2010: Nurture The qualities in myself that i would like in a partner

an odd kind of success spurred on by the chance meeting of my soulmate.

i value all the relationships that have led up to this, and all my own little self critical moments because they made me ready and open for the magic that i am living now.

I am confident in my relationship because i know myself, and because i am also confident that i will be alright no matter what happens to us, or to me. I am strong, and i am lucky that i have met someone who suits me so well who is as strong and ready to take chances with me!

we’ll be okay, together or apart, but i will love this love with all i am. :)

I woke up this morning and felt like I NEED TO RESOLVE THIS. I read about personality crisis’ and i feel like i need to do the thing that resolves my varying attitudes/personas once and for all. It talks about how people who decide on a personality are much happier etc.

So, here are the facts as i see them:

I am super tired of being selfish and narcissicstic and i know the reason for this is that i am trying to understand and comfort myself because i haven’t been able to ‘get it together’.

I crave close personal relationships with people and especially partners and this move has completely thrown me for a loop… and its been a two year struggle.

I enjoy having someone who is very close to me, who understands me and who i can really care about/support etc. But i also know that in the interest of my ‘comfort’ i have gotten deep into relationships that weren’t ideal and as a result i have hurt people who didn’t understand when i had to leave and acknowledge the disparity in personalities etc that i had disregarded at first.

I’ve been torn between living here in my Vancouver life, and keeping up the relationships i built in Toronto. I know my friends there are good people and will love me no matter what but i have been leaning more on them and missing the opportunities to get closer to the friends i am making here.

I know i’m doing what i should be doing in terms of meeting friends, and i’m very good at being social etc… but i’ve gotten into the habit of pimping myself out at bars and parties because frankly, i’m not the most comfortable in those situations. I act out, and enjoy my little social experiments but its not least fulfilling and it distracts me from the life i crave.

I have met good friends since being here in Vancouver but by chance, they are the ones who have all left for work/adventure and i’m here on my own with yet more people to write letters to and miss. I avoided my good friends going away party because i didn’t want to face it, and partly because i’m uncomfortable in big crowds.

I know I have gifts, and that i’m a great and compassionate friend and lover. I am excited to meet someone who is also looking for a relationship. I am excited to put down my very own roots and look forward to a life full of joy and family.

I am afraid of becoming attache to a new lovers life (again), and i want to really dig my toes into my own happiness first so that i know what i’m compromising and can make informed choices about how far i’ll let that go.

I’m really enjoying nesting in my home and i really like getting together with smaller groups of people, i think i need to make a serious effort to have people over more often in smaller groups that i’m comfortable with.

I need to vent, NOT outloud to my co-workers or long distance to the friends i have far far away, but to the people who are actually in my life! I need to nurture those relationships and spend less time feeling guilty about being absent to the family in toronto who will love me no matter what.

I need to get ‘out there’! I live in an absolutely beautiful city and i need to spend equal parts of my free time soaking in the shoreline and the mountains as i do enjoying my home and friends.

I need to save money and get back into listing things and not just buying them when i feel like it.

I need to make value village ‘dates’ and go with a pal so i’m not just wandering the isles for companionship.

I need to cut the bar ‘scene’ out of my life, its okay to go to a bar once in a while, but i need to make it a social occasion and drag along a friend! No more missus barfly! I will buy a 12 of beer tonight to celebrate!

I’m needy and i keep trying to fill the hole in my heart with someone for a night or two but its not working.
I deserve better.
I deserve to make smarter choices, to act as strong as i am inside, to stop hoping someone will save me from myself.

I like being in relationship, but i need to get better at being in relationsihps that are GOOD for me.

I realize now that my last relationship was absolutely what i wanted/needed for the time it lasted but that i could easily have seen that it wasnt something that was long term potential. I don’t know what to say about that, because it was fun, it was great in fact, and frankly i’m not desperate for longer term something.

I’m happily learning about my current squeeze, but there are good and bad things already showing up… I’m open if it happens but I should be more honest with myself about the thing i’m really in rather than the illusion of what the thing might become.

