Nonsensical musings

I feel like my head is spinning in so many directions at once I have a hard time seeing clear answers.  I can’t even tell for sure how many questions there are or which ones are relevant or worthy questions or subsets of connected questions. 

This therapy process is hard work.  And then I wonder why is this necessary.  Why do I have to figure all this out in order to be happier in the future.  I was happy before.  Pretty happy.  Is it possible to be happier?  Can I have that?  On the continuum of relative happiness, where was I before?  And how much of that do we have control over.  On one hand, I believe in “choosing your own mood.”  Choosing to be happy even when life serves you a raw deal.  But if I follow that line of thinking to an extreme, I think that potentially leads to a “blame the victim” mentality.  If we are happy because we choose to be happy, does that mean we are miserable because we choose to be miserable.  What about when life gives you crap?  And I don’t even mean my bourgeois problems of self-absorbed, depressed, narcissistic husbands who up and quit all of a sudden…. Though tangent, that’s not altogether a bourgeois problem.  I say that because it isn’t ruining my life in the same way that it would be another woman in another time and place in history, but actually, it would have been thoroughly devastating to other women in other times and places…. But anyhow, I’m thinking more like victims of fatal illnesses or genocide or war or other horrific things.  There is an ugly flip side to that “law of attraction”/”choose your own mood”/”all we are in control of is our responses” philosophy which hints that if life sucks, it might be because we weren’t positive enough.  Like the subtle suggestion that eating organic food and living holistically will keep you from getting cancer, so therefor, the people who get cancer must have been because they weren’t eating organic food and being emotionally healthy enough.

But what does this train of thought have to do with me.  So, as I explore myself and figure out how I’ve been in relationship with others, I am struggling to find the nuanced explanation that will allow me to understand how I attracted my spouse and was attracted to him while also not being determinist.   If I accept that there are qualities about me that I need to work on that led to that relationship than it seems like I’m also accepting responsibility for my life following the path that it has.  And while we have to accept responsibility for our choices, and it’s also healthy to examine patterns and see how those patterns enabled certain events to unfold, taken to an extreme that becomes determinist. 

I don’t even know what I’m trying to see.  I see myself writing nonsense and thinking in circles, but I can’t get clearer. 

And I’m too tired to write the dozens of pages that it would take to spell out concrete examples which would help me make sense of it.

Random themes:

Feeling lonely…Noticing the pattern between highs and lows in this current experience of mine… the high of the first day of school today.  Happy community, excited staff and kids and parents, successful day.  I was ON.  BUSY.  In the center of it all.  And then ALONE.  The juxtaposition was hard.  Thank goodness for going to a friend’s for dinner.  And I got to cook!  Which I realize I like to do for people who care about a meal and never get to really do anymore, since my boys don’t value my cooking. 

Thinking a lot about feeling vulnerable and how I have FOR YEARS, protected myself against feeling vulnerable by justifying other people’s behavior, from friends to family members to loved ones.  By seeing the best in others, and generally assuming that they have understandable reasons for their behavior that is largely unrelated to me, I have, for as long as I can remember, allowed myself to not feel hurt, or to get hurt very little.  It’s not that I don’t feel hurt at all, but I relatively quickly (from instantly, to faster than usual, defined as “not being a grudge-holder”) get over it. 

So what are the ramifications of this behavior?  How has that impacted my life?  I’ve always thought that has impacted my life positively, but I’m now questioning if life characteristics, if there have been negative ramifications as well.  Has this prevented people from falling in love with me?  Why have so few men ever been attracted to me? How?  Don’t people like positive people, right?  People don’t like woe-is-me folks.  I hate even having this inner dialogue because it seems so self-pitying, which is abhorrent to me. But I also feel the need to understand the cold hard truth.  Why at 28 years old had so few men ever been interested in me?  And he hardly pursued me.  For God’s sake, I responded to his personal profile.  I practically threw myself at him.  Sure, he asked me on the first few dates, and I agreed, but from them on, I guess the control was in my hands.  I didn’t see it as such, but I do now.  He didn’t object, and responded largely positively, but in retrospect, passively.  I led from the get-go.  I didn’t realize it at the time. 

And what good does it do to understand that and come to terms with it?  It seems like that’s worthy of analysis, but I don’t know why?  What’s the lesson?  Not to pursue anyone ever again?  It’s not like I had done very much pursuing or had been pursued, either one. 

Well, I’ve vomited nonsense here for 40 minutes, and still don’t even know what my questions are.  Still don’t even know what the important themes are.  All I know is that I must get to sleep or the morning isn’t going to be pleasant with the boys.