myself off. I decided being numb, or cold was a hell of a lot easier than showing someone how much they meant to me. For the first time I feared love and what it could do to my life. I learned that caution was nessasary to protect your heart. A thick wall was built around my heart during that time, I have been chipping away at it ever since.
As I grew up I got into another serious relationship and I was cheated on and lied to and mistreated, we were young and selfish and destructive and we destroyed one another. We lived together for a long time and he was the first guy I ever shared a home with. I learned a lot about myself and what I want out of a relationship. I wasnt the nauive girl I once was, but I loved deeply. I loved him and I hoped for things again, I thought we would be together forever, but there were things that I began to notice and I realized if I didnt change things, if I didnt step away I would wind up just like my mother, in a unhappy marriage, working three jobs, struggling through school and raising children on my own. I realized that there is a pattern to lives and there are certain cycles that people get stuck in and its up to the person to change things so the cycle breaks. I want to do things the right way, I want a husband and a family and a home and I want to be happy. I loved this person I was with, I still do. I still wish sometimes that the person would come back and show me I was all wrong, that they could be a husband I could count on, a good father to the children we would raise, and someone I could count on to help support a family. I wish I could believe that I would be enough for him, that he would never stray again, but I cant do those things. He never came back to fight for us, so it was never meant to be. It doesnt mean that the pain leaves. I think that although the first love destroyed me, I think this relationship im speaking of crumbled me. I no longer believe that there is a marriage that can work in this day in age. I no longer believe that a couple can be a team, I think that there is always one person that has to take care of everything while the other mooches off the other. I dont think that love is enough to make you happy. Not only did I live with him and begin to believe that a life together would be possible, Not only did I fall for him but I fell for his family. I created bonds with people because I believed we would be family forever. And then it ended, not just the relationship but the home and the family and all you put into the relationship. It isent worth it to me to ever even be in a relationship in the first place. I have never seen a marrige steam from my generation that lasts or that is trully genuine. Its sickening and disheartening, its also a stone cold fact and not one I can afford to forget.
Knowing all these things about myself, going back and seeing the root of my pain can help me save my future from the same problems. I know that a relationship is not something you can base dreams around, I need to ensure my own destiny, provide for myself, do the things I need to do to make sure Im going to be okay. I need to be able to count on myself and that be enough because I know that I wont be able to rely or count on someone else forever. I know that nothing lasts, so I need to prepare more for when things begin to go south again. I need to learn to love myself and not care if someone loves me back. If I want a family of my own, I can have one. I dont need a husband or a relationship to have that, at least I wont be disapointed when I end up doing it all on my own. I need to stop believing in the unrealistic and I need to stop dwelling in dreams, all it ever does is cause pain.
The point im trying to make is this, You need to look back on your own lives, you need to learn your own lessions and form your own standards for life. I think that in order to make it through life, you need to be whole as a person. To be whole, you must patch all the holes poked along the way. Once that is done you can be the best self you can be and you can put your best foot forward on your journey through life. Take every day you have for all its worth and dont ever forget, in the end the only person you have to blame for walking the wrong road is yourself, so step wisly folks, every step counts on the walk of life.