Does the shoe fit?

Call me cliche, but I have spent my entire life believing that love exists, and that there is always someone out there for us. I watched romantic movies, read books like Nicholas Sparks’ romantic novels, and I truly believed that give the right circumstance, the right person, and the mutual effort needed by both, two people can truly love one another.

This belief sent me on a very naive path towards finding something I believe existed but couldn’t see. What I was missing was the understanding that the journey is what prepares you for that person. The frogs you have to kiss are part of what make you the princess in the end. Again with the cliches, I just think they are so common for a reason. They are true!

I kept hoping and looking and trying to find this person that fit some perfect description of who I would love, and would love me in return. Not finding that person only left me discouraged and lacking faith. It is true when they say you only find what you’re looking for when you stop looking for it. It’s not just a simple “stop looking” though, it is a state of mind where you accept reality instead of staying on this constant hunt for something. You have to reach a point in your life where the search is no longer your main goal, and you are able to accept your life as it is, living it in the moment.

When you do this, and you truly just live instead of hunting, then you’re able to attract the people you want, because you are truly being yourself. No expectations, no pressure, and no desperation. When you stop projecting those things, you become the most genuine version of yourself, you become true to yourself, and then you are able to look at the world with wisdom rather than hope. And others can look at you with desire rather than pity.

There will be moments in life where literally everything goes wrong, and things blow up, and you feel you have nothing going for you. But there are also times when everything just falls into place… You really do have to focus on yourself, be yourself, and figure out who you are, because once you get there, you are ready to find the love you deserve.

All the other relationships you go through will feel like they have something missing, or aren’t going very well because, as I see it, you are trying to make a small shoe fit on a big foot. Spreading it out and stretching it may only break it. It isn’t a good fit. But once you find the shoe that is the perfect size, and you love it, and want to wear it every day, it makes all the other shoes irrelevant. But only by having the right size shoe do you realize how wrong a fit the others were. Don’t settle for a small shoe, and don’t lose faith that your size is out there.

Unhealthy Obsessions

Ever since I was a small child, I have been obsessed with all things romance. Love stories are where it’s at for me. I know what you’re thinking…. That is so cliche, stereotypical and expected. Maybe so. I spent years wanting to break from the norm just to be liked. I never wanted to be placed in a negative category.

When I was in high school, I heard from the boys that women wouldn’t put out, or they would be scared to try things. I tried them, I put out, because I wanted to be liked. That just proves how delusional I was, and how my obsessions with romance got me into a great amount of trouble.

Needless to say, I still hold a respect for the passions and epic events of love. I recently started watching the show, Jane the Virgin, and I realized how silly romance can be. They made this amazing show, with constant digs at the romance genre, while still showing its beauty, that it inspired me. I can stick to a genre, I can do what is expected of me, I can try to please others. Or I can just do whatever the hell I want, when it comes to my own writing.

While my own love life has proven to be tumultuous, given the previous comment about my sexual history, I still believe that a writer can be a hero and a villain. I can create anything I want, and have things go exactly how I want them to. Yes, audience is important, if you’re intending to have your work read. And while I have many books I want to share with the world, I have some that are just for me. And in those novels, I can say the things I want to say, and I can have the events go in the ways that please the romantic in me.

Jane the Virgin has so much creativity even though it is all cheesy, half-expected lines and plot twists. That is one of the reasons I love it so much. They take what is seen as old news, predictable, and boring in its common themes, and they make it sparkle again. The comedy aspect, with the side plot of watching telenovellas at the same time, and all of Jane’s fantasies played out from inside her head, makes this show addicting and impossible to stop watching.

Now, to take that passion, and turn it into my own creativity in writing, that is the struggle I am having. I have too many thoughts and ideas to actually sit down and write. And that is how I found myself on this blog post. If I ever do become a famous writer, I wonder what my fans would think of this blog post. Regardless of all the negativity painted around romance and femininity as being soft, boring, and gag-worthy, I think, why not defy that stigma, and make something that brings it to life again. Captures the interest of the critics out there.