I want very much to be seen and understood in my life, i have a sort of sick affection deficit disorder or have had and i get myself in to the pickles with people who are really nice and well meaning and genuinely like me and then i feel to crappy to be honest and break it off… and when i do balls up and let my frankness shine, i feel guilty anyway.

I am feeling super karmically ‘gunkked up’ right now, right here.

i know for sure that the times i’ve gone on internet dates and its turned into something it us usually more of a ‘grasping for some connection thing’ than an actual attraction. I wish that weren’t the case.

I won’t be doing that anymore.

I broke up with A last night… which needed to happen but is sad all the same.
He’s a SUPER sweet guy and i wish that it could’ve been more excellent, but i never felt that ‘gush’ of wanting to kiss him after a few weeks away, i know he appreciated me, but i don’t feel like he really got me. :( I kept trying to make the math work out in my head but it just didn’t. Just didn’t.

Anyhow. I’m off to work and then after that my life keeps happening.

I’m looking into the future and seeing myself happily single and perhaps even quirky-alone for a while. I’m living a great life, and all i have to do is keep enjoying it. :)

I don’t know where this uncertainty is coming from, or if its just my insecurity manifesting in another strange knot of thoughts, but i find myself constantly comparing my relationship (which is in frankness the best and healthiest one i’ve been in!) to some strange standard… i guess i’m comparing andy to something, some standard of what i expect or feel i deserve or something. Its odd soemtimes knowing what to do with ‘us’ when no one i’ve dated in the past can compare because andy is unlike all of those other people.

Andy is not someone i would have picked for myself but that is in fact one of our greatest strenghts as a couple, that we are different and have completely different goals and perspectives. It makes my life interesting, but sometimes i feel like we don’t have much in common.

I don’t want to date myself, and i don’t want to be in the pattern that i was in before i met andy of dating people who are patently unhealthy for me, but i feel like there is something ‘missing’ not a spark per se, but some kind of neediness, or some kind of reverence maybe.

In the past i have dated people who i coveted in some way or who had these talents that i wanted a piece of somehow and i guess that isn’t fair. I wonder if that’s what feels like it is amiss here.

Andy is who he is, he has his own interests, he listens, he has opinions and processes of thought that are all his own and that intrigue me and make me think more carefully about the assumptions i make every day. All of this is good.

I guess its just GOOD.

I guess i feel like its not exciting, or challenging or dramatic enough or what, god i wish i knew.

I love him most because he is like drama-retardant and just won’t have me causing fruitless arguments because its a waste of both of our energies, he just absorbs my little fuse lightings and somehow that is the best sign of his love. When he just hugs away my nebulous anxiety.

Its okay for me to have crushes on people, and for me to find situations and people attractive, its totally healthy but its even healthier that it doesn’t phase us.

I love ‘us’. I need to try more actively to accept and cherish who he is, and who we are as a result because its the happiest and most accepted i’ve felt in, ever, and its not bad, and there isn’t anything wrong.

I guess its possible that its scary to be finally in the situation that i have been searching and fighting for, just to be in it. I will ride it out, and i will give myself more re-assurance that things are wonderful until they are not, and i will stop counting the days that we have been together as though it is some kind of backwards breakup monitor.

I love his guts.
and i know so deeply that he loves mine.

sigh.

I am so much softer now.

Its been a year and so much in me and in my life has changed for the better.
I’m not saying that life is solved, i’m just confident that i’m on my way.
I feel so much anguish about the way i’ve gone about things in the past. I’ve had a really hard time in relationships and every time i meet someone and get involved there is a growth spurt.

I don’t regret my choices or methods, but I was wondering this morning, laying in bed with my busted foot up on a pillow not really ready to make a break for the crutches… what might have my last relationship been like if i were who i am now?

I would say an awful lot better.
It wasn’t a good relationship, because we weren’t looking for the same things. We had a lot in common and pushed each other in various ways to be better and more well rounded. We were both very passionate, but where i was almost ‘devoted’ to him he was just ‘enjoying the ride’.

