Changes...

I'm overwhelmed with the amount of stories, experiences, changes, moments, and feelings that have come and gone since posting my last blog. I was even behind posting the past two or three when I actually got around to doing it. Charlie and I broke up in November if that gives an idea of how much I've been slackin'.
When I think about writing I start getting prickly under my skin and the task of writing out all the things I want to share with you becomes a little much. This is what I'll go with for now...
The next day at work after the class I had where Annie said I was an author I was tearing foil for the colorists when I suddenly had a feeling that Charlie was moving. I've known that he hasn't been happy in Chicago for quite some time and has wanted to live in northern WI. I have no evidence to support this feeling, it just popped in my head. I keep tearing foil.
Later that same day I remember that I emptied my camera's memory card onto his computer back in September. Three hundred of my pictures are residing on his laptop. He's out of town but a week later I'm sitting in the passenger seat of his car while the rain pounds the pavement beneath us as he picks me up from work in Lincoln Park. He tells me he hasn't burned the pictures to the disk yet and wants to know if I want to get sushi. I know this is trouble yet I find myself agreeing.
In the week that we've been apart the swelling and craziness my dermatitis has wrecked through on my hands has gone down considerably. I feel like I've been asleep for nine months and living in a dream world. It's like something has been there all along patiently and quietly trying to wake me up, trying to make me see that I can't "lay in bed" and "sleep" all day. It was wanting me to see that this relationship wasn't working. I chose to turn away from this though. It felt so warm and nice in my "bed" that I shooed away the nagging feeling until it's only choice was to step away from my stubbornness, get Charlie and make him do it. I settled into the comfortable loveliness of our routine together, not wanting to see anything else. Now that I'm "awake" I can see that I've made a mess of everything. I've let my little spirit become overgrown with nasty, negative thoughts that intertwine themselves all over my "body", squeezing it, cutting off it's air supply. Quickly I begin to struggle within this entrapment, tearing away at these thoughts, cutting them apart, scrambling to undo the damage.
Dinner of course is wonderful. It's everything it should have been the whole time we were together. We talk, laugh and share the details of our past week. He listens, and is so attentive that while I enjoy it, I know this whole thing isn't real. He can't keep it up and well, neither can I but for right now, I want to enjoy the facade.
I spend the night. We spend the morning together. He tells me he's moving to WI. He's got three more weeks to pack and settle everything up in Chicago before leaving. The only thought that comes to mind is "thought so." I don't feel anything and find that scary.
After we've gone our separate ways for the day, I go for a run and start to fear what might happen once he's gone. I'm reminded of when my former roommate Kaci left and how much that hurt. I wasn't prepared to feel any of that. She was my "home base" so to speak. The person I depended on to be there when I came home. When she left, Charlie became that person. Since we've broken up I've been investigating both of those situations, recognizing the unhealthy attachment I've formed to both people. I've seen that I have behaved this way my whole life. I bounce from one person to the next,never learning to build my own foundation to stand on but hitching a ride on others. When they move on I freak out, feel abandoned and begin the search again. This time, while out of habit I've got one eye out in the open looking around, the other is looking inside. It's searching for my likes and dislikes, for my opinions, for my thoughts, for what it is I want to do with myself, for now and for later. It's searching for what makes me, well, me. I lost that person somewhere in life, covered her up with the garbage from everyone else's expectations. Really though, even under all of that, ultimately, I'm simply looking for love. It's what I've been on the hunt for all my life. I've just now gotten around to seeing that the type of love I'm wanting is the type I can't get from another human. I have to find it within myself.
Folks talk about that all the time. We're consistently told that in order to love someone else you have to love yourself first, but seriously? What does that look like? As children we're praised for pleasing other's. Who doesn't love praise? For me, as I've gotten older, I've become almost addicted to that praise. I'll do whatever it takes to receive it. I've never been ok with saying "no" or creating some sort of conflict in the name of my own desires. It's so easy for me to hear about you and what you want to do and adopt your thoughts and opinions. It's too much work to find my own. Plus, I won't be able to "stand it" if you don't like my beliefs, thoughts and opinions.
Well, fuck that. It's too much work to keep this up. For the first time in my life, I'm going to step out in another direction and try going down a different path. I just want to see what could happen if I try something new. Sure, I'm scared. I fear what you'll think of me. I fear I won't be able to keep it up. I fear I'll get stuck in something again that looked a lot like this past situation, but there's a part of me that knows better. Somewhere while I was "sleeping" and moving through my dreamworld, I got stronger. I began developing a spine. Why it took being with Charlie for this to happen I don't think I'll ever know. What I do know is that he's the last person that I, as I've known myself to be, will ever be again. From this moment forward, I want so badly to be different that I believe I'm willing to work for it, put in the effort and just see what happens. Lord knows I can't go back to where I was...