Find Yourself Fool!

Recently my heart was broken. That is such a lame thing to say. It felt like I was shredded to pieces actually. I felt like my limbs were torn mangled and laying every which way. I felt like the flesh of my body was being ripped apart. I was in pain, I had a hard time not crying at work.

I believed all the things this heavenly creature told me and my was she the picture of perfection in my mind. Here is the sort of conversation we'd have:

Her: You are my penguin.

Me: Hahahah, what the heck does that mean? I love penguins, they fly through the water, they are playful, they are fun.

Her: Yes, but they mate forever

She went on to speak of this and tell a lovely story, to paint an amazing scene and I smiled and felt loved.

She called me Clyde and told me she was Bonnie. Hell yeah I thought we are in this thing together through thick and thin. I can count on her. She see's the edge to me and she likes it. Really accepts it. She knows the good, the bad, the embarrassing things about me and she still see's me for who I am.

She told me I was so much like her dad and I could see how much she admired, loved and respected her dad. I thought wow, what a compliment, surely we will be forever, AMAZING.

I think I truly loved a woman for the first time. I thought I had before but this was different. I accepted her, I truly accepted her and her me.

I even thought, I could love this girl if she gets fat. Hey call me shallow but I'd have a hard time with that and could never imagine that with another female. I wonder how many comments this will bring.

When we first got together she told me she didn't want kids or she said maybe she did but adopting would be fine. I said maybe my kids will be enough. I have four. I said I don't want to have kids but if adoption is fine then we can explore it. She said she didn't see a need for marriage unless we had kids, I said good, I think marriage is messed up in our society because the laws make it so that a woman gets the kids and half the money and no one really cares about the dad even seeing the kids. We agreed.

Then one day out of the blue she wanted kids and I wanted to think. Then we sort of broke up. Then we sort of got together. Then we said we'd break up when the lease on the house was up and we'd stay together until later.

I'm really bad at playing pretend so I told her if we are breaking up I can't pretend any longer. I'm in constant turmoil. I love you Bonnie. I have to leave if we are going to break up anyway.

Then I woke up and said, woman, I love you. I love everything about you. I can't lose you. I can't lose you for a day. Give me three years and I'll adopt and I'll marry you.

Then she said there are other problems. I said okay, lets figure them out. If two people commit to one another you can figure anything out.

She said she needed to find herself. I wanted to blow my brains out. Really? So this was not about kids, this was not about problems, this was about something else which I do not know.

I don't know if she needed to find herself or not.

I do know this, you don't find yourself by letting inertia take you away. You don't find yourself in front of the television. You don't find yourself by constantly being entertained.

You find yourself by living life. You find yourself by exploring new things, by doing hard things. You find yourself through action. Nothing was ever accomplished laying around and feeling sorry for yourself. I've preached this for years. I recently read a great book called Choose Yourself and the author said something to the effect of the most worthless people he'd ever met said they needed to find themselves. I believe that to be true.

I'm not knocking my heartbreaker, I love her. Maybe those things are not what she means by find herself. I think very highly of her and I hope she is not trapped in some psychological bullshit and she is living life, real life, not some made up Hollywood reality television show life.

When I look around me sometimes it feels like people are trying to be Paris Hilton or Jersey Shore or the Kardashians. Is that attractive to people? WTF!?

I pray for the heartbreaker and maybe she tried to let me down easy. That sucks, it made it harder if that is true it seemed that she broke up with me for no reason.

Why wouldn't she simply tell me the truth? Was I an asshole? Was there another man? What was it? Maybe she believes what she said.

How ironic that for the first time in my life I realized what it was to love someone fully and my heart was broken?

Oh I love and accept my kids, that is easy for me. Accepting someone else for all they are has always been a foreign concept.

Why do I pray for her? I hope she finds her purpose. I don't think we ever need to leave someone we love to find purpose.

Don't ever leave someone for that reason, it is stupid.

Life brings our purpose to us. Life shows us who we are.

I rather believe that God through life, through living, through struggle brings our purpose to us. Life is the path, life is the journey, we don't have to go “Eat, Pray and Love” to find it.

We do need to eat, we do need to pray and we do need to love while living to be lead to our purpose. Our purpose becomes clear because our purpose is what our passion is at the time.

We will have many passions.

I hope she lives.

This really isn't about her, it is about me. I don't know what is in her heart anymore than you do.

I knew I needed to mourn and so I did. One night in the middle of the night I woke up crying and I just allowed myself to feel all the pain that was inside. I didn't try to ignore it, I didn't try to hide it with beer, I didn't try to think happy thoughts. I thought of all the pain. I embraced the pain and let myself hurt.

It was so painful I cried and cried, my head hurt, my body hurt, my tears were hot, my eyes stung, my body went limp and I slept. This was the beginning of the healing.

This was not the end of the pain by any means, not even close but it was the start of healing.

I know who I am and I like who I am.

How does that happen? I try new things. I don't worry too much about what others think. I am not self serving, I want to leave a legacy. I have integrity and I stay true to the values in my heart. My identity is in Christ but I don't pretend that God made me perfect. I'm as far from perfect as any man can be. I am a sinner, but I'm forgiven.

I started living again. I started picking myself up and acting with integrity.

Sometimes life is about simply standing back up after falling down.

I love Batman Begins because that message was so strong.

I made even bigger changes in my life because going through that pain gave me strength. The strength I needed to make changes I didn't even know needed made until going through that change.

I would have never chosen to lose the woman I thought was my penguin, but I did and in the end I came out better for it.

Life is the journey, embrace it.

Added August 21^st, 2013

I took this down a few days ago because I thought it made the girl in it look bad. I don't want to hurt others, but help others in this blog. I also realized I screwed up in a lot of areas I hadn't realized.

It is amazing what is revealed when you want to see who you really are. I messed up in that relationship.

I made Bonnie feel unaccepted and unloved in some areas of her life specifically who her friends are and parts of her past. I also questioned her motivations for things. I don't know if those things are right or wrong, I do know that making a female feel unaccepted will shut her down emotionally.

In my experience once a woman has shut down emotionally you have lost her forever. I have not seen a return to balance in a relationship after that occurrence. For my part in this issue, I say I'm sorry Bonnie. In many ways I made you feel like I left you far before you were done with me.