I bet he would’ve liked who i am now a lot better. And i bet i would’ve been more comfortable with the ‘practical’ nature of our relationship but honestly, i guess its his loss, or well… both of our gain.

i was feeling so melencholy about that relationship and (after all he was the one who ‘wanted to stay friends’and then disappeared,) that i wrote a letter to our one mutual friend to find out if he’s at least ok.

I don’t know what is inspiring this line of thinking right now… maybe its that i miss the academic lifestyle but not the academic himself..?

I always admired what he did, getting to think creatively and be rewarded for it. I think i would like to do that one day… maybe once my loans are paid down… (famous last words!)

I’m also curious about his work and what he’s been up to professionally. It interested me then, and i heard A LOT about it, and it would be nice to know what came of those things, his research, the play he was starting to write when we split, the 10 minute play he had written for the humana festival (i even went to the humana this year because it happened to be at the same time/place as the NAPBIRT conference, i looked for him in the program notes…).

You can’t change the past and the past is guaranteed to change you…

I have to find gratitude and let this evaporate into the beautiful day it has turned out to be outside.
I will stop letting what was cloud what i have now. carpe diem!!!

Also, someone is playing trumpet outside in the park, it is worse than my playing GRIN!!!
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The boy forgot the tent, which was luckily easily rectified when we hit the wally world and found one for 20bucks!!!

But then we were certifiably squished into my NEW 6×5ft 3lb tent for two nights which was less sexy than i’d have liked seeing as this was the last time we’d be kickin’ it for a few weeks at least but it was alright none the less.

There were a lot of good times and a lot of me being an anxious wreck still but that’s just me not being able to relax all at once. He’s good for me that way, its dumb not to be relaxed and go with the flow, and i need to do more of it. but also there were some moments when for the first time i can remember he said ‘i love you’ without a prompt and out of the blue.
Some of what i have been saying leaked through his hardseal of a consciousness and he is trying to do for me what i need.

For that reason alone, i’m glad that we talked, and i look forward to having some more time to spend with him and other people and just him on our own. It was also good to go camping with someone because it made me really appreciate how much i like spending time just the two of us in contrast, and how different we two are when there are other people around. :)

Lovin m’life!

I have had this feeling in the pit of my stomach for almost a week now, this feeling that things aren’t going well in my romantic life, and that I didn’t even know WHAT i wanted to happen, or which way i hoped the coin would flip.

I did my best to enjoy myself anyway and not get caught up in it until i had some time to figure it out a bit better.

I called friends and got opinions and man does that ever help!

Finally tonite i was able to actually talk to my love and sort all of my anxiety out.

I was dreading that i was foolish and that i would cave to some unseemly demands of relationshiphood or somehow be the ‘sacrificer’ but no such trouble.

Just putting things out there and hearing his side made it all make sense again. I sincerely love this man, and in a way that makes us both better, stronger, confident individuals. I wonder if that feeling of ‘not knowing what i wanted to happen’ might just be a certain measure of confidence that i would be alright either way.

Its hard to be away from each other like we are, separated by a border and 300 miles, but its alright.

Its alright now that i’ve got my apology and my peace of mind and my lover back in my heart where he belongs. :)

its been a week now, since i started working and we went on to our respective lives in different cities and i’m here to report that i’m good. I feel like we’re both doing alright, and keeping busy and if this is any kind of indicator, i think we’ll both have pretty oz summers. I am helping to plan a big salad solstice party at his place next weekend, i’m going to get down there sat. night, chill out/go out, and then party sunday, stay until monday evening and then bus my butt back up here to work monday.
We talked about all this tonite, and whats wild is that i’m not freaking out, i’m not crying or lonely or even bored. I’m happier than i’ve ever been (many thanks to great roommates!) and after we talked when i said ‘i love you’ it felt awesome to mean it.

We’re not great on the phone, but this absence is not like an absess, it truly is making me fonder. I can only hope its mutual.