Somewhere along the way we get fed a line that says, "If you work hard enough, if you bear down long enough, if you just hold on another day, things will get better." We dream of what things will be like "one day" when things are different. The different job, the right husband or wife, enough friends, the great house... the happiness will just appear around the corner. When this changes, when we get through this stage, when this tragedy is over. Almost there, we are almost there. Just another few attempts, just another few years, just another few months, days, years.... It's an endless cycle.
The heartbreak comes when you realize, that's not even close to true. No matter what you do, there will always be some other major catastrophe to survive, some other heartbreak to fight through. The scars we incur don't go away. They just get older, just as we do. We will always be relearning our childhood, healing from wounds suffered during innocent wonder years. We spend a lifetime two natures fighting each other, neither able to completely win.
I built houses on sand and they were washed away by the storm. I'm starting over again for the 150th time, and it's exhausting. I'm fighting uphill battles against bad theology, bad teaching, bad learning and bad wounding, and I'm losing. The idealism is gone: shitty things happen to good people. People lie, cheat and steal and at one time or another, and maybe more than one at a time, we will all be subject to the victimhood of this truth. And I hate it. I absolutely hate it.
If your still waiting for the punch line, the hopeful silver lining, well, join the club, so am I. I am still waiting to hear the hopeful wording, to see the moment of clarity that makes this all worth it. I hate that loving people brought me so much pain, so much suffering, and I don't know how to rise again. I hate that I saw something in front of me, a path, a plan and I loved it, and I was excited, and then it all showed itself for what it was, just a pipe dream. I would never want to go back, I would never want to be apart of something shallow and false, but I'm pissed it turned out that way. I'm angry and frustrated that I should be excited about all that I have: an amazing job, an opportunity to buy a home, a few strong and true friends, a family that while imperfect, loves me, isn't enough. For better or worse, I will be that person that has dreamed of nothing more than loving and being loved and it's the only thing in the world I have no control over.
I can relearn finances, I can climb the corporate ladder, I can learn new things and strike out, those are all great and wonderful things, but they matter little to me. I was deliriously happy when I thought I had what I wanted, and in my mind, I did. Finding out it was all mirages and heat waves, nothing more than convenience and lies, everything shattered with it.
I've said it before, but I'll say it again. It's not okay, and it never will be, but I will, because I have to be. No matter how tired, how discouraged, how wounded, how angry I am, I can do nothing but pick up the pieces and move on. I'm right, this shit sucks, but no one pays for it besides me.
My therapist looked at me today and said "You're changing patterns here, going against what you have learned. It's not going to be easy, but your families ways are stopping with you." I know it was supposed to make me happy, but it just made me cry. I'm so tired. I don't care. I would have preferred the illusion if it had just lasted forever. I wouldn't have changed anything if I didn't have to. If it hadn't been my only choice at a last ditch effort at happiness and peace.
Years of heartbreak, of failing without knowing it and here I find myself. It feels as though my dreams have passed me by, my opportunities are gone and I wasted my time on that which served to only wound me farther. It makes me want to scream, and so I do, loud and raging at a wall that can do nothing but stare blankly back at me. It's about as feeling as the people that have so easily turned off the parts of them that promised to love me. This feels like the false reality and yet everyday it sinks in more that it is the truth. Still, still I wake up wondering if it was a bad dream. Everything is going to be back to the way it was, right? No, I'm still bleeding, still screaming.
I stop in hopes that a portion of the anger, the frustration, the powerlessness will be drained away with my vocal chords. It's not, but at least I'm tired enough to not care.
At the end of every session, I look at my therapist and ask her if it will always be like this. If maybe I'm not just some overdramatic women that can't get over a heartbreak. She says no, that this is what happens when you combine a person of passion with a person of faith. They collide and don't know how to just accept ignorance and anything besides everything. The peace they find eventually is deep and real, but hard, hard fought. She says she wouldn't expect anything less from me than to face these things straight on. It doesn't help. Instead I rip off my check, sigh and ask what time next week. I don't care anymore what kind of person I am, I just want to feel again like there is hope on the horizon. I just don't know what that hope is supposed to look like.
I guess that's really what the death of idealism is. It's somewhere in between visions of false grandeur, and settling for anything. It's giving up dreams of being saved by love and recognizing people suck and no one is ever going to make things better. I can't live in the clouds anymore waiting for "someday" to come knocking, but instead I have to accept the reality that life is going to happen and what makes me, what determines me, is my response to it. My faith will always be pushed to its limits, my heart wounded, my hopes and dreams crushed, but I guess the only question is, what will I do in those moments? Will I continue to believe? Will I keep loving? Will I let new dreams rise? Right now, no one all accounts, but I guess I also know, the story isn't over. The fairy-tale sure as hell is, but there may be room yet for a romantic comedy, maybe a drama or even a foreign film. For now, living another day not plotting someone's demise, or curled in the fetal position is a day of progress.
Maybe one day this will all make sense, but I doubt it. Instead I just hope I can find peace and some energy.... and maybe, just maybe a really, really hot husband.
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