Break a window, burn a souffle, scream a lullabye

I have it in my head that other people lead more normal lives than I do. By that I mean when other people get in the car to go out to eat with their families, I'm sure the trip to wherever they're going doesn't end up in shouting matches like it does here--where I have to hold myself back from opening my door and jumping out into the road just to get away from all of them. Normal in that when someone suggests to their father that he might be passing by the dry cleaners where he needs to drop off his shirts for work, everyone doesn't end up listening to a tirade about how someone doesn't need anyone telling him how to drive or where to go because he knows everything and takes care of everything.

Normal in that people can agree on one place to go to eat without it being a major production like we always have here--people within a family who can compromise and not always put themselves first because they feel they work the hardest or deserve to make all the decisions for everyone because they earn the money that will buy the food everyone will eat. I want normal people in my life and I don't have normal people in my life, and when I look around me, I think everyone has normal people except me, and I'm jealous of them. I think I started off my life pretty normal then gravitated towards crazy and now I am neck deep in it and I want out even though I know I cannot go.

I know tomorrow I will feel differently, but now, I am beside myself with regret. I don't want out of control yellers who make mountains out of molehills, who fight dirty by bringing up things that have taken place years ago just because it's easier than being normal and letting things go. I'm sick of scab-pickers who feed me the most beautiful words thinking that I will believe in words when there aren't any actions to back them up.

It's the day of love and after attempting to going out to eat with my family, we all came home and went our separate ways because we can't do the simple things without making them difficult and ridiculous and so terribly insane it makes me ashamed to even write it all down. I took the valentine my husband gave me and I went into the kitchen and I got scissors and cut it up into a million pieces and left in by his wallet. It felt cathartic cutting that thing up.

Don't give me a valentine that speaks of love then scream like a maniac about all the things in life that should not matter because that is not the way I have ever operated and if you don't know that by now, then I guess I am living with people who do not know me at all.

And it's moments like this that I wonder how in the world I ended up in this place, in this life with these people. What's the purpose, the message, the life lesson I need to learn that put me right here where I least want to be?

And I think...how could I have gotten it so wrong? How could I have thought I knew that this is what I wanted for my life when I was only 21 years old? And I want so badly to go back and make different choices...ones which do not lead me HERE with a person who finds it so easy to stamp out my light, to leave me lonely.

And I lie to myself, and say it was for the best

Do you keep a list of things that you have never done, or never experienced? And if you keep a list of things that you know you will never be able to have or experience, then how do you ever get past the feeling of loss that lives beneath the surface? How do you stop wanting things you know you will never have?

I keep a list. It isn't long, and mostly I don't drag it out to remind myself because I believe that being positive helps promote hope and joy in a world that sometimes feels as though all it wants to do is drag me down. These are things that I know I cannot go back in time to reclaim and so they are forever lost to me. It can be argued that these losses were the direct result of my own choices and/or mistakes, but that doesn't make them feel any less painful. When you know you are to blame, then how do you stop blaming yourself? How do you learn to forgive and forget?

There are many people who will tell you that they have no regrets in their lives, that the successes and failures accumulated along the way have made them what they are today and for the most part, I can buy into all that. What I cannot tell you is that I do not have regrets because I do. I sometimes wish I could go back and have a redo. I don't live in the past, but I do look back and think I would do certain things differently if I had the chance. I am always wanting more chances.

What I want to know is how to let go of the losses that I seem destined to mourn forever, particularly when I am taking inventory of my life and feeling as though I will never get things right. How do I find peace like a star-filled sky? How do I feel a quiet peace inside of me?

Maybe the answer is that there is no answer, and that life is meant to be just what it is at this very moment. I keep thinking that I will wake up some day and know everything there is to know, but I don't.

I wake up and start again. I keep with me the experiences that led me to this place. I remember the things I wish I did differently or not at all. I write a list of things I will never have or never do and I fold it up and hide it because I am big on hiding things that feel hard. I tell myself that I am over learning things the hard way.

I can't go back so I move on.

Life

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."- Annie Dillard

There is something to be said for hard work. There’s something to be said for setting clear goals and making up your mind not to falter in a such a way that it is impossible to get yourself back on track again. I have struggled my entire life with sticking to things that I know are good for me. I tend to live in extremes, an all or nothing existence, and I’ve finally realized that this lack of stick-to-it-ness doesn’t serve me or help me in any way.

I want to wake up in the morning and take care of the things that need to be taken care of without feeling myself drowning in the responsibilities that seem to confirm the mediocrity of my life. I don’t want to admit that I’m just an average person with an average life who gets up every day and doesn’t really make a difference anywhere. All too often, I take the easy way out by wishing for things but never putting forth the effort to attain those things. Then I get all indignant like I've been cheated and I look outside myself to place the blame when I know the blame is mine alone. The truth is that life is ordinary a lot of the time and no amount of wishing will make it otherwise. I keep waiting for the time when I can accept that without feeling like I'm losing something important.

I feel lost in my life a lot. I want to write it down somewhere that I’ve let years go by feeling lost–-surrendering myself to this wandering around without purpose–-to this living just to get by. I need to be able to see it in writing so that I can read it over and over again to remind myself that I have choices. I feel ashamed that I forget or ignore that fact that I do have power. It really sucks knowing that I haven't done my very best at things that really matter. I don't know of any other way to put it. It just really sucks living with that knowledge.

But what I’m learning is that no one is coming to save me from myself and this internal struggle of mine. I'm like a hitchhiker that everyone keeps whooshing by, but I think I'm ok with that now, although I haven't always been. I have people who love me, who adore me (really), so it is not a question of not having people to lean on, it's more that I need to believe I can navigate this world on my own and this is what I am working on. I'm trying hard not to be too distressed that I'm in my 40's and still haven't gotten this life thing figured out yet.

It’s hard work. It’s about trying to find peace. It’s about forgiving myself for the mistakes I’ve made and not falling backwards and becoming immobile when others continue to bring those things up. And it’s about forgiving them for not letting things go and not realizing how damaging it is to whip out that mistake list the minute it becomes useful again to bring it up. In the past, I never felt like I could let anything go when someone was always reminding me. I want to be able to let things go.

There are things I know about myself that are hard to know. The truly awful things, I simply want to deny but they do not cease to exist just because I don’t want to face them. I’ve asked myself what I’m afraid of, what I feel will happen if I acknowledge that I am hopelessly flawed? I think I’m afraid I won’t be able to live with myself which is ridiculous because I get up every day and live with myself being hopelessly flawed. I even think that some of my biggest flaws are things that win over other people's hearts, so there's proof right there that making mistakes is all part of the journey.

Anyway, I don’t know why it is always such an awful shock to realize I'll never be perfect.

And who knows, maybe it's good that the really important things are hard work.