Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

Good morning , LOLers! It’s a bright new day with unlimited possibilities. I spent part of the day yesterday with Colleen, my bestie and sister from another mother. She knows me as well as anyone in my family and she’s able to point things out to me that I might be too close to view objectively. I got a good night’s sleep with no weird dreams, celebrity sex dreams or otherwise. 

And I feel completely different this morning.

Breakups suck. Everyone on this planet has had or will have their heart broken at some point, and we gauge the emotional pain based upon how deeply we cared for and were committed to our former partner. Sometimes we feel like we dodged a bullet, and other times we feel as if our entire insides have been ripped out leaving us about as functional as the Walking Dead.

The first time Max and I broke up was the worst heartbreak of my life. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and a good day was when I could wake up and make it to the shower before I started crying. I had been living in Vegas when we split and shortly after, went to Oklahoma to stay with my mom while she was going through chemotherapy and to try to put my own head back together. You can imagine the culture shock from Vegas to OK only added to my heartbreak and depression. But slowly I started to put myself back together and I measured my recovery not in feeling better, but in acknowledging that I didn’t feel as bad as the day before.  But this was the beginning of my on again, off again relationship with Max.

Three and a half years ago, we started back on again. At that point, I was still employed and going to school, and he had a home and obligations, so it wasn’t an ideal time for either of us to move to be together. We agreed to a long distance relationship for a specified number of years, and in spite of everything, we were making it work.

As I’ve said, I won’t go into the details of what precipitated this final breakup. But to be bluntly honest, I’d been willing to give up everything to move to his home, despite the fact I extremely dislike the area of the country where he lives. At the time it made sense, because he’s a homeowner, and the market still sucks and it would take forever to sell, probably at a lower price, blah blah, etc. But this morning, I feel a little angry at how little he’s been willing to concede over the last three years. I won’t deny that he’s been really supportive since my diabetes diagnosis and subsequent recovery and management, and encouraging in my job search. But the fact remains that I feel less valued at his reluctance to make concessions to my life, fully expecting to get his way to reduce the disruption to his own.

He’s not a bad man. He has some wonderful qualities or I would never have loved him the way I have for so many years. And I’ve always been aware of his faults and accepted them, knowing I couldn’t change him. But he is a selfish man, and ultimately this is what I cant live with.  But oddly enough, I’m not devastated. I’m not angry. I’m not bitter. I am deeply disappointed, though. His willingness to so blithely dismiss the depth and commitment of our relationship and me when he’d professed I was the most important thing in his life, has left me feeling completely unvalued to him.

But. Here’s the important thing. I know my own worth. I know what I brought to the table and contributed to the relationship and the depth of love and understanding that I gave to him. If he fails to recognize that once again, as he obviously has, then I realize there is nowhere left to go in the whole affair. I am finally finished and have him out of my system. He’s been like a drug to me for 15 years, whether we were together or apart. Yet I woke up this morning absolutely knowing I was done and he was out of my system for good. I could never want him back now because his latest act of selfishness closed the door to any future we may have had.

Instead of being a crying mess wondering what was wrong with me, wondering what I lacked that he couldn’t give me what I deserved, I woke up this morning knowing I deserve so much better and that there’s something inherently wrong in him to be willing to throw away what he himself claimed to be the greatest and best thing that had ever happened to him.

I may not have much right now. My future is very uncertain on many levels. But I have a future that is wholly my own. I have myself, which is a pretty damned awesome self. I have my self-respect. I have an open vista of possibilities before me. I may have just turned 48, but I still have the option to choose anything I want for my life. And that is something available to each and every one of us regardless of circumstances. Nothing is impossible. Regardless of your obligations, or commitments to family, children, or job, if you have a dream you have the power to make it happen. It may require sacrifice or finding a balance to make everything work. But no dream is too improbable.

I woke up this morning feeling renewed and clearheaded. I’m not sure what I want for my own life going forward. The only thing I know for certain is that I still need a full-time job. I’m partway there with the part-time job I just obtained. But the fulltime gig is necessary to rebuild my financial house. Other than that, I don’t have the first clue about what I want this next half of my life to look like. But I’m alive, I have my own inner strength as one of my best resources, and I trust completely in the Universe that everything really is going to be okay. It really is. And actually, I know its going to be better than okay. Its going to be stellar, because I have the ability to make it so.

I woke up this morning knowing it was time to dream a new dream.