Learning how to be by myself.....
This week I had a "ahha" moment and I have been thinking about it ever since. I have been reading the book Keeping the Love You Find by Harville Hendrix and this book has me thinking about a lot of things.
My moment...well it had to do with the fact that I realised that I don't really know how to be by myself and be happy with that. I can take that one step further even and say I don't really know who I am without a connection to someone else...such as D's daughter, J's sister, lil J's aunt, L's best friend or so-in-so's girlfriend. I think this could be termed a mid life crisis if not for the fact that... 1. I'm not at the middle of my life yet. 2. I don't think I really ever left the "nest" so to speak to find out who I was.
So this is a 2 part problem; who am I as a individual and learning how to be happy by myself.
I'm not saying I have never been by myself (I lived by myself for 2 years before I moved to Chicago) just that even when I was not in a relationship I had family and friends to take up any loneliness slack. If I needed someone to talk to, someone to go out with I had built in "people" to take care of that. Now my people are 200 miles away and I need to amuse myself.
And when I was not in a relationship I was always looking for the next one. The one that would be the lasting one. The book has some exercises you do that help you pinpoint patterns you have in relationships that are causing you to not have good relationships. I have to say I'm not liking what I am seeing as I do some of these. I look at the trends and say why are you doing this to yourself time and time again? Why are you choosing to make yourself unhappy/scared/hurt? Why are you choosing to be with men who are not what you want, or not going to treat you right?
All of these are questions that need to be answered, taken care of. So my goal for the next 30 days is to try and work on finding out a little more about me as a person and not as part of the collective. And to continue reading this book to see where it leads.
Posted in: General Life on Friday, January 19, 2007 at 7:30 PM
