...Still searching for my "Happy Place"

When I was in therapy years ago, the therapist wanted me to envision my "Happy Place" in my mind. A place where I felt content and safe. A place that I could go to when feeling bad, stressed, scared, or injured. And even though I feel I have a creative mind... this was a very difficult task for me. I could visualize a beach scene... a forest setting with a river running through it... a field of wildflowers gently swaying in the breeze... Lots of images of serene scenery where contentedness could be visually felt.  But I could not find the "happy"... the "content" in the context of my own experiences so found it difficult to create a "Happy Place" that felt real enough, reachable enough, for me to feel safe there.

I recently glossed over my 45th birthday. I say "glossed over" because I did not focus on it, did not celebrate it, but rather just "let it happen". And then moved on. I believe Age is just a number. But I also notice at this age that I am doing a lot more thinking and analyzing of my future, my happiness, my "level of contentment". And I am doing more reading about relationships, marriages, how to keep it together, how to create that contented happiness that everyone craves. And not just in relationships. I am searching for that feeling of content in my work, in my home, in all aspects of my life... sort of a balance of contentedness.

I like to read posts by established authors. I also like the quirky, off-center personality of some writers. This guy, James Altucher, is one of those writers.  I found him a few months ago and I have read a LOT of his stuff since then.  Some of it I like, some of it I don't. I wanted to share one of his writings that I really, really like.

The Purpose of Marriage

In this blog post, he talks about his thoughts on the purpose of marriage. My favorite part of the blog is this:

“Marriage is a gift you give to your spouse. It’s a gift that says, ‘I have fully enjoyed our past together, I fully enjoy our present together, and now I want to devote the rest of my future to helping you achieve your goals, to being with you, to you being with me, and to taking care of you (or vice versa) when we are old and sick, as we will almost assuredly will be." 

If everyone could think that way and ACT that way... every day... just imagine how much nicer people would be to each other, how much more kind our interactions would be, how many more saved marriages! Instead, we get so caught up in the rush and flow of everyday life and responsibilities that we end up not "seeing" our partner/spouse anymore and we forget how special that person really is. We forget to admire and appreciate their "gift" to us.

I admit, in my one and only marriage, I was not a good wife. I was so busy trying to be ME, that I forgot to look at HIM. I forgot how to be the person he fell in love with, the person that loved him enough to get married in the first place. And eventually, I ended up losing the person that I had fallen in love with and in the process... lost myself.

In the past 5 years, I have come to know ME again. I understand my flaws and my weaknesses and I can admire my strengths and feel proud of my accomplishments. I have learned what I can and cannot accept in a relationship and what I really want to have in my life to be happy.

While I crave the feeling of being comfortable with another human being, of letting my guard down and attaining intimacy — I don’t want that to morph into complacency. When I say I crave being “content” I do not mean “settled”. Why would I ever want to settle for anything?

To me, love isn’t about settling; it’s about adventure. It’s about finding that person who has the guts and ambition to travel the world side by side with me. Just because you fall in love doesn’t mean the thrill and the endless wonder of the world has to stop. I don’t want every day to be exactly the same. I don’t want to have the same conversations over the same meal every single night for the rest of my life. 

I want a blazing passion that sparks a fire within me. I want to be with someone who makes my heart skip a beat and whose touch has the ability to light up my entire body and soul.

If (and hopefully WHEN) I get to that point in life where I am in a committed partnership that is moving towards a future together... I hope I can remember that life with them is a GIFT. And I hope that he, in return, will appreciate that gift and return it back just as much. Then I will have reached what we all strive for in life. My Happy Place.

Serendipity

I love the movie Serendipity. Part of what I love about it is the love story (obviously.. I AM a woman! LOL) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePU2Ux9JIMM

In this love story, 2 people meet and because of the locations in their lives, and the other people in their lives, they don't "get together".  So... their life circumstances kind of got in the way. They both even had partners at the time.Later on in the movie - 3 YEARS later, they are BOTH still thinking about the other one and they are drawn to each other... they just can't get over the feeling that they WANT to be with that person.

And so they find a way! They both end up going after each other, even though they live far apart... THAT is the kind of love I want. I want a man that will chase me down and profess his love for me! I want a man to travel around the WORLD just to show up at my door and tell me he can't live without me, that he can't stop thinking about me.. that he loves me, and ONLY me!

They say there is ONE person in this world that you are absolutely supposed to be with. I would want that person to chase me down and tell me I am HIS destiny! I would do that for the one I loved and I would expect nothing less! :-)

Life lessons aren't easy... but necessary for growth.

I think that sometimes you meet people to teach you a lesson about life or about yourself, to show you an area of your ‘self’ that still needs improvement.

I went through a rather difficult time in the past few months. Without going into too much detail, I met someone that became an instant friend, confident and an important part of my life. Everything was great, progressing forward and the future looked bright. But an old, buried insecurity from my younger days somehow clawed its way to the surface of wherever I had stuffed it years ago. It is true that you cannot just “bury” old pains, but you must work through and resolve them… many times throughout your lifetime, until the old pain is truly overcome. My independent, proud outer shell began to crack… and I didn’t notice right away. I have spent years learning to be a better version of myself, to create the type of ME that I really, truly want to be, but somehow I had not dealt with this little “bug” and it was burrowing its way under my skin and into my psyche in a very destructive manner.

Unfortunately for me (and others), I did not recognize the signs and looked for External causes for my discomfort. In doing so, I became irrational, paranoid, insecure and just downright NOT my true self. I felt like I was sliding into a deep hole and I had absolutely no control over it! It was very painful but yet provided me with a very important life lesson. I ended up pushing away this new friend of mine and alienating other possible friends in the process. 

And the worst part of the entire thing was I allowed this old buried “bug” to eat away at my self-confidence, my happiness, and my feelings of self-worth! I was miserable! I had anxiety, panic attacks, stomach aches, digestion upset, and lots and lots of crying! It felt like I was going crazy! Literally! I did not know the cause was internal. I did not recognize that it was an old injured part of my own SELF that was causing all this pain for me.  

It was too late to salvage the connection with this person that I had begun to feel was a very important part of my life and future. But it was NOT too late to figure out WHAT had happened and to learn from it. I feel better now, though not as strong and unbreakable as I felt 3 months ago! It is important to learn to recognize the signs of self-sabotage when the ‘ego’ is trying to break out and do its damage to the True Self. It took many, many years for me to learn to overcome the life patterns that I had developed as a child and young adult. Some of the destructive life patterns that I had used as a protection measure against the outside world, to protect the innocent self… were constricting and not conducive to a happy life!  Some of that learning is life-long, as I recently found out.

That old “bug” of insecurity is probably not all gone… but I recognize it now, and I am taking steps to deal with it and to learn from the past few months. Does this erase the pain I inadvertently caused myself over the past few weeks? No. Does it reverse the disappointment or dry the tears? No. But a lesson learned is an important step in building the kind of future that I want for myself. A happy, secure, stable and loving future where I feel like the best possible version of me. And THAT is a very good lesson!