On Hope, and love.

It's been a while since I've committed what I feel to words for an audience larger than a person at a time. There was, as my last post indicated, a period of loneliness, and a determination not to settle for someone who didn't make me happy. I had, by August, decided to focus on my writing, and to focus on self improvement. When I went to GenCon last year, I decided to try to make a connection in the publishing industry. Instead, I fell in love. With a woman in the scifi/fantasy publishing industry. Who is local to me, that I met 5 hours from home at an RPG convention.

It has been 4 months and 18 days since our relationship moved from friendship to love. 5 months and 13 days since I knew that I would love her. Every day I am moved by how much more I do, as though my capability to love is proportionate to the passage of time. It fills me up, makes me smile at the most random times, gives me hope and a vision of the future. We have more in common than I have ever experienced in a relationship before, so much more that it seems surreal sometimes. I want to wake up every day for the rest of my life next to this woman. She loves me unconditionally. Loves my children. Encourages me, and lifts me up when I have bruised my ego so badly that I see nothing good about me. She wants to be a mother, wife, partner, lover, and best friend. She is at the center of my happiness, and I know more contentment and peace than I have ever known.

I've noticed something else. I am closer to loving myself than I have ever been.

It's as though, in her eyes (that I love to see full of laughter and smiling), I can see the me that is, as she sees me, and not the me that I've always presumed that other people saw. She gives me so much warmth, so much joy, so much light, so much faith, so much hope. I don't have to worry about what I'm not, who I should be, who I need to be, what other people want me to be. I'm just me, and she loves me for who I am. Not only does she love me, but she gently disassembles what insecurities and fears that I might have, with warmth and patience, and leaves me with no other choice but to see that I have nothing to be afraid of. I have a life to look forward to with her, and I plan to live it, to be who I am, growing, changing, and loving, knowing that this is who I'm supposed to be.

I still need to finish a written work. You can't publish love.

Time and Time Again

I just got off of the phone with a woman that I've seen a few times recently. She went with the "It's not you, it's me." delivery. I can see her point, though, because she's been through a lot, and needs time and space to find and center herself again. I honestly just hope that she finds happiness and peace for herself. I had worried over how depressed she had become, and couldn't do much to help, as I'm in a precarious place myself. Neither of us needs to be in a relationship right now.

I am, children aside, alone. Alone, and terrified, of being alone, of being unloved, of being unworthy. I can't count the number of women that I sent hopeful messages to on various dating sites in the recent past. I can count on one hand the number of responses that I received. The equivalent, to my mind, of approaching a stranger and introducing yourself, having them look at you, and then walk away without acknowledging that there was ever an attempt at interaction. I've decided that dating sites are evil.

I had resolved to engage in things that would, theoretically, put me in contact with other people who shared my interests, thus increasing the odds of meeting a woman that would be compatible with me. I decided shortly after that I wasn't ready. I need to work on myself more. Lose more weight, tone up, bolster my self confidence and esteem. My lady friend this evening brought up an interesting point, though. I shouldn't need to try to make myself perfect in order to believe that I can be loved. I should be loved for who I am. Evidently, I have things to offer.

I've found myself thinking, over the last day or two, about my previously failed relationships. My marriage. Jen. Dawn. They all failed, and they all had one thing in common. Me. In the parenting class that I had to take before my divorce decree could be issued, the instructor gave us an interesting set of statistics. Over half of all marriages end in divorce. The percentage of failed marriages increased dramatically for those remarrying, with increases in failure rate per successive marriage. The theory is that, as you become accustomed to leaving bad relationships, it becomes easier. Serial spouses become accustomed to rationalizing why the relationships failed and walk away without holding themselves accountable. I don't know how true this is, or how it jives with the concept that we should be able to be loved as we are, without changing ourselves to meet the needs of others.

I just know that I keep failing. Failing at responsibility, accountability, maturity, patience. And that it doesn't get any easier. I'm an incredibly fortunate man. I recognize that, whether or not I have someone by my side through my journey, I'm still on this journey. I could focus on not having someone with me, or I could focus on the wealth of beauty and wonder that surrounds me, in a world that does not focus itself on me. I need to be more appreciative, and attentive, giving my all to my children, while I still have this time with them in their youth, time to make memories.

These things are easy to conceptualize, easy to understand, easy to vocalize. Much, much harder to do.

A Road of Troubles

I broke up with the Girl last week. It was hard. It was painful. But it was the right thing to do. I started seeing a therapist not long ago, and when I elaborated on some of the problems that I had when trying to relate to the Girl, my therapist asked me two questions that broke the construct. "Are you happy? And if you're not, and it's because of the person that she is, do you really want to spend the next 30 years of your life this way?" I wasn't happy. Comfortable, certainly. Secure. But not happy. And I knew then, that if I weren't happy, it wouldn't be right or fair to her to drag it out. She had paid for tickets for the two of us to go to Mexico next month to celebrate her birthday. I knew, even before one of my friends told me, that going on the trip and THEN breaking up with her would make me a pretty horrible person. I couldn't do that. It wouldn't be right.

We have one life. Every day, in whatever way we choose to spend it, we aren't going to get back. If I had stayed in that situation, I would have been making the same mistake that I made throughout my marriage. I would have been settling for a situation that made me less than happy, and submitting myself to pain and suffering for the sake of someone else. I learned, in this, that even when you're comfortable, even when you have stability, if you aren't truly happy, it's all just window dressing.

After the breaking up was finished, a difficult conversation with some ugly revelations that only confirmed my suspicion that neither of us had truly been okay with where we were, I set out to make some things right. To mend some fences. I had, in the aftermath of our first separation, walked away from someone who was very important to me. I had allowed myself to be talked into believing that her presence in my life was what had kept me from being happy. No, actually, it had kept the Girl from feeling as though we could be happy together. I had never questioned whether or not her presence brought light and warmth into my life, because for as long as I embraced it, it did. Now I have to hope that I didn't burn that bridge. Not because I'm trying to run back into my past again and find comfort in memories and rekindled romances. No, I've learned my lesson in that too. I only want to keep one of the sweetest friends that I have ever had in my life from fading away again. I have very few close friends, and hate to think of driving one away.

