Day 365: The End . . . and a New Beginning for Two More Blogs

So this is it. Day 365 is finally here and I feel . . . well, a little anti-climatic actually. I’m not healed or un-crazy. Life isn’t going 100 percent my way and there are still tons of things about myself that I need to work on to be healthy and happy. All that aside, what I am most focused on is the fact that there are so many things happening in the world today that I want to comment on and discuss. While the main intent of the blog might have been to focus myself on me, a side benefit was that it gave me an outlet to express my sometimes over-exuberant opinions on political and social issues. So I have decided there is no reason to stop.

My year of self-examination might be over, but I am going to continue the blog on a semi-frequent basis to see what I can stir up. I love hearing from you on your beliefs and lifestyles and I love even more telling you what I think. The narcissist in me demands a platform and since no one is smart enough to hire me to write for them, I will create my own venue. In this next year I won’t be writing every day, and I won’t be writing so much about my own issues, instead, I will comment on what’s happening in the world. I am perpetually fascinated by what we are and are not doing around the globe, so why not discuss ad nauseam until even I am sick of my own opinions?

I am incredibly grateful to all of you who have read even one of my blogs and I’m pretty damn happy with myself for writing every day (we’ll ignore the five or so days I didn’t post on time). Still, it was a lot of work and there were many days I did not feel like writing anything at all, let alone something others could read. This year will be different. I’ll post only when I want to and it will give me time to consider my topics more carefully and even edit them for mistakes. I hope to engender more discussion and if you have not signed up to follow, you should really do so now.

In addition to this blog, I am starting a new one entitled “Ame’s Addictions” and in that blog I will write about things that I am obsessed with at the moment of publication. The topics will be more fun and in-depth. I’m hoping to use photography, interviews, quotes, and maybe even video. We’ll have to see how it goes. I definitely am never at a loss for words or topics to discuss/investigate so between these two blogs I should be able to come up with some at least partly interesting missives.

In the meantime, I think I am going to enjoy my weekend blog-free for once. Thanks to all of you who have read it, commented and emailed me privately. Your support and even your dissent means more to me than I can tell you. Until next blog, cheers.

A.

Day 364: One Journey Ends and Another Begins

It is a typical bit of irony that just when I am winding down my exploration of the self, the husband would begin one of his own. After all my talk of healing, dealing and feeling, I find that I am a little annoyed at the prospect of Jeff’s own journey of the self. Not that he’s not entitled to his own quest for fulfillment and inner peace, I just don’t want it to interfere with my life. Funny, that for all my talk of acceptance and sucking it up when it comes to my own flaws and quirks, I don’t seem to have the tolerance for granting the same to others.

Not that the husband is particularly flawed or messed up, he’s just unwinding from life now that he’s got a little time and space to be his own person. It’s interesting to note that once you live with someone you kind of stop with the self-indulgent act of “finding oneself” because you’re busy finding each other and who you are together. Jeff has been in school and the Army for eighteen years and most of that time he also had various romantic relationships to maintain. Since we are separated during the week and sometimes over the weekends as well, that part of ourselves that we hold back or temper a bit to compromise for relationship’s sake is starting to seep back in.

I, of course, had a full year on my own to experience all this, but Jeff was a bit busy with that whole war thing during that time. Now that he’s had time to adjust to life after deployment he’s beginning his own journey and as supportive as I want to be, I keep saying and doing the wrong thing. Why is it so difficult to be selfless no matter how much you want to be? I am supportive in theory and know that when all is said and done I will let him experience his own path just as I did, but those selfish motivations keep creeping back in. Why, for example, can’t he just be normal on the weekends and stick to “Jeff time” Monday through Friday?

Being in a partnership is tough and I knew that going in, but there’s a reason I keep finding myself partnered up with strong, somewhat stoic men . . . I am a needy, selfish woman! Jeff is strong and well-adjusted and not overly prone to introspection, and I like it that way. So it really sucks now that he wants to rebuild his own identity after a whirlwind existence of advanced education, relationships, and wartime deployments. Why can’t people be on our timelines instead of their own? Life would be so much easier, but also a lot more boring if we could control our loved ones.

Now that I have completed my set upon journey to find out who and why I am the person I am, it’s going to be difficult not to tell the husband how to proceed down his own path. We all need to take time to get to know our adult selves as separate from those relationships and responsibilities of our daily lives. This might be the hardest part of being a couple. No matter how much we try to exert our independence, it can sometimes be uncomfortable to witness our partner’s own need for the same. I think maybe that is the definition of a truly healthy adult relationship: the acceptance of our loved one’s need to be their own person, separate from their identity of wife or husband. I hope I live up to the challenge.

