Melancholic Optimist

My emotions are all over the place today.  Perhaps it’s because my hormones are running rampant - my baby girl turned twenty, a budding relationship seems to have withered, I work all the time and it doesn’t seem I get anywhere, yet at the same time appreciated and admired for my abilities, talent, inspiration, and professionalism. I miss my kids like crazy. So many things have changed, yet some things still remain the same.  At the same time I’m excited and energetic this morning.  I had a GREAT workout, pushed myself a little further, a little harder (having gained over 2 lbs this week – I’m thinking because of the crepes), one of my writers are about to launch their first book, got a lot of editing done on another writer’s manuscript, my collaboration on my own current WIP is still going strong, and my prospects for the future are wide-open.

I suppose this emotional roller coaster has been coming on for the last few days.  It always happens when I’ve been with the “family”.  Friday night, I helped my daughter celebrate her upcoming 20th birthday with my ‘former’ family.  I’m beginning to hate those gatherings, because they remind me of what I left behind, what I left to pursue, and what I’ve not yet obtained.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret for one second my decision to leave, but there are some things my decision cost me that hurts me to the deepest part of my soul.  For a brief moment in time, I had my family back. Then as we all climbed in our cars and went our separate ways, I’m reminded I don’t have a family anymore.

My children love me and I will always have a relationship with them, and they will always be my family.  But when I decided to separate from my husband, I lost something that was very precious to me – all the rest of the family I had. Having been estranged from my parents and siblings, my husband’s family became mine.  So, when I left him, I lost them too.  Their lives continue on without me.  They still all gather together to celebrate every birthday, holiday, and special event.  I wasn’t invited to the last two – because they didn’t involve my children.  That’s okay, I know I’m not part of the family anymore, and that was my choice.  They have their Thursday night dinners and their Sunday brunches.  They’re there for each other, see each other almost on a daily basis, take vacations together, their lives keep moving forward, without skipping a beat, not falling apart without me, not even missing me for that matter.  I go home alone, eat alone, sleep alone, work out alone, vacation alone, go on my adventures alone, celebrate my victories alone, and mourn my failures alone.

I’m not feeling sorry for myself or even sad that I do everything alone. I’m actually growing fond of being alone.  It was new for me, having never been alone in my whole life.  It’s taken some getting used to, but I am, and there are lots of things about it that I’m learning to enjoy, especially the part where other people’s decisions no longer keep me from doing things I truly enjoy.  But, I’m angry that I haven’t reached many of the emotional goals I’ve set for myself.  I’ve accomplished a lot in these last few years – done some amazing things that I’m so proud for accomplishing.  I know, without any doubt, there’s nothing I can’t do.  It doesn’t matter what it is, I’ll find a way.  It’s those things that I can’t obtain by sheer determination and hard work that continue to allude me. Those things that depend on someone else.  Will I ever trust someone else again? I don’t know if I can.

I want what everyone wants – to matter, to be loved.  Being with my former family is a reminder that I didn’t matter.  I’m not needed, not wanted, and their lives continue on without me.  Even to my close friends I have now, who happen to all live in separate parts of the world very far away from me, I essentially don’t matter.  Should I disappear tomorrow, they may miss my drama, but their lives will continue on without missing a step, because I’m not an integral part of their world.  I couldn’t have made it these last couple of years without them, but they in turn have never needed me.  So, what happens when I don’t need them as much anymore?  Will they just disappear from my lives too? It’s what I feel happening all the time.  I hear from them less and less every day. That’s what I fear. Yet, at the same time, know that if they do – I will survive.

I had a friend ask me lately why I let people so easily walk out of my life, why I don’t fight to keep them in it?  It’s simple really.  Holding onto someone that doesn’t love you and want to stay in your life doesn’t help you – it only hurts worse.  The pain of losing someone breaks your heart, but it’s not as destructive as much as loving someone that doesn’t love you back.  That destroys your soul.  I’ve already had to restore my soul from death a few times before – I don’t want to do it again.

So, on this Monday morning filled with emotional madness, I smile, and I cry, and I breathe.  I tell myself it’ll get better.  I take a moment to be thankful for all that I have been given.  I wish my daughter a happy birthday and try to impart a few words of wisdom. I exercise.  I go to work, and I live one moment at a time – and I choose to live the best I know how.  It’s all I can do. Who knows what will happen in the next moment.

Till next time,

~The Melancholic Optimist

Why So Cynical?

I don’t know if my cynical radar is amplified, but it seems lately it’s picking up a particular signal and I don’t like what it’s playing.  I don’t want to think it’s the people around me, that I’d choose to surround myself with such an attitude, but it seems to be like an infection spreading over the universe.  What disease or situation am I talking about?  Cynicism, especially when it comes to love and romance.

According to Webster – a cynic is:

1.   A person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions and who disbelieves in or minimizes selfless acts or disinterested points of view.