I have hope for the future. Hope that I'll find someone who values the gifts that I have. That I'll find someone who isn't just looking for a body to warm her bed and drive the demons of loneliness away. Someone who sees giving and loving as ephemeral gifts, not to be measured by the worth of the material. Someone who shares at least some of my passions. Surely there has to be someone out there who would choose to be that person in my life. I just have to wait, until they've come into my life, and hope that I'll be wise enough to recognize them when they do. In the meantime, I'm going to be joining the local writers guild this week, and attending local literary events as I can find them. You won't find a diamond if you're looking in a salt mine.

Lovin is what I got

It's been a lonely week. I think that one of the things that I miss the most about being in a relationship is the physical presence of someone. The living, breathing manifestation of a choice rooted in love that blossomed into something larger than myself. My kids are a wonderful example of this, but I can't be with them every day. And the love that I have in me to give, the agape love, the eros, they live in a place within that wants to resonate with someone. That has resonated with someone. And, through a variety of missteps, I've had to turn the page on the chapters in my life that contained those people.

I miss hugging. Kissing is good, too, but hugging is special. When I hug someone, I'm not just patting them on the back without looking them in the eye. I'm letting them know that I'm there, to lean on in as much I have strength to be given. I'm leaning on them, to let them know that I appreciate their strength. I'm holding them tightly, to let them know that I'm attached to them, and that they mean something to me. Adults usually get skittish after being hugged too long, it's one of the things that's great about having kids. My son will hug me for as long as I hug him back. My oldest daughter will, as well. My two littlest have too much energy, but will tolerate the hugs just long enough to let me know that they appreciate them. To be hugged, genuinely held, is to know that you are loved.

I've been reading a few books lately, one of which is about learning that we don't need to look for love from someone else in order to know that we are worthy of being loved. That we can choose whether or not to be happy. That, by the magic of our consciousness reproducing the happiness that we have previously felt in love, we can be that happy without needing someone in our lives to give that feeling to us. I tried that this morning, on the way to work. I thought about how happy I was a year ago. I thought about how happy just reading "Te Amo" has made me. I thought about how happy looking down into the smiling eyes of someone that loved me, and seeing their tears of love and joy made me. I thought about the joy of having someone by my side telling me "I love to see you happy.". And I had an amazing day. Even in those relationships in which I am no longer a fortunate partner, I can still feel the love that I shared with those people, and it still gives me peace, and joy.

Even without someone next to me, I can know that at some point in time, I have experienced and known love. I am an incredibly lucky man.

Loneliness

The last few weeks have been rough. For a variety of reasons, things between Dawn and I didn't work out. I would like to say that it was all her fault. I'm inclined to say that it was all of mine. The truth is, we were both unprepared for what a life with each other would be like. I miss the time spent with her. There were more happy memories than sad, and that's better than the alternative.

I've been with someone, in some way, shape or form, for almost all of my adult life. As of the beginning of June, I'll be renting an apartment for the first time, embarking on a single life. The opportunities scare me, and exhilarate me, all at once. I find myself lonely, and really, I'm not sure that that's a bad thing. Maybe this is what I need, the doorway to changing myself that I've always needed but never had. I'm not sure about that, though. I didn't exactly do a bang-up job of turning my life around while away in college. That was 12 years and more ago, though. Surely I've learned something since then. I hope.

On masks, and good company

Yesterday morning, while trimming my beard, there was an incident with the scissors. The beard had gotten a little unruly, and I was trying to trim it back to something more orderly, less like an aspiring Mountain Man. The first pass went smoothly, stray whiskers were brought into the fold. The second pass went just as well, as I mimicked the motions that I've seen hair stylists make when trimming what little hair I have left up top. I should have left well enough alone, but no, I decided to go big. I moved a little closer to my chin and tried it again, and was shocked to discover on the third pass that the hair on my chin was much, much more sparsely arrayed than I had thought. That thin spot had been hiding behind the surrounding whiskers as camouflage. With a single *snick* of the scissors, I undid a years worth of growth, and kicked a hole in the thin plaster veneer that I had been erecting in the mirror.

The goatee had become a mask. Originally started to appease someone else, the more it grew in, the less I felt that I looked like the old me. The me that had wasted so many years, that had neglected so much, that had been so foolish. The childish me, and not the new man. "Fake it til you make it!" they say, and the goatee had been helping me, I thought, fake "it". Granted, it wasn't some magical, all powerful totem that symbolized my increasing good looks, but it was, I thought, a good look for me, and hid alot of things that I didn't like. It symbolized my distance from the man that I was.

The initial damage done, I had to plow ahead and finish the job. The beard went, followed by the mustache. The amount of hair in the sink was shocking. And there I was, weak chin framed by a double chin. Weak lips in a pouty mouth, too small for the wide face that it had been planted in. Hair cut too short to effectively frame my head. There was nothing there that I found pleasant to see, and I spent the rest of my day brooding on it. I skipped lunch, determined to punish myself for not having come further, for not being more. I took stock of who I was, and found so many reasons to be so disappointed in myself.

Over dinner, after a movie, I poured my insecurities out to Dawn. I spoke of my fear, that my constant fear of failing in my life would become a self fulfilling prophecy. I shared my doubts over my ability to become the man that I should be. And found, after a series of insightful questions, that I don't really even know who that man is. I can't define what it is that I hate about myself. I just know that I'm not who I should be, when compared with other people of better station at my age. I should be doing more, showing more evidence of growth, demonstrating my value. If I'm not succeeding, I'm failing. Instead of acknowledging that I could be set out on the right path, that I could be worthy of something good in my life, I raise the bar of my self expectations higher until I find a place in which I'm lacking, and then flagellate myself over it. I set myself up for failure by allowing myself no room for error, no room for growth.

All of this, triggered because I took away the mask that I had been hiding behind. Well, not really. That implies that these issues were ever far from the surface even when I had the goatee. They were always preying on my mind, but now I felt that my deficiencies were out in the open, on display for all to see. That everyone who saw me would be as disgusted with me as I have been in myself. That I would be "found out", exposed for the unworthy man that I am. We talked about all of this, over some really good food that I had initially been reluctant to order. It was, I'm sure you can imagine, a pretty emotional conversation. I felt as though I were releasing some bitter poison, lancing a boil and venting to this wonderful woman who has been so amazing to me. She then, methodically, rationally, logically dismantled my self loathing. Cut through it with insight sharp as a scalpel, dissecting the root of my fears, and showing me where the reality diverged from my expectations. With the strength of her belief in me, her unconditional love for me, she reinforced how lucky I am. She is committed to me, and to seeing me become as happy as I can be with the man that I am.

