It's My Life

I'm now on day 3 of not making contact with my ex. I know. It doesn't seem like a long time. Especially for a girl who left Portland over a month ago saying she wanted no more contact.

Turns out, although a part of me knew that was what was best for me, another part, the part that was driving, couldn't abide it. So I overrode it. I called, I emailed, I texted.

Not surprisingly, I heard only the bare minimum back from him.

Then finally, this week, I realized that I could keep giving all my love and my energy away to him, but only at great personal cost and pretty big cost to my kids, too.

I realized this not in my mind or my heart, but experientially. Yesterday after savasana (final relaxation pose at the end of my yoga practice), I was having all these realizations about love, and my first instinct was to share them with the New Englander. Call him up, as I had done last week when the same thing happened. But the result of me leaving him that voicemail was for him to tell me that he hadn't finished listening to it because it made him emotional at work, but he would. And that's it. That's all I've heard about it.

This time I didn't call or text or email, mainly because I got busy with other things, and then, as I wrote about yesterday, I poured my energy into an email reaching out to someone about the next phase of my career.

Then yesterday afternoon, I tried to take my daughter mountain biking at CamRock. I really thought she'd love it, but she was pretty miserable. Super frustrated. But instead of getting frustrated myself, I stayed open and kind, and it made a HUGE difference to both of us.

Aha! I thought, late last night. If I don't give all my love away to someone who doesn't reciprocate, I will have more to give to my children. Hooray for that!

It will also please you to know that these realizations had a soundtrack, and that soundtrack featured a song by none other than Bon Jovi:

This ain't a song for the broken-hearted
No silent prayer for the faith-departed
I ain't gonna be just a face in the crowd
You're gonna hear my voice
When I shout it out loud

It's my life
It's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just want to live while I'm alive
(It's my life)
My heart is like an open highway
Like Frankie said
I did it my way
I just wanna live while I'm alive
It's my life

That it is. And today I'm feeling a renewed commitment to live it for me, for my kids, and eventually, with someone capable of reciprocating my love...