Tao

This is my sixth round of holidays being single. I guess perhaps in 2017 I wasn't truly single and had someone to exchange Christmas gifts with, and last year I spent Christmas night with that same man, but the further away from all that I get the less comfortable I feel calling it a relationship. It really never got there.  Something I said not too long ago describes it well, we were never nothing, but never something either, just always an almost. It never really got off the ground because he never gave it that chance. For the majority of the past five years with that situation imploding and resurfacing it just always felt so circumstantial, and so unfinished. I have lamented to friends how I really never thought I was still going to be single 5 years after getting divorced but of course I am. How could I have ever been capable of truly connecting and letting anyone else in when I have allowed my heart to remain with someone that never chose me back. When things ended the first time in 2014 he told me not to give my heart up to someone who wouldn't cherish it and I truly had no clue that years later that would ultimately mean no longer giving it to him.

Once requited love is proving to be extremely difficult to let go of but it has been forcing me to spend so much time with myself, and learning my flaws in glaring ways. Living a heart centered life often causes me turmoil, but I'm not sure switching to a more logical way is the answer. Everything I've been learning this last year has pointed more to this idea of balance. To acknowledge the gray of it all and learn to be comfortable in it. To learn how to be more present in the now and not allow myself to spend so much time ruminating over the past and worrying about the future. I've never felt more present in my life than I did on my trip to Europe. I've never felt peace and calmness and genuine contentedness like I did during those magical three weeks. I'm still kinda pissed I allowed an interaction with that man the week I came back to result in me losing that feeling. That yet again I let my hurt from that cause me to descend into despair instead of staying in the high vibration of being satisfied with my life. I haven't seen him since that day and while there's parts of me that seem to be saddened by the idea that I may never see him again, the rest of me can feel how beneficial it has been to my mental health to finally have that space. I know I will continue to wonder if he is happy and wish the ending had turned out differently but I hope the day where I can say with conviction it worked out for the highest good of all involved reaches me soon. For a long time it has felt like my heart has been so sad that it has made the rest of me sick, almost as if I have been a shadow of what I could be.

I know a new year doesn't really mean that anything changes in any real sense, but I do feel like the energy of everyone changes. That everyone is just a little more hopeful than usual, believing that maybe this is the year, this is when things will be different, and so they're a little more open, and try a little harder. I think if you can harness that energy in a productive way and change habits that detract from your goals, than you really can make it be the year that it all changes because we truly are the architects of our own lives, and the change we wish to see in our outward world, begins in our inward world.