I've decided to start a program of some kind, and am looking into options, so that I can learn to begin seeing the man in me that everyone else sees. I'm still growing the goatee back, though. Now I know why it's a favorite look for chubby guys with double chins.

One Year

Tomorrow marks a year passed since my leaving. I have known, in that year, more beauty and more sadness than I ever have before. I have seen things that I had never thought that I would see, heard things that I had never thought that I would hear, done things that I had never thought that I would do. I have lost love, found it again, lost it again, and found warmth, safety, and comfort. I have never known that I could be so happy, and never imagined that I would feel so alone again. I have been blessed with the love of a woman who has been very, very good to me. I have struggled with questions of my worth as a man, and as a father. Struggled with how to gauge the worth of my word, and the weight of what it means to make, break, and keep my promises. Struggled with the reality of the consequences of my decisions. More importantly, I have put my children through life altering changes. Changes that I hope, through the positive example of what I will become, they will learn from. A year ago, I would never have imagined myself where I am. It was all supposed to go so differently. I am an incredibly fortunate man, to have been given so much.

What Is

It occurs to me that I've spent a good deal of energy talking about what once was, and not enough energy talking about what is. One night last week, in the wee hours of the morning, I held a wonderful woman and whispered words of love and encouragement into her hair while she wept. She wept because she fears that she will never be able to live up to the spectre of what I once had. I have written at length on the qualities in Jen that I love, on the memories that I will hold with me for the rest of my life, and the doubt, the regret that I will have over losing her again. In putting these thoughts to record, I have fleshed out just how high a pedestal I've put her on. In putting her on so high a pedestal, I've guaranteed that the shadow she casts is long. It's no wonder that someone trying to stand by me would have insecurities and fears.

The first time that I met Dawn, I told her everything about my situation. I tried, purposely, to scare her away with the enormity of my emotional burdens. She wept for me then, a stranger across the tiny table of a coffee shop in a bookstore, because I was, as she puts it, "so sad". She became my friend, my companion. Eventually, as I went for days, then weeks without hearing from Jen, she became a part of my daily life, reassuring me that regardless of how I chose to interpret the silence, I was a worthy man. A good man. She began to take note of the little things, and found joy in bringing me joy.

My family loved her from the beginning, because she was so obviously taken with me, and so incredibly good to me. She engages everyone in my family on a very personal level, and has no fear of speaking her mind, no aversion to disagreement. She thinks of them in the littlest ways, just like she does me, and has adopted them as her own because they are mine. "They're important to you" she says "and so they're important to me, too." She makes no effort to hide her love for me from them, or anyone else. I am important to her, and everyone in my life that she interacts with can tell.

We took a good bit of time debating whether and when to introduce her to my kids. She read books on the subject, looked for guidance, and when she decided to meet them, she was as nervous as I've ever seen her. They took to her right away. Cailee, my sweet little Cailee, with so many quirks and funny little rules about physical interaction, asked her for a hug on the first night that they met. It moved her. She understood and communicated with the kids on a level that they couldn't resist. She worries about them, asks about them, helps to provide for them, plays on the floor with them, talks to them like real people, and loves them. She puts them first, which is something that noone else in my life has done before.

She keeps me honest, reinforcing the man in me who wants to do the right thing. She lends me the benefit of her wisdom, her life experience, her generosity, her nurturing nature, and her desire to see us both become the best human beings that we can be. She loves me unconditionally, corrects me with humility, disagrees with me when necessary, and puts herself at my side, to support me, to encourage me, to help me, and to enlighten me. She understands and respects my need for honest, direct communication. She makes sure that I know that I am not alone, that she wants to help me. Her strength, her courage, her joy and her love for me radiate from her like the light of the sun when she is with me, and if any light could have the strength to banish the shadow of what I have put between us, it would be hers.

This is what I have. This is what reminds me on a daily basis of just how incredibly fortunate I am. This love, blossoming from the roots of friendship, has come to sustain me, and to nourish my soul. While letting go of the past has been, and always will be hard, Dawn has committed herself to a life with me. I will do all that I can to keep her from regretting that decision, and to give back as much good to her life as she has to mine. In that spirit, and to ease what insecurity I have it in my power to, I will put no more words to page about what once was. I will give over my energy to nourishing and extolling the depth and beauty of what I am incredibly fortunate enough to have in my life right now. The love and respect of an amazing woman.

Time keeps on slippin....

The last year has seen more change than any other in my life. I ended a toxic relationship that produced my wonderful children. I had no more trust left in me, and she had no real desire to become someone that I could trust. Our partnership was broken, I couldn't fix it on my own, and she saw nothing in it that was in need of fixing. The decision itself was easy to make. It had made itself long ago, I think, and another lie to break the camels back set it in motion. The aftermath was hard, and still is to some degree. I worry a great deal about what kind of effect that decision will have on my children, but my train of thought in that regard leads me to believe that a happier, healthier Dad will help them learn to make difficult choices and take ownership of their own happiness. It's what I hope for, at least.

I reconnected with the first woman that I genuinely believed that I was going to marry, only to see her fade out of my life once again. The euphoria of what a life started over could be was dashed against reality. I became another demand, instead of a release, and when something had to give, I felt the foundation that I had built with every one of our shared promises fall away beneath me. I had given my happiness over into the hands of someone who wasn't ready or able to take on the mantle of that responsibility, and learned the hard way that while we may mean every promise that we make, keeping them may not always be possible.

We shared the most beautiful day of my life, and at the end, I hadn't heard from her in weeks, although she was keeping up her "Facebook face". The last time that I heard from her, she wished me well in my new found love, and said that she would leave me alone. I'm not sure if she understood that she had already left me alone. I learned then, the hard way, that we all ride currents on the river of life, and that we have no guarantee that those currents will keep us close to those that we love. I hope that she finds peace. I hope that someday she finds the love that she deserves, when she finds herself ready. A part of me will always wish that it could have been me.

While I waited through those weeks of silence, shifting between a stoic acceptance of the situation and a pathetic need for attention, a friend stood by my side and waited. Waited for me to come around, to realize that every quality that I was waiting for was already beside me. Waited for me to realize that I couldn't make someone choose me, that I was worthy of being chosen, that I had already been chosen. Waited for me to open my eyes and see that a good woman was devoting her time to watching me agonize over someone who would spare no time, and yet for whom I was willing to give everything. She waited patiently, until I finally let go of the hopeless situation that I was putting myself in, and devoted my energy to building a new life.

