Where Am I Going With This?

Life is a confusing thing right now. I feel so contradictory about everything either in or going on in my life. The weather is finally doing that thing where it bounces between from sunny and seventy to pouring rain and forty degrees. It’s officially spring time. I feel like my emotions are doing the same thing right now, bouncing between perfectly peaceful and happy to dissatisfied with everything.
I finally got off my ass and started the process of changing my name back to my maiden and it has been a trial that is still on-going. Last Tuesday I went to get my new driver’s license in order to start the process of having another piece of legal and tangible Identification. The moment I signed in the little yellow box for my new temporary license I expected to feel a sense of relief and overwhelming accomplishment to roll over me. It didn’t come. I just felt empty and alone. The rest of that day was spent trying to explain that the name change was due to divorce not a marriage and dealing with the looks that ranged from pity to horror. The only thing I got accomplished was the driver’s license and I just wanted to sit in my car and cry instead of celebrate.
I really can’t pinpoint what it is that is troubling instead if liberating me, like I had wanted this name change to be. I’m me again, not the name of the person I was never really ever married to. The pain of those years are far behind me, five years behind me, but still I think deep down I feel like I’ve failed myself. I’ve failed because of where I am at the moment in my life as to where I envisioned I would be when I walked down that aisle and said, “Forever”.
Don’t get me wrong, he and I weren’t meant for each other, and I don’t regret figuring that out. It’s more like I feel like I haven’t figured out anything else since. I haven’t done anything pro-active to change my life toward something good and true since then.
I work the same job where, economy aside, I get paid peanuts compared to the amount of time and effort I put in. A monkey could really do my job, and one is right now proving the point that I try too hard at my job. When I fought so hard to go to college when my parents said I wouldn’t be able to, this isn’t what I had in mind when I dropped eighty thousand dollars.
I look around at the people that I went to college with: my best friend, who is no longer speaking to me, and the guy I’m seeing, they’re both making good money at the general level of their potential. One night I was talking to JN about his job and got so jealous of the idea of having increased responsibilities that would test my ability to do my job. The idea of being stressed and pushed toward achieving something sounded so damn nice. That’s somewhat ridiculous on the grander scale of things. Most people would kill for my job. I’m generally set. Other than downsizing, I’m not in fear of losing my job for any reason whatsoever. I do generally the same thing every day and if my co-worker is any example I don’t even have to try that hard to do any of the duties that are listed as my responsibility.
Is this what I fought so hard for? Is this why I went to college? Dream job or not I will never regret going to college. As I’ve said before, my private Lutheran, liberal arts style education and my experiences in that environment have made me a better, more well rounded person, than I ever would have become without it. But as more than one ex has asked… where is that motivated person I once was?
I once knew what I wanted and was determined to do whatever it took to get there. Then I got married and divorced, life’s various obstacles popped up and I took the comfortable road. Now seven years later I suddenly feel empty, alone, and lost. I’m barely surviving financially because I’m paying back the college loans and the several years I lived outside my means due to the separation and divorce. I’m almost thirty and time is slipping past me at light speed. Yet I don’t know what to do about it.
Yet with all that negativity out on the table there are some major upsides to my life right now. I really am learning a ton about myself. As I wrote several months ago about the drama that hit when I started to seeing someone, I learned to start thinking about myself and not wasting my time on people who don’t care about me. Since then my relationship with several people has improved dramatically. Who would have thought my lack of dealing with other’s bullshit would turn around that well. People just get lazy and forget how to appreciate and treat others in their life.
I’m also realizing so many great things about my needs romantically. Things that I thought were terminally wrong with my personality up until I started hanging out with a certain someone again. These things have finally been brought to light as needs that I wouldn’t have thought I had.
I do actually need time and space to myself. I would much more classify myself as a clingy, needy, co-dependant person and most of my relationships in the past have failed because of this. Recently my perspective has flipped around completely. I don’t NEED to be with a guy twenty-four/seven. In fact I flip out and become someone I really don’t like when I fall into that pattern. I need to have friends, hobbies, and activities that don’t involve my guy. This factor alone explains all the other symptoms of dissatisfaction I normally have in a relationship about four to six months in. My penchant to become the illustrious “Ice Queen” that EVERY single guy I’ve dated for a year or longer has called me.
Education is very important to me. I HAVE to have an intelligent conversation with a person in order to keep interacting with them, most of all, the guy I’m dating. I want to go to museums and galleries and talk about stuff. This goes hand in hand with intelligence which doesn’t automatically come with education. Intelligence is something a person has and chooses to actively use. Education gives that person the tools to use it on a broader range. I do not suffer fools in any part of my life. Common sense is not something everyone is born with, that’s for damn sure.
If asked I would say that I’m too trusting of a person and that’s why people have gotten away with abusing my feelings of love or friendship. I’m realizing that I am a completely distrusting person. I’ve always been that girl who sits quietly in the back of a room watching the rest of the world and taking in all the details. Now I’ve caught myself using this habit in order to keep myself safe from being abused. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing or unexpected after some of the weird situations I’ve found myself in both romantically and friendship wise. It’s just different from the “me” that I think of myself being.
I need music in my life, both from myself and the people in my life. In the last couple years I’ve realized how important it is for the guy I’m dating to being a musician. Not for the cool, “rock stars girlfriend” bullshit. It’s about having someone in my life be as passionate about creating and listening to music as I am. The simple act of my romantic interest gravitating toward a musical instrument or a friend want to talk about a local band that gave an amazing performance it is something I need to have.
All of this is coming with feeling my age. I’m getting older and when I look back I feel content that I’ve lived my life. I have my good stories. I’m just not ready to feel old yet. Getting old so far has been symbolized by my choice to stay in rather than go out, and being terribly tired all the time. I went out really dancing last week with Renzo and it amazed me how long it had been since I really went dancing, how different it is to move to a type of music I don’t listen to any more, and what it’s like to have a partner on the dance floor. Renzo has always been the guy that seemed to read my mind. We dance the same in many ways yet are different enough to keep it interesting.
It was surreal being in the south again. The guy behind the bar serving drinks use to work at a place I spent several nights a week dancing at back in the day, the music was hip hop which always makes me think of the south end. I don’t go north unless there is house music involved. And the guy I was dancing with was someone I had originally met during those years I had spent dancing in the south end. It was that same moment I keep having with one foot in the present and one in the past.
Maybe that is what’s getting to me. All these memories come directly after I separated from my husband. It’s like being stuck in reverse. Here I am dealing with my name change and spending time with the same people I spent with then. It’s almost like I haven’t progressed or I’ve run back to the things I knew before. Yet I haven’t actually sought these people out. They just keep appearing and by the time I notice I suddenly realize where I am. Caught in this weird present/past.
With the good or bad I still don’t know if I like where this is going; my life. I’m more content with internal changes but the outside world stays the same. If I look around me at this moment and think… Is this where I want to be in ten years? I answer in a resounding no. But what to do about it? I just don’t know.