Ephifany

It's been a while since I posted and I've been quite busy in that time.

Got back together with that still unspecified girl from earlier posts only to break it off again.

However in discussing the reasons why with her afterwards she spoke a few words that have forever changed me life.

"You're hard to manage. You have a heartness in your heart. Me, I'm tender. I hurt easily but you can become stubborn and cold..."

I immediately realized she was right. That a defense mechanism that I had set up years ago had betrayed me. What I had thought was a strength because it kept me from harm, was now revealed as a weakness because it kept me from true emotional intimacy.

While I was all loving, open and giving on a surface level, beneath that I was cold and hard - and I didn't care about other people, only my own self at that level.

I immediated reject that hardness. It was in complete opposition to everything I identified myself as being. With that expurged from my being, it was as if a light went on and all suddenly became clear.

I had been in a nearly 1 year relationship with a wonderful woman which had fallen apart. I had blamed her and her fears and they did contribute but now I saw the fault was primarily mine. I failed to be there, on an emotional level, so many times. I was so fixated on being totally emotional self-sufficient, I just thought she, and everyone else, was too. I loved her but I didn't safegaurd her heart. Not ever.

It sickens me looking bad over the years. It's overwhelming really. How could someone so sweet and nice also be so compassionless? I hurt so many people and it was the ones I loved most that I hurt most. Never intentionally, but I drew them to me, to love me, trust me, depend on me but I never thought to look after their emotional well being. And when something hurt me, I grew cold and compassionless while still loving on the surface but never giving my heart to them or taking theirs underneath.

No wonder I'm still single, I've never been available. Until now.

Since then I've been busy making amends and trying, and failing to rekindle my love affair with my ex-girlfriend, even going so far as to do what I should have done when I had the chance - propose.

She, wisely, said not now. Not no, never but no, not at this time. Which is fair enough considering. I don't regret it. I didn't expect a yes. Would have been welcomed though. But I did want to give her the honour, validation and memory that I had denied her before.

So now what? Armed with a whole new perspective on relationships I'm now ready to give myself to a woman like never before (or at least like I never have since I first got married 21 years ago in my naive bliss of youth). But do I want to? I do, yes, but I also want to pursue a career with renewed vigor and much more focused determination and dating and relationship building can be extreme distractions that could consume most of my limited available time and energy.

Shame I didn't propose six months ago. My life would be completely different now. Or would've been had I seen then what is so painfully apparent to me now.
But there's no point in living in regret.

The future beckons and looks brighter than it ever has before.