While I've known for some time now that I'm a lucky man, I'm still getting used to the idea that I'm a worthy man. Worthy of my own respect, at the very least. This is the year that I begin to claim what I'm worth, the year that I stop wallowing and start moving, the year that I begin to make this new life into what it should be, and stop waiting for it to become what I hope it could be. This is the year, my friends, that I begin to live, to love, to laugh, to breathe, to focus, and to center myself in gratitude for what I have, hunger for what I want, and to test myself in order to maintain the former and move forward toward the latter. I will be no less than who I am, and do all that I can to give those who love me every reason to be proud, without reason to be disappointed or ashamed.

This is my year.

Weariness, closure, and renewal

We spoke again, after the goodbye exchange. She doesn't have the energy to put into returning the love that I have for her. She needs to find her own path, her own joy, for her. She will always love the fact that I will always love her, that I will always be here for her. I helped her to see that she wasn't the cause of the unhappiness in her life, that she is worthy of being loved. It felt alot like the first time that we went through this. And, while I can't say that it made it easier, I felt as though I attained closure. She will never belong to me. The time that we had together was borrowed, and never guaranteed. I can look these facts in the face, and accept them.

I know now, that it wasn't me. There was nothing more that I could have done, nothing that I could have done differently. Thinking of her smile, remembering her voice, while they still hurt, hurt less. The promises, the commitments that both of us made are still bouncing around in my head, and those hurt significantly more. I don't understand it at all, but I've started taking the memories and putting them away, like keepsakes in a box. Through her, I experienced some of the happiest moments of my life, and I will always appreciate that. I found the good man in myself, in part because of her.

For over a month now, I have been growing close to and confiding in a very sweet, very kind, very understanding woman. My family loves her. She takes me to places in the city that I would never have thought of going to on my own, introduces me to culinary experiences that I wouldn't have tried, exposes me to hobbies that I wouldn't have given much thought to in the past. We don't read the same books. We don't listen to the same music (although I've been introducing her to genres that she's never experienced). We don't have a track record of enjoying the same movies (although she's been remarkably patient with my attempts to transform her into a sci-fi geek). We don't have what I would call a traditional "spark".

But she's patient. She's kind. She's sat and listened to me pour out my soul about another woman. She's listened to me profess undying love, devotion, and commitment to someone who has, for all that I know, walked out of my life forever, and she hasn't given up on me. She makes me acknowledge my successes, talks me out of beating myself up over my failures, and puts time and energy into me. She's available to me, knows that she wants to be by my side, and puts herself there. She really has been amazing to me. I don't know what my path forward holds, but I know that she's traveling it with me.

But how, you might ask, can you go from declaring undying love and devotion to someone in one part of your narrative, and then speak of being with someone else in just a few short paragraphs? How can you speak of love as an absolute in the past, assuring us that you don't cut and run, and then just a few weeks later introduce us to a new player in your life as though it were trivial?

Because it's not trivial. Because it took me weeks to acknowledge to myself that it was the right thing to do. Because I gave Jen space, and time, and love, all of me, and she closed the door to her life in my face. Because I deserve to be happy, and because I deserve to know where the person that I love wants to be in my life, where they want me to be in their lives. Because she had no energy left to spare for me, for my happiness, and that's okay. She has to make the choices necessary to make herself happy, and somewhere, somehow, I became a part of the problem, and no longer a part of the solution.

And because I'm not speaking words of love to anyone else right now. And may never, if it means going through this kind of thing again. Right now, I'm spending time with someone who wants to see me happy, and who is willing to put time and energy into bringing me back to that place. I've found in the last week, while beginning the process of letting go, that loving someone with that amount of energy, when it isn't returned with the same amount of energy, is exhausting. I don't know if I can bring myself to ever commit like that again. I don't believe that I will ever find love like that again, and I'm coming to terms with that. Maybe we aren't meant to. Maybe loving like that isn't healthy. Maybe all of my expectations, all of my hopes were unrealistic. Maybe giddy, irrational happiness like that is destined by nature to be short lived. I don't know. I just know that I'm tired, and for the first time in a long time, I have a shoulder to rest my head upon. That might be silly, but it's all that I've wanted for months. I'm finding peace. Finding rest. Finding closure.

Goodbyes

I let go today. I said goodbye. By necessity it was via email. She hasn't had the time to talk to me on the phone in quite a while. I tried to call, but it went to voicemail, as I had expected it to. I had prepared myself for it to be hard, and it was harder than I had imagined that it would be. Love is patient, and I will love her for the rest of my life. I can't, however, keep living a life in which I allow myself to be relegated to the lowest priority in her life. I can't keep living a life in which I have to beg for the least amounts of attention. I won't pretend to be a healthy, whole individual, but even I finally came to the conclusion that it was unhealthy.

I will most likely never hear from her again. I'm not okay with that yet, but she seems to be, I can't tell. She's psyched about the possibility of the Rangers making it to the World Series, according to her last Facebook status. I deactivated my Facebook. I honestly have no desire to be around people for quite some time, and I don't have the ability to maintain what she calls a "Facebook Face".

It will also most likely be some time before I update this record. While I recognize that I truly am a lucky man, I have to take some time to internalize this, and move through it. I had never expected to lose her again. I had never expected, from the conversations that we had, the moments that we shared, that she would walk away. I had believed that we completed each other, and committed myself fully to the promise of a life with her. It was supposed to work this time. I don't understand what I could have done differently.

If you love something

In keeping with my recent tendency to examine trite phrases that seem to end up in motivational conversations, I've spent some time thinking about another classic.

If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it was yours. If it doesn't, it never was.

(Okay, so I paraphrased. And inserted things like commas and periods. Google that phrase, and you'll find that it just can't seem to help but come across like it was written by a semi-literate teenage girl.)

Setting something that you love free is incredibly hard. It means letting go. It means understanding that they have their own life to live. Their own choices to make. Their own path to take. Their own challenges. You may be asking too much of them. They may love you, but they just can't be what you want or need them to be. Whatever the case may be, you accept that it's outside of your power to do anything more to change it. In fact, by trying too hard to keep that love in your life, you could suffocate it. In the immortal words of .38 Special, "if you cling too tightly, you're gonna lose control".

