Not So Intertwined

I am feeling more and more like myself.

When I'm with people, I tend to go into auto-pilot mode and my sparkling personality shines through.

But when I am alone, I hear love songs, and shed tears. Today's trigger song was Keshia Cole's, I Remember.


I wish I could shake the blues every time it creeps up on me but I need to feel these emotions, mourn it, and move on. My 45-minute commute to work this morning found me pouring tears. I feel so helpless to these emotions and I desperately want all of this to be over.

Judging on my relationship with my ex-ex husband and the length of time it took to shake him from my emotional landscape, I am going to be in this for some time. And I vow to do things differently this time. When my ex-ex husband and I divorced, I jumped so quickly into another relationship and now that relationship has come to an end after 13 years. My heart is always so willing and so open to love and romance. This time has to be different though.

I have sworn off marriage. There is just no way that I can enter another committed relationship like that. And this could be me talking right now but I just cannot feel the highs of falling in love and the depths of a break-up again. Maybe it's better that I stay steady, alone. It's not that I am cynical; far from that. I still believe in love but I just cannot put my heart on the line again. I don't have it in me to do it all over again. I am 41 years old and I'd rather not try to learn to be with someone new. I can't. I don't want to.

I always toot my own horn about my ability to be a good wife and a good woman. Yet and still, I have two failed marriages under my belt. I cannot explain the whens and whys. Of course, it always crosses my mind that either my selection in men is horrible or that I'm not as good a woman as I think I am. I can't call it.

Last night I went to a local watering hole called The Shack. Seated next to me was an older, Caucasian gentlemen. He was paying the tab and we chatted all evening long. He spoke so fondly of his deceased wife and how they had celebrated their 40th anniversary before she passed. I told him that they don't make men like that anymore. Based on my two failed marriages, both men walked out on the relationship. Divorce was not my choice in either case. When I take the vow of marriage, it means that I will never give up even when shit gets hard. Even when things are monotonous and it feels as if all we're doing is going through the motion. I believe that we can work to make the relationship brand new, given time. I only wish that my type of love were mirrored.

I can say that I have two great loves in my life. They both ended in a quick and concise divorce. Days after announcing they wanted a divorce, I was signing uncontested papers. My heart hurts double and yet I remember these two great loves. Maybe I'm lucky to have fallen in love twice. Maybe not. I can only think about myself now and not be so intertwined in the habit of being in love.