Long ago my viewpoint on relationships with the opposite sex were quite simple.
A man and a woman meet, fall in love, and spend the rest of their life together.
All Walt Disney's fault.
He had to go and turn all those twisted little fairy tails into pretty little stories with happy endings, even though most of them actually were not.
The Grimm Brothers had it right.
Even Hans Christian Anderson was not so sappy as to assume that coupling with the opposite sex was all it was cracked up to be.
Sometimes The Little Mermaid gets what she wants most in all the world, but at a far more terrible price than she ever imagined. Not only is she mute, but every step she takes with her human legs is as if she is walking on knives.
And the Prince doesn't save her in the end.
She dies a miserable death.
Yep.
That's how the real story goes.
Look it up.
I made up an idealized version of my own life.
I married this guy that I pretended was The Prince because my parents didn't raise me to know how to take care of myself and I needed the security. I didn't have the self-confidence to make it on my own, and I bought into the idea that a husband meant happily ever after.
And safe.
And not homeless.
That route really was like walking on knives.
It was painful and cruel and did nothing for my self-esteem.
Luckily, I was incapable of just laying down and dying in the end.
My blind dreams did come crashing down on me.
But it wasn't so terrible as you might expect, because the Brothers Grimm were right.
Sometimes things don't work out the way you might imagine, but there is always a lesson to be learned from the experience.
I learned, for example, that you can lose everything and you still get up the next day and you can still rebuild everything again.
Life doesn't end just because you have a broken heart.
And, as my precious child once said to me, "The cracks in your heart help the light to shine in."
So I'm looking at life differently, and I am slowly reconstructing and remodeling how I view relationships with members of the opposite sex.
I've mentioned before, but it bears mentioning again, that the first step is to view each individual as a person first, and as a gender only secondarily.
Every man I meet is not a prospective husband.
Being married, after all, did not guarantee that I was going to be happy.
I like being an individual who can make her own decisions; I like being free.
Sure, you can have both those things and be married, too.
I just know that for myself I have to learn a few more lessons first.
Like how to make my own decisions, what freedom means to me, and what will really make me happy.No person on this earth will ever "make" you happy.
Happiness is not the inclusion of a person in your every day life.
That's too much to ask of one person.
If that person's only reason for existence is supposed to be "making" you happy, then how the hell is that person ever supposed to be happy?
I know some will tell me that they will be happy because your reason for existence will be to "make" them happy.
You can't.
Happiness is a choice.
They have to choose to be happy, and they can't lay all that on just you.
Therefore, I think it is healthier if we each see to our own happiness.
Then we actually have something to offer another person.
We can share our happiness.
I find some guy down the road who will buy into that view of relationships, I will literally welcome him with open arms.
Though I might not marry him.
I'd be content just to have someone around to share happiness with, and also to be there with me when things go wrong.
Meantime, I've got my own life to live, my own goals for myself.
I want to become financially solvent all by myself, to be able to take care of myself.
If I can do that, then I know I'm not just trying to suck some guy in out of a need to feel safe and secure only.
I say this because I think that's what all the nightmares are about.
I think I will continue to dream that I am searching for something I cannot find and getting trapped in the past with my father or my ex-husband so long as I continue to live out my days struggling to make ends meet, afraid that I might lose everything again. So long as I feel that insecurity and anxiety, the nightmares will continue.
I have to fix that.
And I have to do it myself.
This is the hardest battle I've ever fought.
Mostly because I still fall back on the idea that I have to have someone else in my life to make me happy.
I want to be rescued by Prince Charming.
Damn Disney movies.
I want someone to love me unconditionally, to enjoy life with, and to catch me when I'm falling so that I don't ever have to be afraid again.
Maybe I have to learn to do those things for myself.
I know that I can, because I've done it over and over again.
I have to admit, though, that I just get tired of doing it alone every time.
I want someone to hold my hand and walk with me.
Something as simple as that.
And that doesn't require any legal commitment so much as an emotional one.
So I think that's what I want.
I just want someone to want to be there with me.
Supportive.
Kind.
Even when I was married, I didn't know what that felt like.