If it comes back to you, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was always yours, or that it will stay in your life from that point on. My joy came back to me after 16 years of darkness and loneliness for both of us. And now it's gone. I've found the hard way that things don't happen according to our wishes in life based on the desire that we throw at them. If this were true, we all would have gotten the puppy we wanted for Christmas when we were kids. I've also learned that life isn't anything remotely like a romantic comedy, or a sitcom from the 80's. Telling someone that if they really, really loved you, that they would find a way to be with you doesn't result in a montage of two people crying alone and then inevitably finding their way to each other at the hour of their greatest need. It breaks things.

I am in love, for better or worse, and will be for the rest of my life. At this point, I don't know if I will ever have her in my life again, but I have to let it go. If this love was meant to be, it will. If not, I'm left with memories of the happiest moments in my life, outside of the birth of my children. I was lucky enough to have reached out to the most wonderful woman that I have ever known, to have given her all of the man that I am, and to have been the recipient of her love, for however brief a time. How many people can claim to have been so fortunate? If I should never hear from her again, I was still lucky enough to have had her in my life. Even in this, of all things, I find that I am an incredibly lucky man.

Serenity

At one point in my life, every time that I heard someone reference or repeat the Serenity Prayer, I would roll my eyes, or at the very least, get that feeling inside that you get when you roll your eyes. I think that we all know it, but just in case we don't, here you go:

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

See? You've heard or read that before, surely. Maybe tacked up in an office cubicle, modified with a picture of someone strangling a cat, or edited to include some witty reference as to exactly what you'd like to do to the person testing your patience. It's pithy, and quotable. It's also, as I think about it more as a philosophical text and less as a pop culture reference, actually pretty deep. So deep that it's been modified and included in 12 Step Programs, the modified version of which I had never read before, and you probably haven't either, unless you've been in a 12 Step Program, or you're a Wiki geek like me.

God, grant us the...

Serenity to accept things we cannot change,

Courage to change the things we can, and the

Wisdom to know the difference

Patience for the things that take time

Appreciation for all that we have, and

Tolerance for those with different struggles

Freedom to live beyond the limitations of our past ways, the

Ability to feel your love for us and our love for each other and the

Strength to get up and try again even when we feel it is hopeless.

This version changes things completely. This is exactly the kind of life instruction I've been looking for, and the lessons are immediately applicable in my life.

There is so much that I want to change, and that I can't. My mind honestly works at the insurmountable things in my life like it's trying to solve a Gordian knot. Accepting that I just can't change them, that there isn't always a bold move to suddenly make them right, is really very hard for me. In my mind, letting go of something is tantamount to admitting that you failed at making it work. It's one of the reasons that my marriage lasted as long as it did. I didn't want to admit that it had failed, even though the evidence was all around me. I need to learn to visualize the weight that I feel from these things as rocks, and to just drop them instead of carrying them with me everywhere I go.

I could be spending as much time battling with these issues as I do because I lack the courage to just change the things that I can, and should. It's easier for me to tell myself that I don't know what to do to fix something than it is to accept the solution that would fix it, because I want a fixed outcome, requiring the serenity to accept that I can't change the outcome. There are times when I will worry at something into weariness, exhausting every possible outcome, just to avoid accepting the fact that I have to make changes, like ending my marriage.

Having the wisdom to know the difference isn't the same thing as the intelligence to recognize the difference. I'm intelligent enough to know, for example, that I can't force some things to happen in my life by my timetable. I can't, for example, force someone to choose a path in their life that leads them to immediately to me simply because it would make me happy. I know that. I'm not, however, wise enough to assimilate that into my day to day hopes and fears. On a certain level, I have this childish need to have my own insecurities and doubts allayed constantly, and I should probably see a therapist about that.

The rest of the 12 Step version is what really drew me in, though. Because I need the patience to realize that not all wonderful things in life germinate, take root, and blossom overnight. Roses may smell sweet when they're budding, but if we pick them too soon, they'll never attain the potential that they could have had if we had left them there until they were ready, yellow, and inviting. I need to learn to appreciate what I have, and not just yearn for what I don't. I need to learn that what I'm going through isn't what everyone else is going through, and that the people around me are struggling with their own problems. I need to learn to forgive myself for the things that I've done and can't change, and to forgive others for things that I'm still angry over.

The loving part I've always been good at. It's one of the reasons that I've learned over the years to be selective about the relationships that I engage in with people. Everyone deserves to be loved, at least a little, but the people in my life that I love, well, I never love in half measures. I do need to learn, though, that the strength to get up again doesn't always have to come from inside of me. I have a hard time reaching out to people when I'm in pain, a hard time admitting that I need help, because it's always seemed like an admission of weakness. When I do reach out, I need to learn when to stop asking for more than someone can give, because the world doesn't revolve around me. Well, except to my babies.

Which brings me back to my need for this whole philosophical lesson in the first place. I'm in a place in life that's unstable. The plans that I had made with the mother of my children about their future have changed a few times. I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was, but I allowed myself to think that it could all work out in the end. My faith was misplaced. I'm still not sure what's going to happen, but I know that I need to take steps to take care of it, so that it doesn't take care of itself without my input. My energy needs to be spent on securing what's best for them.

I feel like a man who's been handed a painting by Monet, while his house is in smoking ruins around him. Before I can figure out where to hang it, I need to, well, rebuild my house. Sure, I could just throw up some joists and sheetrock and then hang it on my impromptu wall, but if I don't have a house built around that wall, it's eventually going to fall. As much as I hate to, I need to stop admiring the beauty of the Monet, put it down, and get to work on rebuilding the house, making it stable and secure, a warm and comforting place for my children to grow up, admiring it's beauty with me. It's not going anywhere. It's still my Monet. Unless the deliveryman comes back and picks it up, because it wasn't supposed to be delivered to me in the first place. See? See how my mind works? This is why I need to work on this whole thing.

Next time we'll talk about the classic proverb that begins with "If you love something, set it free..."

Or maybe we won't, I don't know, I've got to shop for sheetrock and lumber first. Does anyone have nails? And maybe a hammer?

On Love, Again

When I was a minister in training, I would almost always emphasize the love of Christ in my sermon studies. Rather than focus on the post-mortem structure of Peter and Paul that give most conservative ministers license to condemn everyone under the sun to Hell, it was important to me that we remember that He socialized with the undesirable, and that He gave love to those who were judged as unlovable by everyone else. One of my favorite passages in the NT was a definition of what love should be.

