Time alone forces your mind to work and the things your mind
chooses to mull and work on are the things that sometimes can scare you the
most. My personal experience has been that the last 10 months have left me a
lot of time to examine my life and where I'm at right now. I can view it in
terms of what society tells me I should be feeling and happy with, and my own
realistic view as it pertains to my everyday existence which tells me something
entirely different.
My personal view of who I am has always been optimistic.
I've viewed myself as someone loyal, reliable when it counts, but idealistic in
the best sense possible. The life situation known as divorce has forced me to
ponder something that I've always seen the results as an outsider, but never
fully accepted as a part of myself; that is being selfish. The selfishness I've
had to come to accept is not the kind I associate with material things or
money. The selfishness I've concerned myself with, is the idea of happiness and
how it pertains to my life.
Marriage is one of those subjects that has hit in all
previous parts of my dissertation on great human beings because it was
something that I thought would define my being as a success. This was the one
area of life where I thought if I put work into, put effort into, I would never
be alone again. I spent most of my time growing up feeling like an outsider, a
loser, and awkward. I thought that if I found someone to love me for me, and I
could swindle them into spending "forever" with me, that would be
happiness. Married folks always tell you that it's hard work, and while you
associate hard work with aspects of your life like your job, yard work, and
working out, the work involved in a marriage is something completely different.
The aforementioned aspects of work entail physical pain and labor. Marriage
requires sacrifice & compromise and when you really analyze these things
that are needed for a relationship; you don't factor in how much of you think
you are that you will lose to this new entity known as the married couple. If
your marriage is healthy and honest, it's a two way street where solutions come
about by working together. In most situations, it turns out to be one standing
and one falling and resentment builds up and infects all the aspects of what
you originally got together for.
Tranquility to me insinuates a sense of calm well-being that
comes about when being alone. But it was in these times that I was face to face
with my flaws as a person. I wasn't perfect. The things that I perceived and
valued as "good," also carried with them the realization that these
same good qualities also made me weak. I've had to accept that I'm not a great
leader, but a devoted follower with qualities that others at the top may not
possess. Making excuses for yourself is something that comes with having an
ego, but exercising honesty with yourself is something that pain comes with.
There are things that present themselves that you cannot change or require a
lot of work to make better.
After these thoughts percolate in your mind, you start to
question the motives of others. It's like one giant paranoid scheme where
everything that you thought was concrete or a pillar of your life has holes.
You start to tear things down to see. It's at this time, I chose to rebuild.
While my goal is to be honest, especially with myself, the element that is a
fixed variable in this equation known as life is time. Like Pink Floyd sang
about, the "ticking away of the moments that make up a dull day" is
what makes up most of our lives. Was it a huge human flaw that I didn't want my
limited time here to be defined by a marriage where I always compromised? When
I first had the initial success idea that finding someone to marry would make
me happy, the question of "what if things change and they create suffering"
never came into play. To keep my family together, I tried to convince (LIE)
myself, that this was the vow I took. For better or worse. But time was the
nagging element that made me reconsider what my vows meant. Marriage is a
partnership above all. What is a partnership where there is no respect? It's
just one person taking advantage of the other. Did I want my time in life to be
defined by that?
I'm trying to be okay with the fact that life/time is
something that is okay to be selfish about. If I take my life and time back, I
can use it for something and someone better who will appreciate the other
"good" qualities I have and not take advantage of what I consider my
heart. Most of all, I'm accepting the fact that the best investment I can make
with my time is in me. To be alone with these thoughts and flaws so that I can
create a solution isn't something to fear. It's part of who we were meant to be
and discover.
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