WHO IS TENDING YOUR GARDEN?

If you read my blog post about not always getting it right, I've already forgotten the precise title, then you know that my biggest "regret" about MY LIST is all of the repeats. What is that old saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I don't know what they say about fool me three, four, and five times. You're an idiot, I suppose. In reality, I think we keep getting the lesson until we learn it. Period. Once it penetrates our thick skull, well then we can move on to the next. And there will be a next. That is the deal. The lessons just keep on coming. That is why we are here. Of course, some of them are good. It isn't all a school of hard knocks, though it may feel that way.


Anyway, as I said, the lesson continues to repeat until it gets learned. My ex was a tough teacher and I got a lot of schooling. Frankly, I thought I learned my lesson. After my divorce, I would jokingly say that he had taught me to see a manipulator from a mile away, and this was just my "training," so that when someone much more handsome, and with money, but with those same "mad skills" came along, I would spy him from a mile away, and run, not walk, to the closest exit. That sounded really clever and funny. Turns out it wasn't true.

I suppose if I hadn't met Right Guy, it might have been true. However, my judgment was upside down, inside out, and I was drowning in a pool of my own misery. So, when a more polished version of my ex came along, I totally didn't recognize him for what he was. He really wasn't more handsome, just more polished, but he was the same animal. However, he came from money, but was down on his luck. I could relate. I was down on my luck, too. He kept telling me he was going to bounce back any day. Until then, he was living with his mother, who was going through a *nasty* divorce. It was one of those stories that just could be twisted up to make sense. Mom needed him. And she did. His mom was a mess. Anyone with eyes could see that. Plus, it was hard to judge, since I was living with my parents. People who live in glass houses and all that....

I am not going to do a relationship breakdown on this thing, because that would get tedious fast. But, there is a *point* when one person goes too far and that is the time to end it. I hit countless points in my marriage and I stayed. When I hit the *point* in this relationship, I tried to end it, and this guy handled it just the way my ex would have. Constant phone calls. Aka harassment. Before it was over, I was the one feeling like the bad person, which was the point of the phone calling. And, this tenuous relationship began again, even though it should have stayed dead. It didn't last because there was no trust. Eventually, we hit a point where I just couldn't go on. However, I knew from past experience, that me simply saying that I wanted out was not sufficient. For some people "no" doesn't register. So, I brought the pastor of our church into the mix. Maybe it was dirty pool, but I needed third party interference. (Does this worry me that another manipulator is waiting around the next corner for me? Yes. Because I still haven't figured out how to shake one of these people all on my own!)


Well, except that I did: I found out what I was doing wrong. You cut off communication completely. You don't answer the phone when they call. You don't respond to the email. Someday, you might be able to do this, but not when you are vulnerable in the beginning. The pastor of the church was great with analogies. I love analogies. He called our lives our gardens. When you're a couple, you combine your gardens. You tend your own garden and your partner's garden. When you decouple, you can't worry about your former partner's garden anymore. It is up to them to take care of it. Taking care of your own garden is all you can do. That was where I always fell down. I spent too much time worrying about their garden, and not enough time worrying about my own. Meanwhile, they were absorbed with their own garden, and spending all of their time trying to get me to focus on it, too. Usually, it worked. Meanwhile, everything in my garden was dying, because no one was paying any attention to it at all.

As I typed the preceding paragraph, it hit me like this tidal wave that the above strategy is precisely the one Right Guy used with me. I don't think he chose it because he saw me as a manipulator. Otherwise, I wouldn't have gotten an "I miss you" email, out of the blue, two years ago. I think he chose it to protect himself from what he saw as a whole lot of heartbreak headed his way, and maybe he saw very clearly that he needed to focus his efforts on tending his own garden. *sigh*

My friend, Sharon, over at Musings of a Mercurial Woman posted today about contentment. And, somehow, that sparked this post about tending your own garden. I suppose, for some people, that could be a real garden. Not for me. I have a brown thumb. I can't quite put my finger on exactly what that means, but I know that it is about who we are, what we believe, what we think is important, who we think is important, and so much more. I really don't have any kind of handle on it at all. The only thing I am pretty sure about is that it is a state of mind. Sharon said it would take her at least a day to figure this puzzle out. You really should read her blog if you haven't already. It is very thought provoking. I am thinking it's going to be several days, if not weeks, or months before I get mine into order. Or maybe it is a process that is in a constant state of evolution. I do believe that once we stop growing, we start to die. So, it's time to start gardening. Destination: contentment.