^{1 Corinthians 13:4-8
4}Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸Love never fails.

You may have noticed that my last rambling diatribe of a post has been removed. I removed it because, as soon as I posted it, it felt wrong. It felt self serving, and self centered. It felt as though I were putting my love on display for all to see, and saying "Look! Look at what manner of man that I am, giving all and being repaid with sorrow!"

(edit: I have republished that post. Revisionist historians always bothered me.)

At the end of the day, whether I sleep alone or not, whether I weep or laugh, whether I have peace or my mind refuses to allow it, my life, and my love, are the result of choices that I have made. There is no room in agape for "but...". Love is patient. Love is kind. Love doesn't boast, and it isn't proud. It isn't self seeking. It isn't easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. My last post was the reflection of something that was not patient, that was not kind. It was a boast. It was proud, and self seeking. It was angry. It wanted to keep record of wrongs. It was not protective, it had lost trust, and hope. It had failed. This is not how I love.

I try very hard to be honest, and to remember how fortunate I am. I have the love of an incredible woman, who only asks me to give her agape in return. To give her patience. To be kind. This should be easy for me, because this is how I love.

I am not, unfortunately, a strong man. I frequently despair over my weaknesses. I am going through one of the most difficult periods that I have ever experienced in my life, and rather than face it head on, as I should, I whine about going through it alone. There are widows in third world countries trying to find a way to feed their children on less money a month than I make in a day. There are good, hardworking people going through trials in their lives that make mine look like a walk in the park. I should be grateful that I have what I do.

I have four beautiful children who love me more than anyone else on the face of the earth. I am at the center of their universes. I have a family willing to move mountains to help me do what's best for them. I have 6 friends who love and support me, because when I choose friends I choose the right people. I have a great job, and managers who work with me on trying to figure out what it is that I want to be, and how to get me there. I have the freedom and the resources to allow me to plan a trip to see the most amazing woman on the face of the planet, and she makes as much time for me as she can when I do. I have an incredible woman who completes me, and all that she asks me for is time, and patience.

Who am I, to complain? I should be grateful and glad, to have so much. That is how I should love.

On Love, and Happiness

In the past, I've been rather coy regarding my happiness, and the cause. Or at least, I thought that I was. In hindsight now, I think that it would be obvious to all who read my previous posts that the happiness that I spoke of was in fact love. While my last post was titled "The Last Post", I have in fact been struggling with the situation since.

I am in love with a woman who is unavailable to me. I first saw her 16 years ago in college, standing alone on the quad, obviously waiting for someone. I tried an unbelievably corny but original pickup line. "You know, if you're waiting for him now, he'll keep you waiting forever." It was the only time that a pickup line has ever worked for me. She was the first woman that I really, truly loved. The first woman that I ever proposed to. My first lesson in what happens when you stop paying attention, and take someone for granted. We lost touch for almost 15 years. When I began my journey back into freedom, I looked for her, because she was the last woman in whose life I felt that I had truly made a positive difference. When I reached out to her, I hoped to hear that she was happy, that I had indeed made a positive difference in her life. Her story is her own to tell, but chance and circumstance conspired to bring us back together at a time when we were both in pain.

The Greeks have several words for love. The two that we most commonly would identify with are agape and philia. Agape is unconditional love, commonly reserved for reference to the love shared between spouses or family members. Philia is brotherly love, commonly used when referring to the affection between friends. I mention this because, when I give someone agape, I love them with all of my being. There are few things that could bring me to break that tie with someone, dishonesty being paramount, and the giving of that love has been very rare for me.

I have loved no one in my life like I love this woman. I can tell you her favorite author. I can tell you her favorite book by that author. I can tell you what her favorite band is, what the side projects of the band members are, and what bands the members came from to form that band. I can tell you who her favorite baseball team is, what her favorite football teams are (pro and college), what her favorite car is, what her favorite comfort food is, what her favorite adult beverage is, what her favorite cologne is, what her favorite candy bar is, and how she likes her tea. I know where she likes to be touched, and how she likes her massages. We've decided what to name our dog, and our child, if we should decide to have one. I will spend over a third of a day driving in order to spend 15 minutes with her, then turn around and drive back. I call her before I get out of bed in the morning, and I listen to audio on my phone of her telling me how much she loves me before I go to sleep. I want to wake up next to her and go to sleep with her every day for the rest of my life. She has been my everything, and I want her to be, because she is amazing.

I would like to say that this love is not unrequited. Because of the nature of the situation that she finds herself in, I'm limited to talking to her while she's at work, when I call, and she has time. I'm limited to hearing from her via email while she's at work, and when she has time. I'm on her mind, though, she tells me, even when she can't communicate with me. She's coming someday, she says. She just needs time, to find the right time to break away from the comfort of everything that she's known for the last 14 years and make an incredible leap of faith. My solace in the off hours is to read her Facebook status updates, and watch her banter with a man who tells her that she's blackhearted and judgmental, and that she ruined his life. It's been 3 days now, since last I've heard from her. It will be at least 5 before I do, and that's if I'm lucky.

I know. I know how it looks. I know how it feels, on the bad days and the good. I've tried to look for someone else to fill the void. At the end of the day, though, no one can take her place. She is my puzzle piece. When I close my eyes, I see the light of love that fills her eyes for me, and I know that I could no more turn my back to her than I could stop breathing. Agape. Unconditional. Even when conditions aren't always what we would like them to be. Because that's the way that I love.

I create those conditions for myself, though. I let them control me. By letting my anxiety, my low self esteem, and my impatience create a feedback loop that pulls me down ever further, I move further and further from the positive place that I should be bringing myself to. I have to learn to recognize that I can do nothing more to have a positive effect on the outcome of the situation that I find myself in. If who I am is enough, and if the situation that she's in hasn't made her leave by now, I can't be "more" of that person and make her decide to come sooner. I can only make it worse by trying, and can produce no positive outcome at all through the sheer amount of worry that I go through over it.

Several of my friends have counseled that I should stop trying to find my happiness through my relationships with others, and instead try to find my happiness within. That until I can find a way to be happy alone, I will never be happy with someone else. I don't know how to do this. My waking thoughts are occupied by what I could be doing differently, what I might have done wrong, how I could make her happier. One of my friends has told me that I need to quiet all of the inner voices and listen for my own, the one giving me the answer. I'm afraid of letting go. Afraid of focusing on myself. Afraid of what the answer might be.