I might just give it a try…

Labels and the Serial Monogamist

My entire dating life I have been called a Serial Monogamist. It has been painted as a negative thing to want to be in a relationship so much that you don’t want to be alone. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the value and importance of learning to love yourself before you can be in another relationship. But I don’t see why it’s such a bad thing to date. Things progress and relationships can start, but if I swear off all dating, all relationship possibilities, then I am forcing my life. Just as I would be forcing it by going onto online dating sites.

For the longest time, people have tried to tell me what lessons I need to learn, what experiences I need to gain in order to be better, smarter and wiser. That’s just life though, isn’t it? We all go through experiences and make mistakes, that is how we learn on our own! And by making the mistakes ourselves, it is no longer just textbook theory, we lived it. We don’t just know, we understand on a deep and meaningful level. So why is it when someone tries so hard to tell you their textbook theory, we don’t listen? Because we don’t understand well enough.

After I ended my three year relationship, which was an absolute disaster (BUT I LEARNED FROM IT), I started seeing a man who was 8 years older than me. I believed this to be a positive thing. I liked maturity and people who had their ducks in a row better than the last men I had attempted to grow with. I made a very stupid assumption, an ageist assumption, and from that experience, I will never make that mistake again. But the one thing that bothered me to my core, so intensely that I rebelled from it, was that this man used his age and experience as a superior thing, and tried to tell me how behind I was in life, mentally. There is nothing more unattractive than a man putting you in your place, and then telling you he is not ready for a relationship.

I have wasted a lot of time and energy on the wrong men, and some will absolutely tell you that I shouldn’t have. But you know what, I wouldn’t change any of it, because I learned very valuable lessons. And I GREW UP! That’s the whole point isn’t it? Life hands you lemons and you learn to make lemonade. If everyone else made my lemonade for me, I’d be useless. I guess what I am trying to say is that as a soon-to-be teacher, I hope this epiphany allows me to treat my students with the respect of their own learning experiences, and to let them own it. To not make the mistakes that many have made with me in the past, and present. Life happens and we all have to learn resilience and perseverance by overcoming said events.  Hopefully anyone reading this will give no shits about what I just said, so as to go out and figure life out on their own.

Another year, another me.

Funny how quickly everything in your life can change, and yet you can still feel as though you’ve stood still the entire time. A list of my accomplishments – I began the Bachelor of Education program at the local university and finished the first semester with straight As’s. And that’s it. That is all I have to brag about.

I am still stuck in a mind-numbing relationship with a man who thinks he rules the world and also seems to think that I am mediocre. My dreams and life goals are apparently boring and mundane, much like every other ordinary being on the planet. But no, he is not normal, not boring, but unique and meant for greatness, therefore I am meant to change my dreams and values to fit with the life he wants.

So I dumped him. Awkward part – we still share a home. I really just want him to leave the house so I can rearrange it and move on with my life. I feel stuck, he isn’t gone yet and I am on holiday break from school. Life isn’t moving, it is standing still and I am going crazy.

I’ve become that girl that everyone hates because I’ve lost my voice. I’ve lost who I am and I don’t know how to have fun anymore. It’s pathetic really. Even I am sick of myself, and I’ve done nothing noteworthy for the last year. I’ve been watching my life slip away from me every single day, and I don’t even bother to get up and do something. I just sit on the couch, watching TV, and wishing for my world to change.

This is crap. Someone should slap me in the face and say – GET A LIFE!

Stay tuned – maybe I will have gotten a life tomorrow and will finally start blogging for real this time.

The Broken Road

I’m a country music fan. I wasn’t always. My mother would play it in my younger years and I would beg and plead with her to end my misery of the endless twang and sob stories. Not long after I finished university, it became my happy music. Ironic right?

Something about the bright sun, hick attitude, hay fields and beer – it spoke to me. Call it my Calgarian roots, or call it my merging into a culture based on the only bar in town I could actually enjoy being at. Ranchman’s Dancehall. Something about the culture; the upbeat, line-dancing, two-stepping, summer feeling crowd. It’s toxic and I drink it in with every bottle of beer. Whenever I am at home on my own, or cooking in the evening sun, or relaxing in my backyard – I listen to that twang and feel a sense of home. I’m comforted and joyed.

