This week, I have been having my own little pity party. Shame on me… I did get that job that I wanted… I have a beautiful family, and life, for the most part, is not horrible.
I won’t give in and say it’s good… I just hang on to that unhappiness? What’s wrong with me? Well, for one thing, I know that there is so much more to life than what I have. I am not a party “animal”. I never needed a gazillion friends ( you all know I love to exaggerate), just a few close ones with whom I can be honest and be myself.
But I am lonely. I HATE to say it, I miss a man in my bed. I have not yet come to the revelation that I want one full time, and honestly, I do not think I do, but I do miss the closeness that my cloistered environment excludes.
My pity party continued all week…. I examined and re-examined my life. There are so few things that are worse than regret when thinking about one’s life. From one of my favorite divorce movies, Under a Tuscan Sun, comes one of the best quotes about regret. I say it to others, but somehow, have difficulty applying it to my own life. In the movie, Katherine says Regrets are a waste of time. They’re the past crippling you in the present. How perfect?!?! The past, and I have done wrong, and all that was wrongly done to me, is being allowed to kick my ass in the present.
But how does one stop the cycle? How do I not rethink the various choices that I made in the first half of my life, and more importantly, how to I prevent myself from making similar choices in the future?
I am all about calling out those in my life who have disappointed me, but I also believe in taking responsibility for my share of my grief.
Sadly, when my divorce became final, I found that I had spent the previous several years abandoning my connections to my Community. I was PTA, Little League, Dance Mom, Charity, Volunteer and Wife of a prominent Professional all rolled into one.
The day I filed those papers, I ceased to exist…
I could feel the friendships falling away… all those hanger on, wanna-be friends who were all too ready to be my pal when it suited them because I was important. Once I was a single lady, the husbands of those friends saw me as a challenge to their stability? Or maybe it was the wives who felt that way. Once I had nothing to give them, and I stopped being the place to “drop their kids” or being the connection to a place in the PTA or whatever other organization I was working with, I lost friends, one by one. I never reached out to those who disappeared. I was too busy having my life turned upside down.
I know that I am partly to blame. I am pretty sure during the heat of the tension, I sent out all the warmth of a rabid raccoon, but isn’t that when you are supposed to be able to find out who your true friends are? Kind of like the way husbands are supposed to be? You SHOULD be able to know who you can count on.
People should not just abandon others, right? We should be able to rely on the personal communities that we build and participate in… otherwise, why bother??
I don’t want to believe that it is all about a man, I really don’t, but I believe, unfortunately, that the closeness, and the sex and the comradeship, are part of a complete life.
So, cheers to me… my pity party must come to an end for the day… I must put on a smiling face as the kids come to expect the family dinner that I feel so strongly about. Today, I just kind of wish I could drive through McDonald’s and toss it on the table… grab some wine and go watch TV.
As I type this, I realize the following… although my world is pretty small these days, those little faces showing up at the table is what it is all about.
Tomorrow, I will try again…. I will get up and remind myself of how lucky I am, in spite of it all. I will dust myself off and begin again.
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