My point in writing this, and in bringing up the book, is because Gilbert brought up a lot of good points. The book is a true story, based on her journey to Italy, India, and Indonesia. In the book, she is a newly divorcee who is just trying to find herself. She goes on a journey to find pleasure in Italy, devotion in Indonesia and balance between the two in India. If I could afford a journey like this, I would definitely be on it now.
One of my favorite quotes and the one I relate to very well at the moment is ""When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Li[a]! Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings."
I loved this quote because like I said before, I have been so lonely the past few days, I don't even recognize myself. I never knew how much I hated being alone until now. I like my alone time, but I guess I miss having someone there that I can run to when things are bad, and even when things are going great. As I said in my last blog, things with ME personally are awesome....great job...awesome grades in school....things are good. I just miss the companionship. Not even really being in a RELATIONSHIP, but just knowing that I have a best friend there that we can lean on each other....But she's right. When I get lonely now, I need to just suck it up and learn to be lonely. Learn to be on my own. There will come a day when I will be old and decrepit and I will really have no one left to lean on. That will be the day that my skills of loneliness will really come into effect. And I need to stop using other people as a "scratching post" as she put it. Other people are not responsible for my happiness; that rests on my shoulders. This is a fact I have come to learn the hard way. No one can make you genuinely happy except yourself. But having someone there does help the process....
Anyway, I digress. On to the next quote.
"I am here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. There's nothing you could ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me."
It was nice knowing that at one time in my life, very recently, someone felt that exact way about me. And I miss it. But in this context, Gilbert is talking about looking at herself in the mirror and finding that person in HERSELF. Loving HERSELF that way. When I started this "journey" of mine, my one goal was to fall in love with myself again, and it still is. But it gets harder when you have very little support around you, which is something that I've always had. But perhaps that is part of it. You can't really learn to love yourself and depend on only you if you constantly have people around you. This is how I yearn to feel about myself! As cliche as it is, the quote "No one said it would be easy; they just promised it would be worth it" really comes into play. None of this is EASY. If it were easy, I would have done it a long time ago, along with many other people.
In my past relationships with men, I have been the frog in the boiling water, so to speak. It's a fact that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, he will jump out immediately. But if you put a frog in a pot of water, and slowly start boiling it, the frog will stay in the pot until it boils to death. The same goes for relationships. If you start a relationship and it's bad in the beginning, you will get out of it. But if you start a relationship and it's wonderful in the beginning, it's comfortable, it's fun, amazing, loving, etc....you will stay in that relationship until you're dead to yourself. Until it takes extraordinary measures to get out. Because you don't notice the relationship getting bad. Other people around you notice it but you don't. You get used to it. Much like the frog in the water. He gets used to the heat, and before he knows it, he's dead. In my past relationships, I have been the main caregiver, emotionally. I have loved and cared and supported and protected until I was dead to myself. This brings me to my next favorite quote:
"If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will protect upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself, and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else."
It's like she read my mind. The past two serious relationships I've had, as I said before, were wonderful in the beginning. They were exciting and passionate and I couldn't get enough. The first happened on it's own, as normal relationships do. I bent over backwards and sideways for him. Gave him every part of me possible and basically sacrificed myself for him. All around me, even people closer to him, warned me over and over. They thought I was crazy for putting up with him, but praised me for being strong enough to do it. I kept telling myself it would get better....he would change. I refused to give up, to "quit" because I wasn't a quitter. After a while, I began to realize that "quitting" would be just fine. It wouldn't mean I was weak, but that I loved myself enough to get out before I was heart broken. Not saying that leaving wasn't hard, AND heart breaking because it was. It took me over two years to get that person completely out of my mind.
The second relationship started out as the "infatuation" mentioned in the above quote. I wanted an easy way out of the first, and when the second came along, I was immediately infatuated with him. He showed me how I should be treated. He showed me what happiness really looked like, and everything seemed perfect. I had every intention of marrying him. EVERY intention. Down to the price of the wedding and what my wedding gown would look like. We were together for two years, and he is still close to me. Despite the things that happened in our relationship, I still care about him.
But I am at a point in my life where going back and forth and back and forth will not suffice. As I mentioned in one of my blogs before, the person I spend the rest of my life with needs to be everything from the beginning. Sure, it won't always be perfect. But the foundation, the reasons I fell in love with him in the first place, should NEVER go away. I don't mind giving everything I have in a relationship, or doing everything the above quote says, because really, that's how I love anyway. As long as those things are being reciprocated. As long as I am being treated the exact same way. I have come to learn that relationships are 50/50. They should never be 70/30, 20/80 90/10 or even 60/40. They should always be equal, no if's and's or but's.
This is a long one, but again, I can relate to it so well.
"I was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences. Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never dared to admit you wanted-an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with a hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is witheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy, and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore-- despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to have 'that thing' even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is,you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess,unrecognizable even to your own eyes. So that's it. You have now reached infatuation's final destination-- the complete and merciless devaluation of self."
I don't believe I need to "analyze" this quote much because it speaks for itself. I have become addicted to a few people in my life, and I hate to admit it, but I am on the brink of addiction now. I refuse to cross over into addiction because I can recognize it now and prevent it from going further.
"I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen."
Something I have to remind myself over and over again is that everything happens for a reason. Nothing in my life or in YOUR life is an accident. Before we were born, God constructed a "blue print", if you will, of our lives. He designed a map and knew exactly what we would do, when we would do it, how we would do it, who we would do it with. Nothing in our lives is a mistake, and everything in our lives has a purpose. Our lives are a series of events strung together and at the end of our lives, we find the meaning of it all. It's like a scavenger hunt. It's just a matter of finding happiness in the good things, and finding our way through the bad, still squeazing every ounce of joy from them we can possibly find.
Last but not least, this quote sums up exactly how I feel about love.
"Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark."
When you find that person that you want to fall in love with, that you want to share your life with, there are no guarentees that everything will always be peachy. It's a leap of faith, a leap that you must take together, with no boundaries. No briberies, no conditions. I believe that you can only truly be in love and completely in sync with someone when there are no more walls up. It is then that you can truly appreciate that person to the fullest.
So, is being lonely hard? Yes. But, if I must do it, then I will. It will only make me stronger and wiser. When I finally do come to that point in my life when "true love" shows up, I will appreciate it that much more because I know the difference between true love and infatuation, and I can only truly be in love with someone when I am in love with myself first! "I Think I Deserve Something Beautiful"? No, I'm pretty sure I DO!
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