Day 363: Still Learning, but a Little Sick of Myself

This is it. The final days of my year-long experiment of self-analysis. I’d like to say that after 362 days I have myself all figured out, but unfortunately that’s not really the case. After all this daily introspection I have come to the conclusion that I, like everyone else in the world, am complicated. I don’t know why I do half the things I do and I am no closer to being able to control my inherent moodiness today than I was on day one. Then again, can anyone? Aren’t we all just muddling through and hoping for the best?

I’d love to think that I am somehow better and that my willingness to put myself out into the world, revealing the flaws and conflicts within, has elevated me beyond mere mortal, but it hasn’t. I love that I can look back on this year and see where my head was at on any given day and sometimes even where I was physically. This has been a great experiment for me and I am proud that I stuck to it. There were days that owning up to something was difficult and I have taken some heat for my more controversial opinions, but it is worth it.

If nothing else, my journey in the blogosphere taught me to stay true to who I am, except when it hurts others more than it helps me. Of all the things I learned, this last is the most important, but also the most difficult to remember. As a natural narcissist, it’s easy for me to get wrapped up in my own issues and emotional dramas, and from time to time that means someone else takes a back seat or gets hurt. Despite all the things I am proud of by writing this blog and endeavoring to be truthful and unbiased in my self-reflection, I am struggling with a few losses that it precipitated. I lost a good friend indirectly and there have been a few conflicts with the husband over some content. I cannot say I completely regret anything I wrote, but I am sorry for any hurt I caused.

I’m not fixed and it’s likely that I will always be at least partly broken, but that just leaves more material for other blogs or possibly that book I’ve wanted to write. I’m no different than anyone else, I’m just willing to talk about the things that most people prefer to keep private or even to ignore. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next year brings. Life may never be perfect, but I do believe that I have made mine better by getting to know myself and most importantly, by calling myself on my own bullshit. I still practice occasional denial, but it’s harder to live there when you’re writing your truth on a daily basis. 

Day 361: It's Okay to Need Someone

I caught a rerun of the movie “Bodyguard” the other night. Today, I’ve been singing that Dolly Parton theme song in my head all day long.

“If I should stay
Well, I would only be in your way
And so I'll go, and yet I know
That I'll think of you each step of my way
And I will always love you
I will always love you

Bitter-sweet memories
That's all I have, and all I'm taking with me
Good-bye, oh, please don't cry
'Cause we both know that I'm not
What you need
But I will always love you
I will always love you”

I quote the lyrics, because it’s not something I can paraphrase any clearer than the original. What does it mean to “need” someone? To me, that’s always been sort of a negative. I don’t want to need people, I want to want them and for them to want me. Of course, we need people in the abstract. We all need people that love us and those that we can love, but the idea that we need a specific person sounds frightening to me. Can you survive without that person you are in love with or is your very existence and ability to live a happy and fulfilled life dependent on a single person? Furthermore, if you say yes, is that healthy?

I am a person who before today would tell you that I don’t need the husband. I want to be with Jeff, but I don’t need him to live. I survived long before I met him and I would survive without him. Except here’s the thing, I don’t want to merely survive, I want to be happy and to thrive. Before Jeff, and if I had to have an after Jeff, I would be okay. I know how to be alone, how to manage being lonely and how to be somewhat unhappy. I know that I could go back to that life. There is a certain comfort in not having to be responsible to anyone else and in feeling free to express sadness or anger. Let’s face it, being alone and unhappy is the perfect excuse to feel sorry for oneself and to be cynical, two things I’m pretty damn good at.

I still don’t want to need Jeff, but it doesn’t mean I don’t. When you build a life with someone else, that life only works when both people are committed to it. In essence, you need each other. Sure, you can live without him or her, but the life you have will not be the same one you cherish now. What I have learned in this last year is that needing Jeff does not mean I can’t live without him, it means that this life I have worked so hard to put back together only works with him in it. I need his partnership, his support and his love and so I guess that means I need him. Everyone needs someone and the husband is that someone for me. Lesson learned.

