What is Marriage

What does marriage mean to me?

• Sharing a life with someone else through respect, honesty, trust, and love
• You lift the other person up and spread their wings, not push them down or make them feel bad about themselves
• Where you have a soft place to fall when the world is hard on you
• A safe secure place to share your dreams and your fears
• Having a partner who understands you and loves you anyways
• Having someone always in your corner
  

I hate my life

I hate my life. I seriously do. Just so tired of making bad decisions. Of hurting others, of being hurt. We are both wrong, we have violated each other's trust, we have hurt each other on a deep deep level. Will our hearts ever mend?

I need solitude. I need to get away. I need to stop hurting.

I hate my life.

What Makes You Happy?

Have you ever really thought about what makes you generally happy? Only you can make yourself happy and content, you can enhance someone else's life, but you can never really make them happy, they have to do that all by themselves. Here is my list of things that make me happy or even just smile, in no particular order.

• Drinking a Pinot Noir watching the rain fall gently from the sky
• Hugging my nieces & nephews and watching their eyes light up when they see me
• Feeling butterflies in my stomach when I fall in love
• Having friends that understand me on a deep personal level
• Cuddling with my pooch for hours on end
• Kissing so passionately and so deeply that I forget where I am
• Laughing and smiling at an inside joke
• Watching a good movie that makes me think and cry, and be moved by the raw emotions
• Watching Criminal Minds
  
• Reading a novel where I am lost in the characters and can't put it down
• Hearing my text alert go off and reconnecting with my friends
• Going on FaceBook and connecting with old and new friends alike
• Baking goodies on a Sunday afternoon
• Making a homemade dinner a few nights a week
• Being in tune with someone and feeling passionately in love with them
• Helping others attain their dreams
• Following my own dreams
• Walking into a room and noticing the appreciative glances
• Walking the course with good friends and laughing through the miles
• Listening to my inner voice and following my heart
• The smell of a rose or a gardenia
• Being creative
  

How Do You Know?

How do you know when someone is being honest with you? Seriously, how do you know? Do you listen to that little pit in your stomach that says something is just not right? Or do you listen to what they say and take them at face value?

I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but quite honestly, it seems like when I do, I always catch them in a lie. Or a falsehood. Or an omission of the truth. No matter what it is, it still hurts me deeply to know that I can't trust you. Trust what you say or what you do. It then hurts my already fragile self-esteem. But is that really your fault or is it mine?

Can you go a whole day without lying? Even a little white lie? If you don't say the truth and just avoid the question is it lying through omission?

Can I trust you not to hurt me? I can trust myself to know the difference? The darkness is coming...

Alone

Have you ever felt like you are living a lie? Do you ever wonder why you do what you do? All day today I have thought about the choices I have made in the last 10 years, but mostly centered on the last 6. I am not proud of what I have done or who I have become. I shell of the person I use to be. I don't know if I have ever been truly happy, but I can say with certainty, I am not happy now.

Actually quite depressed, very lonely, and stuck inside my head where it is very dark. I often wonder if people's lives would be better without me in them or if they had never met me. If I were to walk away from everything tomorrow, would it even be noticed? I honestly don't know.

I've lived a lot of my life surrounded by darkness. There have been those moments where the world shined oh so brightly, but they never seemed to last. A few people have shown me the light, shared the laughter, and taught me to love with wild abandonment ~ can they do it again ~ or do I have to find it for myself this time.

I'm all alone.

Where Are My Balls?

Where are they? The figurative ones, not literal, that would be nasty. I used to be on top of the world, now I feel like I am the world's doormat.

First off, my marriage is failing, in all actuality, it failed a long time ago. We have argued our entire 6-year relationship - over the smallest things and over severe differences in how we view the world. When you love someone you always think that you can accomplish anything and that you can overcome any obstacles. This isn't always true. You have to have a baseline of acceptable behavior and ideals. I use to think that if I loved him enough then he would see the world as a happy place instead of through the negative glasses he always had on. Negativity has worn me down.

