Looking Back: End of the Year Musings...

Some women learn about themselves through their jobs, some women learn about themselves through movies, and some from their friends. I just happen to be the type that learns from men. There is no type that is "better" than the other, or even easier. What makes one easier than the other is being able to see, accept, and understand who and what you are; causing you to make a few less repeated mistakes otherwise. Yet sometimes, it is impossible to walk the long road to who you are without stepping on a few toes, and sometimes even hurting them.

There are times when I can't breathe because of how much I know I have hurt someone. 

{Yeah, you can tell this one's going to be personal with that one line}

A year ago, I was engaged to a man who I thought was the "one."

He wasn't the one, hence the past tense.

I wanted so badly for him to be the "one,"because all of my friends had found their "one" around the same time; planning their weddings was killing me. I wanted it for all the wrong reasons. 

I'd like to clarify: he is an AWESOME man. He's going to make a world class husband someday to a very very lucky woman. Don't think that just because I'm not marrying him that he's not amazing.

Our problem was that we just weren't right for each other.

There wasn't any one reason, just like anything else that fails. It's many reasons pressing down on the roof of the relationship until finally the reasons become so heavy that the roof collapses. 

We could have tried to fix our metaphorical roof, but all the reasons wouldn't have gone away. They would have just filled up the rooms of our relationship house, and eventually causing serious, irreparable damage to all of our antique furniture. 

Did I take the house metaphor too far?

---I digress--- 

When I broke it off, I hurt him.

He wasn't able to see the reasons, because he wanted the happy marriage even more than I did. I'm not sure if he's even able to see them now, or if I'm still an insensitive bitch in his book. 

{I'm not being rude with that last comment, I broke off an engagement not a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. I wouldn't blame him if he felt that way}

We've both moved on, me to the wonderful gorgeous Godsent BF, and him to a beautiful girl that he's known all his life; that seems to fit what he wants and what his family wants. I couldn't be happier for him, I WANT him to be happy, with or without me. I did love him.

It is because of this love that I still feel pain over how it hurt him. I still wouldn't change anything at all about how or why it ended, but I do wish that I could have saved him from the pain that it caused him.

People are always afraid of asking me how it ended; if it was a sore subject. So pay attention, because  here it is once & for all:

There were major irreconcilable differences between his family and I, as well as issues between the two of us; barring us from having a heathy marriage or relationship. If necessary we can have good, solid conversations without being awful to each other. We've both moved on to wonderful people and are both doing very well.

*sigh*

Love is so messy. Disney did not prepare me for the harshness of relationships fraught with love.Yet I can say with a clear head that each relationship teaches you something new about life that you wouldn't otherwise had known, as well as teaching you something about yourself that could have remained a mystery forever. I actually wouldn't change any of my past relationships; even though some of them were a new kind of terrible...they were each important keystones in my life. 

I know that without any of them, I most likely wouldn't have found the man who I can't imagine living without. I realize that there is always a chance that perhaps he isn't "THE ONE." But there is a feeling, deep down inside me, that tells me that he is; this feeling, this voice, I have never heard before. 

Yet even IF someday we don't work out, I know that I will be a much better person than I was before I met him...because of him. 

Looking back on the last year or so has only forced me to look ahead, and be excited for what God has in store for me...I can always rely on Him to make things interesting, and I can always rely on me to make them dramatic 

:)

“I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.”

{Audrey Hepburn}