Besides, for now I have plenty of other things to think about. My children, first and foremost. They need me now more than they have ever needed me. They should be my everything. There is a real possibility in the near future that I may need to take them. To find a way to give them a stable, responsible, and orderly home. To shuttle them to school, to find a way to pick them up. To be everything that they need me to be. I only hope that I can be. I only know that I will never give up on trying. Because that's the way that I love.

The Last Post

I started this blog fresh from what I thought were a liberating series of changes in my life that would lead to a brighter, happier future. This may still be true. What I hadn't expected, at the beginning of that road, was just how long that road would feel. I had intended this space to be a place to share my insight into how wonderful life really is. The truth, I've found, is that life is not inherently wonderful. Life is a series of choices that we make, the moments in between echoes of consequence. There are times when those choices are poorly made, and the moments feel heavier than lead between.

I had expected that by leaving the situation that I was in, I was leaving behind my unhappiness. I had thought that I was ready to claim my happiness. Unfortunately, my happiness isn't ready to be claimed, and I continue to carry the source of my unhappiness inside. There are life lessons in this, I know, about attainment, desire and fulfillment, but I'm not ready to learn them. Right now, I feel like a man dying of thirst, carrying a cracked vessel along my journey. The flowers along the side of the road may be beautiful, but I'm too weak to appreciate them.

My journey isn't over, far from it. I just have no more wisdom in me, not that there ever was much that I would claim. I'm feeling more Amadain these days, for so many reasons. This space was meant to be a record of the positive things, of my good fortune. There are positive things in my life, surely, and I'm still fortunate. I'm just too parched to recognize them. May your own journey be full of moments easier to recognize as good, and may you be wise enough to notice and appreciate them. You'll be wiser, and more worthy of them, than I.

On waiting

My life seems to have been placed on pause as I wait for several things to happen. Not a static pause, placed on hold, but a dynamic pause. The distance between one breath and the next, the silence in the tempo of a heartbeat. I wait for one event to occur so that I can begin the next. While that may be true of everyone on a metaphysical level, unfortunately it has tangible meaning for me. I wait for a discharge to my bankruptcy, so that I can begin the process of my divorce. I wait for the divorce, so that hopefully someday I will feel the burden of the change that I've forced my children through lifted. I wait for the day to come when I'm sharing my life with the right woman. I wait, and I bide my time. Not with the grim outlook of the condemned man that I used to be, counting the hours until I could be released from misery, but with the hope and anticipation of a reprieved man, knowing that I have a future, and that joy is in it.

Unfortunately, either habit is unhealthy. Rather than living in the now, and realizing that I have all of the tools, all of the material for happiness and joy in my life, I put my hope for joy in the aftermath of future events. "Someday, I will be happy, but only after this happens, and this happens, and this happens." No, if I take a deep breath and stop looking ahead, and start looking at now, I realize that I am happy now. I have the love of those who are closest to me. I have my health (in large part, discounting my current sinus infection), I have the ability to work, to contribute to society, to enjoy the small moments of my life. I am, indeed, an incredibly lucky man. Life shouldn't be defined in what we anticipate to be our greatest successes, or our worst failures, but rather in the moments that we choose to make memorable. By taking this breath, and typing these words, I create a record of this moment. The music that I write to, the room that I write in, the events of the day, all crystalized in memory because I choose them to be. The littlest of moments, by becoming the memories, alleviate the need to wait. In engaging the now, and letting the past and future sort themselves out according to plan, we may find more pleasure, and less worry.

On Anger, and Bad Days

"You're afraid of going back to the house, aren't you?"

This question, asked with a giggle by one of my children, was what led to the culmination of a very bad week. The mother of my children had recently begun having her boyfriend over for sleepovers. I had, and still have, no problem with this. She's human, after all, and needs companionship, like we all do. I did, and still do, have a problem with her having the man sleep in her bed while my children are there. Especially, as was the case last weekend, on Fathers Day.

I recognize that I can't control, or dictate morality, to anyone else. They have to make the decisions that they make because they believe that they're the right decision for themselves. As a parent, however, I believe that these decisions must take into consideration the best interest of the child or children in your care. Having someone you've known for less than two months, and that your children have met once or twice, sleep in your bed while your children sleep nearby, seems irresponsible to me. I wouldn't do it, and I asked the mother of my children not to do it, the week before Fathers Day. She agreed.

This is important to me. In a world challenged at every turn by moral dilemmas, I find myself looking for the simplest answers around me. When I ask something of someone, and they agree, I believe that they will honor their terms of the agreement. It seems simple enough to me. "Will you please not let your boyfriend stay the night while the kids are here, at least until the divorce is finalized? It sets a bad example." "Okay, I won't." Simple enough, in my eyes. Imagine the sadness involved on my part, then, when I was told by one of my children that he had spent the night, and woke up in her bed, on Fathers Day. That he had then come back, and spent the night again after I dropped the kids off on Fathers Day. I was hurt beyond words. We had an agreement.

This past Tuesday, I spoke with her again, and she made no effort to apologize for lying to me and breaking our agreement. I let it go, because I recognize that I can't control her morality, can't make her decisions for her. She asked, instead, that I get to know her boyfriend. Give him the chance to win me over, man to man. I've always hoped that whoever she ended up with, I could have some form of friendly relationship with. My early experiences with this man precluded any hope that I had in this case.

Without becoming specific to a degree of personal intrusion, I will say that when I first spoke to him, he threatened me, because I wanted to Google his name for the safety of my children. We spoke again, and while he eventually gave me his name, he also gave me a lengthy discourse on how lucky I was that he wasn't physically near me, because I had angered him so greatly. I listened to a rant about my character, and my inadequate qualities as a provider, and a father. I listened to these things from this man, and I let it go. Afterward, I made a point of avoiding the house when he was there. I had no desire to meet this man. No desire to get to know him. Last week, I asked the mother of my children to at least have him out of the house every other day, so that I could visit at the house with my children. She agreed.

Last night, on a night when I was supposed to have time at the house with the kids, she told me that we would need to go to the park, because he was at the house. Another agreement, broken. We argued for a short period of time about why she couldn't keep up any of our agreements. She had no adequate reasons, and I gave up the argument, in favor of spending time with my kids. My beautiful, precious children, who went on to tell me about how they spend their days with John. How they go to the store with John. How they love John, but not as much as they love me. I was defeated. While I work, to provide for them, to give her money with which to feed my children, and while I pay all of her bills, she and this under employed stranger get to spend their days entertaining my children. I avoided the house while he was there, to avoid confrontation, to avoid an unpleasant encounter, giving him time to steal away my children.