Have you ever taken a moment to really think what living with a negative person will do to you? I admit I want to smack overly happy people as much as the next person, but when 90% of what you say is negative, it has a huge impact on those around you. I have never been one of those half full people but I am very optimistic and extremely empathetic. I believe that people are inherently good and that falling in love is for people and not just for movies.

I married someone who feels that people are not nice to others because they are inherently nice, but because they want something from them. I can't grasp having so little faith in people. I use to volunteer a few times a month for different organizations - I honestly can't remember the last time I went and volunteered somewhere until yesterday. Helping people use to be a very high ideal for me.

I wanted a divorce 2 months ago and actually left, unforeseen circumstances made me come back and stay. He did change for awhile and became the husband I always wanted. He was attentive, affectionate, tried to fight his negativity, and generally tried to save our marriage. It is hard though when I felt it was a little too late. Harsh words had been said and cut through my soul like a knife. Although he was attentive and affectionate, it still wasn't in the way I needed him to be. I still felt that my needs were not being met.

So here I am sad, alone, lonely, trying to come to terms with my life. My failed life. I need to file for divorce for both of our sakes. I have waffled so much that I know it has taken it's toll on his self-esteem and confidence, because I know it has on mine. We have a good time together, but more like best friends or roommates. I want to feel passion, I want to feel alive again. I feel like I am watching a movie of my life - that I am no longer an active participant. I am so lost, so very confused, and very scared to take the next leap.

Walking away means leaving a man I have been with for 6 years, a dog I love more than anything in the world, my house - the only place I ever felt that was truly my home. The closing of my business last year was such a severe loss for me, one that I still feel daily, that I am petrified of another big loss. I feel like in the last year I have lost my dignity, my identity, my self-confidence, and my self-worth. Now I will lose my marriage, my dog, and my home. Friends and family you ask? Family left a long time ago because they didn't always support me and they definitely did not support my marriage. My friends are there for me, but honestly, I don't know for how much longer. Who wants to be friends with someone who can't get their shit together, who continually makes poor decisions? Seriously need to hand my decision making card over to someone else for awhile.

Who Am I?

When I was 18 I was on top of the world - smart, beautiful, gifted - the whole world was at my feet. I am now 35 and I feel that I am an utter disappointment. I burned the fire at both ends until I turned 25. I had owned my first business, graduated college (although I would do so many things differently if I could redo college), had gone through officer training school, and had so many choices as to my life path.

I chose the wrong path. Severe detour. I had the choice of a being a JSTARS officer in the USAF, continuing my education with a Masters in Counseling, or continuing to operate my small business that I had started when I was a junior in college at the ripe young age of 20. I failed my physical fitness test on purpose so I wouldn't have to go into the USAF because I wasn't given my dream job of OSI which is like the FBI. I remember having a long talk with my commanding officer and realizing that I am much more of a leader and not a follower and would have difficulty following orders for very long. How right that man was. I know deep done that a career in the Air Force would have been wrong for me, but I often wonder where my life would be if I had followed through with this option.

I had been in school for eons and the thought of Graduate School was like a brick on my chest, so I thought, like most young people do, that I would come back to that. I never did. I really regret this decision. Although I never should have studied psychology, because quite honestly my skill set is more inclined with either flowers & plants or business. But oh how I wanted it to be a marriage counselor back then - with what's going on in my life right now, this is honestly, the most ironic joke of the century. I wanted more than anything to be in the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. I still do.

Instead I became an entrepreneur. I admit, I love starting new businesses, but I just feel like I have wasted my life trying and searching for that next big thing, that big dream. That first business lasted 5 years - I traveled all across the U.S. and met lots and lots of people, but I was always alone. Most men were extremely intimidated by me. I made more money than them, I was very smart, and back then, quite beautiful.

What changed? Why do I feel so horribly awful about my life. I have become a walking cliche. Seriously. The Poster Child for What Not To Do With Your Life. No I am not a drug addict, I don't look for sex around every corner, and I am not a raging gambler...although I could be.

I have positively lost my direction in life, my passion, my reason for being. I was always defined by what I did, that was who I was. Now I have no gainful employment, am in a failed marriage, am overweight, and have mood swings that change by the minute. I am so living the dream.