transcended.net

I suppose this is some sort of disclaimer, but be warned, the following post is long and well, I had a fever when I wrote it.

This recent self-induced emotional meltdown has left me doing something that I don’t normally do a lot of.

Wondering if I should regret my past.

Wondering if somehow, this is all my fault.

If I really am nothing more than the sum of my past mistakes.

***

Year end is here, and for most that means time to make new year’s resolutions.

I have to be honest with you, I have never been a big resolution maker. This is for a variety reasons I really don’t have the energy to go into right now, but I do think I will make a few this year and hopefully have them be the type of lifestyle changes you can actually stick with. I was thinking one would be to regularly get on the treadmill, even if it’s only for half an hour a day before Paul comes home. I need some of those endorphins I keep hearing about…for I am depressed, remember?

Sigh.

More so than resolutions though, year end has me reflecting on the past. For some reason I keep thinking back to my life seven years past from the present. My last year in college. A turning point, really. That fine line between being a carefree student and being an adult. Could 21 year old Joyce have predicted my life today? It would have been impossible, really. It’s kind of amazing to quantify the unexpected turns that life takes, it’s really pointed out to me the fact that all these illusions of control that I have are just that, illusions. The fact that I couldn’t have known what my life would be like today, simply because none of what I have now existed at that time. Seven short, long years ago.

Career
Let’s see, six months out from finishing a BA in Political Science. I hadn’t even gone to the meeting that would lead to my internship with the fundraiser so I didn’t know that was out there. I probably had no clue what I was going to be doing when I graduated, other than moving back up to the Bay Area to be close to the bf. Instead, I got the internship, he broke up with me and I decided to stay in LA and go full-time after graduation.

All of that was somehow feasible. Political/non-profit fundraising was not a stretch considering my degree and interests. Where I am today? Not so much.

As much as I hated math and did my best to avoid classes that involved numbers, how could I have predicted getting an advanced degree in International Finance? And now, selling bonds to banks and money managers?

I will say this, I definitely make a lot more money than I thought I would!

Health
Don’t think there was any way for me to know then, what faces me now. Actually, if I’m remembering the timeline correctly, there was one hint at the time, the ache in my elbow joint which a K.aiser doctor chalked up to tendonitis (not that this is his fault, I had no other symptoms so this diagnosis made the most sense).

(Shit. I just went through my archives to see if I had written anything about it because, honestly, my memory is fuzzy on this one. That was a really bad fucking idea.)

Love
I suppose that’s as good a segue as any to discussing E. E was a turning point in my life all on his own. We had been together a little over two years, I think, at that point, but what I didn’t know (or perhaps I did) was that it was probably already over by then. I think I can honestly say that he was the first person I loved in the mature sense of the word. When he was on active duty I think we were more both on the same page. We wanted to be settled, and for him, I think he needed it really. And maybe that’s why he was with me at all to begin with. I was there. But then life happened and I guess that was that.

It’s unbearably sad to come to the realization that regardless of how you feel, time has run out. Especially when you had allowed yourself to envision a future together. In fact, that is probably what I was envisioning seven years ago as since I didn’t even know the hubby was out there until six months later.

Is it a problem that I’m afraid I still have some latent issues with this that need to be dealt with? There are still so many questions I never asked. It all revolves around not being good enough. As I watched the end of 500 Days of Summer today, I suddenly became panicked. Wondering, how will I react when he is inevitably settled (like in the end of the movie when Summer is married). We’re getting older. It has to happen at some point. Will it hurt less because I have moved on? Because so much time has gone by that I can reasonably conclude that it wasn’t about me but simply timing? Or will it still feel like a judgement against me? That something about me was too broken to really love. Because I think that that’s the real reason this has continued to haunt me. Where did I fail? What could I have done?

I know this is something I should just let go of, but I guess I haven’t been able to because it cuts at a very raw nerve, the part of me that feels I don’t deserve to be loved because I barely loved myself all those years.

The truly twisted thing? I think I continue to dwell on this (despite the fact that I really DON’T want to be back with E) because that broken part of me? It likes when I feel things that reinforce the brokenness. With Paul? There is no question the boy loves me. I know he would do anything for me. With Paul, I’ve always known exactly where I stand. And so that extremely fucked up part of my brain is unable to get its jollies and thus reverts to questioning the past.

Apparently, that is how desperate I am to make myself feel bad.

Awesome.

None of this is a knock on E. His reasons made sense, and he never made any promises to me (as I just read in my very own words, he told me when he got back from the sandbox that he didn’t want to put anything into us anymore, I think I blocked that shit out). He was quite dignified about the whole break-up and really, I wouldn’t have expected anything less from him. He’s one of the good guys. But I think that made it harder for me at the time too. It’s hard when you can’t be angry. And no matter what, when someone dumps you, you can’t help but figure it has to be you right? Perhaps if you were prettier, taller, smarter, less opinionated, more…whatever, you get the point. It’s easy to feel bad about yourself, especially when you have no animosity towards the other person.

And the little masochistic goblin inside of me loves it.

The rest of me? Not so much.

It’s just not me. I don’t believe in regrets. I have too many good things in my life today, things that I wouldn’t have had I lived my life differently. I’m the type that thinks about the past quite frequently, nostalgia is a companion I know well, but for the most part that’s just what I feel. Nostalgia. Not regret.

I realize that a lot of what I just wrote is quite contradictory. Part of me loves to regret and part of me can’t understand regret. Part of me loves to feel like everything is all my fault, and the rest is mature enough to realize that certain things are out of your control.

I never got anywhere by running away
I never learned anything without a mistake
I never loved anyone by playing it safe
It’s a long way down, but I’m here right now

I think because of this dark place I’ve been in, the new year means a little more to me this year than it has before. I’m hoping it really can be the turning of a page. The year that I am healed, physically, spiritually, emotionally. Not miraculously, but because I quit being scared of failure and give it my best.

So, here goes nothing
Here goes everything
Gotta reach for something or you’ll fall for anything
Take a breath, take a step
What comes next?
God only knows
But here goes

Maybe that’s the whole point of this quarter-life crisis. To remind me, that for better or worse, the bulk of the “growing-up” years are over for me now. Excuses don’t get you very far as an adult. And if I don’t “fix” myself now, when it matters, I will regret it when it’s too late to do anything about it.

I don’t want to turn around
And wonder what happened
Never lost and never found are one and the same
I wanna run across the battle lines
And take my chances
Not the long way around
When I’m here right now

I think I’ve actually come quite a long way from seven years ago. Back then, I was mired in regret and self-hatred. That’s why it’s so hard to read my archives from those days, because it’s so clear how lost I was. At least, it ebbs and flows now. It’s no longer my identity. I guess you can add that to the list of things I couldn’t have imagined seven years ago.

And what good is chance, not taken?
And what good is life, not living?
And what good is love, not giving?

Here goes nothing
Here goes everything
Gotta reach for something
Or you’ll fall for anything