Out of nowhere, near the end of the visit, one of them uttered those words.

"You're afraid of going back to the house, aren't you?"

I asked my child where they had heard this. "John." I asked their mother why she would let this man say such things to my children, without coming to the defense of their father. "Neither of us knows what to think." was her response. Because the event and its repercussions are still too new, I won't go into detail regarding the rest of the evening. I will say though, that my child knows now that I am not afraid of this man. Unfortunately, in the process, I may have ruined what could have been a happy, healthy relationship that my children and their mother had with someone who made them happy. Instead of dealing with this situation in a constructive way, I gave in to my anger and dealt with it in a destructive way. Granted, the man was speaking ill of me to my children, with no defense from their mother, but I'll have to grow to expect that. I'll have to stop looking for cooperation from her, because we're not working toward the same goals. That saddens me, because I realize that it only hurts our children, but I can't make those decisions for her. I can, however, choose not to let the anger control me, and be the man that my children need me to be.

On SSRI's and hard times

Due to my own incompetence, I ran out of my SSRI a week and a half or so ago. Those who have been prescribed SSRI's, like Effexor, know how effective they can be. Those who have come off of that particular form of medication know how difficult that can be. During that period of withdrawal, I found myself drawn into drama over the safety of my children. There are few things in life that I take more seriously than the happiness and security of my children. While I believe the drama to be resolved, I was saddened greatly at the amount of deception involved. While unfortunately I can't say that I was surprised at the fact that it went on, I was surprised at how much I allowed it to hurt me.

I have, through the course of this path that I have put myself on, tried very hard to minimize the amount of pain that the mother of my children went through. She is, after all, half of their world, half of their happiness. Happy parents make happy children. While I will continue to believe in this, I don't believe that I can honestly make myself believe that she plans to extend the same courtesy to me. I accept that. It is, after all, the road that I have put myself on. Even so, I have cried more today than I have in a very long time. I really had hoped that I could keep a friendship with her that would make co-parenting easier.

I took one of the Effexor as soon as I left the pharmacy, and the nausea is already kicking in. I have struggled more with loneliness and with doubt over the last week and a half than I have in months, and it isn't a pleasant place to be. I hate that I have to medicate to get through this, but I've come to realize that if I don't, it will only continue to get worse. I look to a day when I won't need to chemically prop up my happiness, but unfortunately, I haven't reached that leg of my journey yet. For now, I look not to the thunderclouds above my path, but to the flowers beside it, and I try to remind myself of the important things.

On alcohol, loneliness, and acceptance

Several times recently I've found myself drunk. On one of those occasions, very drunk. Never, it should be noted, in the presence of my children. Before the end of my marriage, I drank rarely, always socially, and very, very rarely to excess. When considering my recent experiences, I've found that I set out to seek refuge from loneliness in the alcohol. I had never expected to find myself looking for answers in the bottom of a glass. While it surprises me that at some point I thought that this was an acceptable answer, I probably shouldn't be so surprised.

It's been 4 months now since I stepped away from my marriage, and for a large portion of that time period, I've been alone. These weeks have been the longest periods of solitude that I've experienced in the last 13 years. Granted, I have the love and companionship of my children, and that does go a long way toward making this transition period bearable, but they can only stand to be hugged for so long before they need to wriggle away and expend their youthful energy somewhere else. Funny, how something as simple as a hug from someone that isn't obligated by the bonds of family to give them can be so profoundly missed. I've always been one of those people who puts everything into a hug. My love, my care, my worry, my compassion, all of it flows through the hug, and I try to make them last. These kinds of hugs make some people uncomfortable, but for others the effect is mutually therapeutic. As a physically affectionate person, this has been a hard time for me. I've found that, while the alcohol led to some embarrassing FaceBook posts, and some emotionally charged behavior, it didn't provide the outlet that I had been looking for.

At this point, depending on who you are, and how you feel about the path that I've set myself on, you may be thinking that I have noone to blame for this situation but myself. This is true. I wouldn't dare try to pass the consequences of my decisions off on someone else. You may choose to believe that my suffering is a suitable punishment for what I've done to others. On this, we would agree to disagree. According to the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. In examining my loneliness, and in trying to obtain right understanding, I've found that while acknowledging my pain is healthy, trying to avoid dealing with it through the alcohol only caused suffering. Rather than choose to try to hide from the pain, I've decided to choose to address the source.

While I attribute my pain to loneliness, if I'm being honest with myself, it's really about fear. In stepping away from my marriage, I've stepped away from companionship, intimacy, and affection that I don't know when I'll experience again. When I consider how important these things are to me, I find that they represent validation of my self worth. My fear of being alone is really a fear of being unloved, unlovable. I estimate my value in how much someone else values me. Here, in the heart of this, is a crucial choice to be made. Do I move aimlessly through the rest of my life hoping to find validation in the love of someone else? Or do I choose to find value from within, learning to love the person that I am without requiring the validation of someone else?

I've received praise and kind words of encouragement from friends and loved ones over the past few weeks. One person in particular has gone to great lengths to extend her love and acceptance to me. In the state that I'm still in, I haven't been able to accept that love and devote the attention that I should to returning it to her, or to anyone else in my life. I've always scoffed at the notion that before you can truly love someone else, you have to be able to love yourself. I understand it now, at least a bit better than I did. If I can't recognize and accept my flaws, or the goodness of who I am as a human being, how can I fully understand and accept someone else? If I dwell on what I don't like about who I am, aren't I just training myself to focus on what I don't like about others? Likewise, if I learn to accept and love myself unconditionally, cultivating the joy that comes from that acceptance and love, then I prepare myself to be a vessel for that love, ready to pass it along to others.

There's a great story about a cracked water pot used by Buddhists to emphasize accepting our imperfections. You can google the story to find it in its original form, but the lesson of the story is that while a cracked water pot may not carry as much water to its destination, the water it spills along its journey nourishes flowers on the path. Rather than focus on where I fail, I choose instead to focus on the beauty that the journey of my life sows. In so doing, I hope that I can help others see the beauty that their own journey gives to others.