I got the above picture here.

YOUR GIRL IS LOVELY

When I feel the need to preface one of my blogs, as I do now, you know that you're in for it.  That could be good or bad.  It all depends on your perspective.  Do you ever have this problem that just circles round and round in your head, and you don't know how to solve it, so your brain keeps coming up with different scenarios, and then it starts invading your dreams ,and then it even manages to make its way onto your TV screen?  Finally, you're throwing pillows at your television screaming, "Enough already!"  Well as the pillow was making contact with my television I decided that thinking time was over and writing time better start or glass might start breaking.  So, here we are.

As usual, the idea started in the shower where I do my best thinking.  It was there that I realized I had been on a path of self destruction ever since I saw the movie THE WAY WE WERE back in junior high or high school.  I can't remember which it was.  We had HBO and I only saw the movie once.  Who could take it more than once????  It was on a Saturday afternoon and it finished right around the time my mom was putting dinner on the table.  It was the first time I had experienced the unhappy ending.  I cried all the way through dinner to the disgust of everyone else at the table and I couldn't stop saying, "But it was just wrong.  They truly loved each other.  I don't understand how it couldn't work out if it was true love."  Of course, I had just spent two hours watching exactly why it hadn't worked out despite the fact that it was true love.  The real problem was that I resonated way too much to this movie.  That was my shower revelation.  I was in vibrational harmony with love not working out.  Oh boy.  This explained a whole lot about why my love life totally sucked and why I picked unattainable men and was not interested in the ones who were. 

My next shower revelation was the Brad Paisley song "Letter To Me."  It's this cutesy little country song where he sends a letter back to his younger self reassuring him that all would be well and helping him avoid minor pitfalls.  Well, I had major pitfalls and all is not well.  I should get the damn letter.  So, now my mind (I am still in the shower, probably lost in a shampoo that has gone on forever) is constructing a letter that my 16 year old self would actually believe and follow.  What to say?  Under no circumstances ever watch THE WAY WERE WERE, LOVE STORY, or anything sad about romance gone awry.  Just avoid avoid avoid.  In fact, don't read romance novels they just make you think one thing when it's all crap.  In fact don't read at all because you might stumble across something that you will resonate to that will completely screw you up.  Wait. Wait. Wait.  I love to read.  And I can't send a letter to 16 year old me anyway.  Cut. Cut. Cut.  Hair is clean anyway and I think I have soap in my eye.  Ouch.

And I wanted to leave it there because the truth is I already watched THE WAY WE WERE and I already resonated.  And same went for LOVE STORY and all of the rest and it was all a long time ago.  So, I am watching SEX IN THE CITY on  DVD and get to the end of Season 2 and Mr. Big (who I really dislike and never learn to like and really hate even though they ultimately end up together) breaks Carrie's heart AGAIN by marrying Natasha and the girls are talking about it and they decide at the cafe that Carrie and Big are just like Katie and Hubble from.....THE WAY WE WERE (get ready for the pillow throw) and they relive the lines where she runs into him and tells him his girl is really lovely and cue up the music.  Carrie then leaves the cafe and walks home going by the site of the engagement soiree and has a face to face with Mr. Big and can't help herself.  She asks them him why it wasn't her, and he has no good answer.  And she does it.  "Your girl is lovely, Hubble," and does the famous hair stroke.  Of course, he is clueless and says, "I don't understand."  And she replies, "And you never did."  And if that show could have left that relationship there maybe I wouldn't have thrown the pillow.  No, I would have still thrown the pillow because that was about my own struggle with resonating to bad bad bad relationships, and it was being thrown in my face ~ again.

The thing is that I can't unwatch or unread anything.  After that show I clicked over to youtube to pull up that last scene of the movie.  It was all of six minutes and I will post it for you.  You can watch or not.  I bawled my eyes out, and it's not because I'm watching the movie all of the time and still resonating to it.  It was six minutes of a movie that I haven't seen in over twenty years.  I am still resonating right here in the now, and I can't figure out where the stop button is.  If my more knowledgable future self would send me a letter, I think we could knock out this problem.