Finding Happiness Between Point A And Point B

The event from my last entry has really been on my mind all day. Not really stewing on it, but how can I better myself from this experience. How can I make this a better situation? Well, I have today off from work, I’m supposed to be packing, but instead I’ve been cleaning up the wonderful mess left behind from roommates and my cats’ messyness so that when Older Boy and the boyfriend get here tonight, it will be clean. And while doing the dishes, I had a thought. Significant enough that I had to come here and write it down before it slipped away into the other thoughts of the day.

In college as a Sigma Chi Sweetheart, I learned that you can always better yourself, no matter how close you think you are to being your best. I also firmly believe that everything that happens to you in life is a lesson to be learned, and that your life is a result of the choices you make, and the way you live your life between your lessons (getting from point A to point B).

Well, while washing the dishes, I came across the thought that maybe the lessons I thought I had already learned…perhaps as I get older and wiser some of those lessons need to be revisited, revised and relearned.

Specifically, the lesson of “Not allowing the choices that other people make affect my life.”

This was a lesson that I first was told in college my sophomore year. A friend of mine killed himself, and I was at the edge of a very dark place. The Spring semester had literally just started three days earlier. On my second class session, after this had all happened, my Shakespeare professor pulled me out of class and told me, “I know that this is hard right now for you. But you can’t allow the choices that other people make affect your life. You need to learn to walk away from this a stronger person.”

At the time, I was too distraught to absorb this. In fact, this didn’t even find its way through the fog of depression well until I had already withdrawn for the semester to sort things out. But from then on, I lived my independent life making sure that my choices were my own, and not allowing other people’s choices to have an effect on my life. And if it became an issue, I simply walked away. I didn’t need other people’s bad choices to drag me down.

Of course, in college other people’s bad choices generally revolved around drinking, smoking, drugs and whoring themselves out. On another level, there were also the annoying irritating girls they often slept with and insisted on bringing over to the house. But they were easy to ignore.

Well, now I find that this lesson and solution don’t apply in the same way. I can’t escape my boyfriend’s choices. There is no easy get away plan. And it’s really frustrating…and as my own worst critic…I’ve really been coming down on myself to figure it out. So what’s a girl to do?

I think that I need to relearn this. I need to revise my solution of walking away because, although it’s an option, it’s not an option that I want to choose. I’ve already decided that it’s not an option. Instead of telling myself to grow up and get over it, I need to figure out something else. Because “Grow up and Get Over It” just isn’t working.

I have enough faith in myself that I’ll figure it out…or at least figure out a temporary solution outside of pushing the icky feeling down and letting it bottle up inside, because eventually that’s not going to work any more either.

Interestingly enough, I’ve experienced more horrors in a lifetime than any woman should. But this, this is the thing that has me all hung up. And really, I refuse to let myself make myself miserable between this point of figuring out that I need to relearn this lesson and the day that I finally find the solution. I will figure this out, and this thing that has me all hung up, this will make me a better person.