I have been banging my head against the same wall for 12 years. Nothing has changed regarding that situation and I know the time has come for me to really move on.

I’ve done it, in little pieces. I’ve given up a piece here and a piece there. I hold on because that’s kinda all I know to do.

It’s love, right? Have you ever loved someone who doesn’t love you back? It’s miserable. I want to be mad and I can’t. How can you be mad about feelings? People can’t control how they feel. I want to be over it, but how do you get over how you feel?

Due to the unconditional nature of love, all previous suggestions (time heals all wounds, just forget about him, meet someone new, don’t love people who don’t love you, etc) have not been successful. I thought it would kind of fade out, like a painting in a sunlit room. But it hasn’t.

I rarely write about it, explicitly. I feel like I’ve wasted a large portion of my life on something that wasn’t meant to be. But then, I feel like I didn’t waste anything because I’ve grown and I feel like loving someone can never be a waste.

I’m ready now though. Recently, I started thinking about him getting married someday. I’m okay with that thought. And I’m thinking about me marrying someone else. That’s much harder to envision, but I’m trying.

I thought I’d write a little bit about it because I act like its this big secret. I need to acknowledge it. The truth is that I’m hurting and I’m not exactly sure what to do. I’d like to meet someone new. As strange as that sounds, I think I’m ready. I go back to him because I haven’t met anyone else.

It’s all so scary. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. But I’m ready now. Writing makes it real. It’s time to move on.

I’m in a situation that has me deep in my thoughts lately.

As I move through life, I have this inner monologue going on. Mostly, it’s just narration and reminders, but often it’s my thoughts. I’ve been running the same loop about this situation for a very long time and it occurred to me in the last few days that the reason I’ve been so disheartened about it all is because the narrative I’ve created has been so discouraging.

I’ll spare you the details because they aren’t important. The mindset I adopted, woe is me – on repeat, wasn’t making me feel better. It actually made me feel powerless and pathetic. I’ve made a conscious decision to rewrite that mental tape. I decided to replace the negative thoughts with realistic, but positive ones and I’ve been feeling a little better.

In my opinion, mentally framing situations more positively won’t make them better. The thing that’s going on with me sucks very badly and it’s not going to change because I think more positively about it. It’s a done deal. But by changing the way I think about it, at least I feel more empowered to move past it and see brighter days ahead. I allow myself my feelings, because they’re valid and they matter. Sometimes I’m sad about it. I’m allowed that. What I can’t allow is my mind tricking me into staying sad about it, just because that’s what I’m accustomed to feeling.

I feel better when I think better. I think that’s what this all boils down to. If it takes me deliberately creating positive thoughts about my current situation, that’s what I will do until they happen on their own.

If you asked me 5 years ago what I thought was most important, I would’ve said love. I think I imagined love as the ultimate goal in life. And while it’s still high on the list of things I find important, the older I get the more I value companionship. If I find love unattainable or unsustainable, I can only hope that I can find comfort in the way companionship. Love can be sweet, but without the valuable component of companionship-someone to spend your life with-love can be a lonely place. However, companionship on by itself can provide a measure of comfort without the trials of love. Maybe I just need someone to talk to and ask about their day and eat dinner with. Increasingly, that seems more palatable than the disappointing dates and troublesome issues of emotion that I’m dealing with now. Perhaps I need to just dispense with the idea of romance and find someone who just wants to sit and keep me company.

That sounds defeated, but when I look at what I find important, I realize that the torrid passion of love is not only difficult to sustain, it’s not even that interesting to me anymore. I’ve gotten the flowers. Been on all the the dates. The candy, the candles, the trips? Been there, done that. And it’s all sweet. I appreciated it. But where did it get us in the end?

I think placing a greater value on the merits of companionship could help me focus on what I really find important.

In dreams, birds are supposed to symbolize our goals and desires. When they’re soaring, it’s supposed to be a good thing.

A few nights ago, I dreamed that I crushed a bird in my hand, a la Steinbeck’s Lennie Small.

I held it. Tightly. I was trying to prevent it from flying away. But then I was yelling because I was holding a lifeless bird, crushed between my fingers.

You ever strangle a dream before? They’re not fighters, by nature. No, your dreams and goals will let you suffocate them quietly. They won’t try to resist because they understand the nature of the relationship. Without your blessing, your desires are mute. Therefore, if you’re out to murder them, they won’t fight. What’s the use?

I have taken advantage of that, time and time again. Stabbing, shooting and crushing my own scarcely formed ambitions because it seemed the most humane thing to do. Ever see a bird fly into a glass window and die? They never see it coming. I thought I was saving my birds from a certain and messy ending.

In my dream, I didn’t mean to hurt the birds. I was, like Lennie, just trying to pet them, keep them a little longer. Dumb fingers and good intentions. The same thing that’s happening in my life, I suppose.