Ah, but that’s not the point of the lyric, is it? In the end, it’s not about who we need, it’s about being the person that our partner needs. Short of changing who we are, the only thing any of us can do is to be the best us possible and hope it’s enough. As much as it sucks to need someone, it feels incredible to be needed back. If I’m lucky, I’ll be that person for Jeff for a very long time to come. I’ve loved a few people, but he is the only one I’ve ever needed and it only took me 361 days to figure it out . . . well, five years and 361 days. 

Day 360: I Put on My Oxygen Mask First Because I Want us Both to Survive

Do we have a responsibility to feel what our partner is feeling? In a perfect relationship we might always be in sync, but real life is rarely perfect and relationships aren’t either. So how does one navigate the emotional ups and downs of our partner in a way that is considerate even if we’re not on the same page? For that matter, is it even necessary or should we be free to feel on our own schedule?

While the husband was in Iraq working 24/7 seven days a week I was soothing my emotional distress with good times, alcohol induced hazes, and lots of soul searching. Should I have been home every night sitting by the computer and phone hoping for a call or was it okay to still live my life? I hate that I got to have fun while he got shot at, but in life we sometimes have to follow paths that take us away from our partners.

So what exactly is our responsibility to one another? While we may be coupled up and stand as one in a union, we are still individuals with our own minds, opinions, and emotions. What one person needs to be happy and healthy may not be the same for the other. I think that is okay, but it seems to often cause conflict in many relationships. Each decision made by one person might have an affect on the other person, but do we not still have the right to follow a path that we want or need? I will not argue that some choices are too big and have the potential to adversely affect a relationship in a serious way, but this idea that every step we take must be in tandem is suffocating.

I was born a singular entity with my own name and identity and I will never be a Mrs. or need to take another’s name to redefine who I am. Married, single or in-between, I will forever just be me and the choices I make in my life will firstly be for my own sanity. I put my oxygen mask on first before helping those I care about. Why is looking out for number one, as the saying goes, such a bad thing? There are going to be times in every relationship when one partner is struggling with something and while we should certainly be compassionate we cannot always be in the same emotional place as our partner. I get to be me. So while your own circumstances may not be as dramatic as an Iraq deployment, the reality is the same. We cannot stop life’s bullets and sometimes you just need a cocktail.

Day 359: If I Checked Myself, I'd Surely Wreck Myself

A friend recently pointed out to me that one can search my blog for specific words or phrases. Such a search will bring up every blog that mentions the searched for word(s), thus allowing one to see trends and/or patterns in my writing. Fabulous. A shortcut to dissecting the frequency and timeline of my many issues, just what I was hoping for. So now if I want to see just how often alcohol has played into my personal year-long experiment I can just type in a few words (whiskey, scotch, beer) and see that in 35 separate blogs I mentioned one of these three. 35 out of 358 isn’t that bad, right?

I suppose I should be glad for this new knowledge. If the initial intent of the blog was to get to know myself better and hold myself accountable now I have an actual accounting of each issue. I can search all kinds of fun topics and reminisce. Things like, sad, lonely, low self-esteem, angry, mistake, and all sorts of lovely blasts from the past. Should I actually catalog the various blog topics of this past year would I learn anything about myself? Perhaps, but I’m not sure I even want to learn that lesson. Life is hard enough without wallowing in one’s misfortunes. When I blog about them I just let them out into the world and try not to revisit except for the most egregious of typos or grammatical mistakes.

Now, however, I have this lingering potential summary hanging over my head. I am both fascinated and repulsed by the idea of knowing who I was and what I was thinking on any given day. Imagine having the ability to recall any day of your past, would you use it, what about if it were only over a specific period of time in which you were admittedly struggling? As a person who tries diligently to live a life without regrets this factual hindsight into my past mentality is tormenting me. On one hand I am a narcissistic soul who clearly has no problem wallowing in my own life experiences be they good or bad, but I also believe in accepting and moving on without a lot of worrying over what was and what could have been.

I believe people live their lives in a manner best suited for them at any given moment in time, and to revisit that time does not necessarily mean that one’s current mentality would align with that of the past. I hope that I have grown some, learned some, and forgotten some over the last year. No one is more aware than I am that within me exists the potential for both excellence and massive stupidity. Will reviewing those choices now make me the better for it? I’m not sure and I’m even a little afraid to test it out. There may only be 35 instances of my mentioning those three drinks, but search drunk, cocktails or drinking and you’ll likely to get quite a few more hits. Some things are better left unknown and under-analyzed. I am what I am and I cannot undo anything, but I certainly do not have to relive it.