2.   One of a sect of Greek philosophers, 4^th century BCE, and who advocated the doctrines that virtue is the only good, that the essence of virtue is self-control, and that surrender to any external influence is beneath human dignity.

3.   A person who shows or expresses a bitterly or sneeringly cynical attitude.

Where are the romantics? Surely they don’t just live in novels, because that would truly prove a depressing world in which to live. So, I ask myself WHY?  Why are people so bitter and cynical?  What’s happened to create this atmosphere and social paradigm shift? 

My only guess would be pain, heart-break and disappointment.  But, that is something we all have experienced in one form or the other, or if we haven’t yet, we will.  It’s like a human right-of-passage.  Pain cannot be avoided.  But, allowing that pain to replace hope, romance, or a positive outlook on relationships shouldn’t be accepted. 

I know too many people who are romantic at heart, but refuse to allow even a modicum of romance in their lives.  They’d rather be alone, than risk being hurt or rejected.  They’d rather protect themselves with an armored coat of cynicism than get lost in the idea of romance.

I’ve been hurt.  I’ve been let down.  I’ve been rejected.  I’ve been unloved.  I’ve been disappointed.  I’ve been used.  I’ve been abused.  But, where is MY romance, adoration and the opportunity to be cherished? When do I get a chance to be the girl deemed worthy enough to put it all on the line and risk everything, to give everything, or to trust enough to place the most precious of hopes, dreams and aspirations into her hands?  I seem to always find the damaged men who have given up on love and romance because they have failed in a previous relationship.  You know what?  It failed in my previous relationships too, but I refuse to give up.  Instead, I hope even harder. 

Someone I once loved used to tell me, “I tried that romance stuff before… the poetry, the flowers, all that junk, and all it ever got me was looking like a fool, because the first jerk that came around and treated them like dirt walked away with them.”  Perhaps he was right, because he never used any of that romance stuff on me, in fact, he withheld all romantic and intimate feelings and acts, and I stuck with him for twenty years.  If anyone should be a cynic, it should be me.

I have a friend who says he’s no good when it comes to romance, and believes he will mess up any relationship he has that involves it, and thus has decided to abort all romance from his life.  He hides that part of himself from the friend whom he claims to love and honor most.  He has convinced himself the friendship is better without it; safer, truer, though it was initially built partly by romance.  Perhaps that’s true on his part, but doesn’t he think his friend would want all of him, including the romantic side?  If he keeps that part of himself isolated, he’s cheating them.  He gets all of them, or they are forced to deny a part of who they are and only give half of themselves, and they only receive half of each other. Two halves, in this case, don’t make a whole. His cynicism of romance and the rejection of it is damaging to the relationship. 

The act of NO romance will eventually kill a relationship just as much, if not more, than previous failed romantic endeavors.  I hope cynicism doesn’t destroy this relationship and the cynic is able to keep his friend, even if it’s just as a friend.  Unrequited love hurts more than lost love. With lost love, at least the love was there at one time before it became lost.

I have another friend that doesn’t even try to have a relationship at all, who cuts themselves off from even being in any position to accidentally stumble into a romantic relationship of any kind.  Yet, sometimes I can see a small glimmer in her heart that tells me the harder she pushes the possibility away, the taller and thicker she builds her walls, the stronger I know she really wants it, but too afraid to open herself to it.  She’s convinced herself she doesn’t need love and romance at all.  We all need love, that’s how we were designed… to love and be loved in return.

I hope I can inspire her to heal her cynicism, though I feel I’m a terrible example.  She’s watched me go through my pain, my adventures, my new meetings, new experiences and new hopes, saw my tears, felt my heart-break and listened to my disappointments when I failed, yet again.  She is there with me as I fight through these fears and even with a freshly-wounded heart, watches me as I open it yet again knowing full well it could get crushed, abused or used.  I could very much fail again and fear the solidification of her cynicism. 

I believe with all my soul that as long as I keep my heart open to romance, no matter how much abuse it receives, someday… someday it will receive the love, desire and romance it deserves… that I deserve.  The only thing I know is … if I close my heart and allow this disease of cynicism to consume me… I will never receive it.  The love I have for myself continues to heal me, sustain me, and give me the strength to get up and try again.  I may get my heart broken over and over, but I also… just maybe… maybe find love.  

I choose to remain optimistic.  I wish I could inspire my friends to do the same because I truly want them all to be happy and deliriously in love.  Maybe they are perfectly happy in their cynicism and it’s my romantic notions that don’t understand. If that’s the case, and it could very well be, then I don’t want to understand and become cynical too; I am meant to be romantic.  I could love and accept them as a cynic, and hope they can love and accept me as a crazy romantic in return.  I’m not saying they’re wrong in their methods, I’m just saying their methods are not right for me.  My methods may be the wrong kind, especially in light of my constant failure, but I can’t give up.  I hope they still love me after they read this blog post… they are cynics, after all. 

Till next time,

~T.L. Gray