I can’t continue aborting things before I give them a chance because I’m afraid they won’t turn okay. Especially my dreams and goals. Maybe it’ll be okay and maybe it won’t. I have to get over that. Breaking the bird’s neck isn’t working either. What have I got to lose?

We owe ourselves some happy. I think we forget this. We’ve got all these obligations – real and imagined – that we have to take care of. And that’s real, but honestly I think we discount the importance of happiness. Fortunately for us, if we’re open to the idea, happiness will usually find us. Unfortunately, when it does, we often feel guilty. It’s as though we think that we don’t deserve to be happy and heaven forbid that your happiness comes at someone else’s expense.

I’m not saying it’s okay to hurt other people. But I don’t see the idea of making yourself miserable just because you don’t want to hurt someone else. I feel like the people who love you want you to be happy, bottom line. So even if your idea of happiness doesn’t jibe with their’s, they should be okay with that and not take it as a personal slight.

We place a high value on stoicism and even more on asceticism (both the religious and the plain varieties), and I’m not sure why. There is a lot to be said for enjoying our lives and making our situations better. It sounds vain when you say it, but I think we ought to be able to be happy people, if for no other reason than that I find no glory in misery.

We can’t always do the things that will make us happy. Some things are beyond our control, but there are so many things that are within our control and I just think we let those chances slip away because we don’t think it’s right or fair or a good idea. But neither is the alternative. We’re worth the damn happy.

I’m totally stuck lately.

Like, personally, physically, emotionally, everything. I don’t really know what do about it other than to unstick myself, which if I knew how to do it, I would’ve already done. So I don’t know. Lucky for me, people rarely are static. I’m probably not going to be in this funk forever. But right now I am. So.

Anyway, I’m committing to writing more often because it’s therapeutic and also good exercise. You think I’m lying? I sweat bullets about some of the stuff I write. Matter of fact, this month I started a book. There. I said it. I started a book. That’s some scary stuff to even type. But I know that I don’t want to spend the rest of my days wondering what it would’ve been like to have done it. So I started. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever finish and right now it sounds a little wonky anyway. But maybe I’ll share some with you. One day.

The more I write the less stuck I seem. I don’t know if it’s this pansy Mac keyboard or what. Okay. It is easy to type on, so that could be it.

The fact of the matter is that I’m thuuurty now and some things are going to have to change if I’m going to keep on keeping on like I kept on before. That’s just the truth. Some ducks will have to get in a row. Ya know?

They say you’re supposed to look at your relationships for patterns…especially the relationships that didn’t work out. The thought is that you’ll recognize the pattern and make a conscious effort not to repeat it, thus increasing your chances for success in your next relationship. I never put much stock in the idea. Besides, I couldn’t sleuth out a pattern anyway, so I assumed there wasn’t one. But on further review, I came up with something that was pretty disturbing.

I have a thing for big egos.

The one commonality in my last “situations” (and I use even that word extremely loosely) has been an overwhelming need for the other person to have their egos stroked. Light, but constant ego stroking. Unfortunately, I’ve never been particularly good at the art of caressing another’s precious ego. That’s not to say I’m a meanie. I’m very sweet, but not cloyingly so. I might tell you I think you look nice. But don’t expect that every time you do better than a t-shirt. When I’ve held back on that ego fluffing, those compliments and declarations that I found corny or trite, those people have pulled away from me. To be fair, I don’t expect constant adulation in return. I give a little and I like a little. But too much and I just think you’re lying. I’m not always brilliant and gorgeous. Sometimes I’m clumsy and inadequate; trying to gas me otherwise just trips my internal alarms. I guess I assumed others shared the same BS-ometer.

Those whom I’ve been involved with, even casually, apparently don’t.

Facebook and Twitter have given me a window on the way they relate to other women. Basically, the same women tell them how smart and sexy and handsome and awesome they are over and over and they eat it up like free pancakes. Now are they? Well, yeah, kinda. At least a little or I wouldn’t have been interested. But enough is enough. Or maybe it’s not.

There’s no doubt in my mind that these guys get off on hearing how awesome they are. And if a woman really feels the need to drive home that point in every comment they make to them, so be it. My personal preference is to let my actions speak for me. When I send a book I know he’ll like, it’s because I respect his intelligence. Or if I suggest something that helps him be more productive, it’s because I admire his work ethic. When I take the time to tell others what he’s doing, it’s because I’m proud of what he’s done. I guess if you need big, flashing neon sign, I’m not your girl. I’m more of a candle in the window type.

Anyway, I’m learning to look at situations as a whole. Just like I’m not comfortable commenting “You’re so hot!” to every twitpic, there are people who expect that because public declarations are what they privately enjoy. I gave up judging others last lifetime, so it is what it is. The lesson is that there’s a lid for every pot. And the pots I’ve been picking lately have egos bigger than my lid can cover.