Maybe the reason I like it now is because I have found a way to be a more optimistic and positive person. To the best of my ability at least. My school years were filled with lazy depressions and debilitating stress. I listened to ballads that made me ponder life and question the world. I still do that from time to time, but I find I want to be happier now that my life has “started.”

What a term. Starting life. You’re supposed to be started the minute you’re born (or conceived for those pro-life people). But our society has this idea that you’re only starting life once you’ve started your career. What pressure that puts on us to make our career our lives. It’s what we will be doing every day, all day, for the rest of our prime years of our life (if we’re lucky). Wouldn’t we be more lucky to be able to do more than just one thing though? So how can we start our life with one career? It should be a continuous, life altering, experience gaining experience.

I’m a pretty typical, conservative girl when it comes to stereotypes of “the dream.” I enjoy cooking and cleaning, I can sew, I keep house like any 50’s style woman. It’s almost sad actually. Because I call myself a feminist too. I believe in equality, I celebrate the differences and similarities of men and women. But here I am dating the epitome of male – a greasy, dirty, strong man who sometimes thinks the kitchen is where I belong. How did that happen??

Well there’s another story for another day. Back to this career confusion. I began a job as a financial adviser. My father is in Oil and Gas, is great with numbers, is getting his Masters in Finance and Business Management. Then my mother, she never went to university, but she got into accounting over the years and is now getting certified there. Maybe number and finance are inherently in me. But I would have never known if my cousin hadn’t seen the work I did with my boyfriend’s company (again, that’s another story).

So I’m now balls deep in the studies, trying to pass the testing and get through the training. It’s like drinking from a fire hose. My brain hurts, I thought I would be done school once I finished my very insignificant degree (BA – English) but here I am studying for exams.

I have a natural knack for it, I’m told. Maybe I found my niche? Maybe it’s another path leading me to where I belong. That’s the point of starting life though, you have to live. And I feel like I’m finally beginning something that won’t hinder me from life. It will take me farther, faster, and happier.

Exams suck, but that’s what country music is for. “God Bless the Broken Road that led me straight to you.”

Truck Yeah.

Hoping I find some meaning in sharing my thoughts with the world, whoever reads it.

I decided to start a blog less because I have a lot to say, but more because I have no one to listen. I’m not alone in the slightest, but I feel my friends are too involved in my life that I no longer feel like I can safely share my thoughts and opinions.

I’m a pretty opinionated person though. That’s the problem. Once I share my thoughts and experiences, people offer their advice and instructions on how to live. But then they share their own feelings and opinions, and when I return the advice it’s met with hostility and anger.

I spend my days trying to figure people out. Not as a sport or a game, but just an interest. I like to know how people work, what makes them tick, and categorize based on tid bits of information over time. It started out harmless and then it turned into a dangerous problem. I was at first learning new things about people I knew and how to handle those I had yet to meet. Until I started to become judgmental and controlling. I felt like I had seen so many of the same problems, the same situations, that I stopped giving people the open and safe environment to vent in. I’d become their inner critical voice spoken out loud with more conviction then their own mothers.

What stumped me was how I hadn’t seen that this was the person I had become. I watched others all day every day dissecting their every move and word, and I thought I was in check. My boyfriend definitely had no problem telling me when I was not okay. But after analyzing him the most out of everyone, I stopped trusting his opinion and started the mantra of “the pot calling the kettle black.” This has become a recurrent theme in my life. One I have been privy to since my parent’s separation and later divorce. Once my father stopped being the driving force of unity in our family, I no longer saw him that way. I was unable to see him as the go-to for all things advice and security. I still did despite that, because I was unaware that this was my problem. I no longer respected my parents because their problems, their dirty laundry, had been aired so much that I could no longer trust in their advice. They became the epitome of hypocrisy both together and separate.

This acute awareness and sensitivity instilled in me a driving force of my own. The judge.

And this is why I am writing this blog. I feel as though I’ve reached a turning point in my life where I have seen the light and want to change for the better. But have burned so many bridges that this is the only place I feel I can start. At least honestly. I have tried to mend a few broken bridges. But I need to tread carefully.

This is yet another of the many new beginnings I have embarked on in my very dysfunctional life. Stay tuned to hear more stories from the past and those yet to be lived.