Good days and bad days. We all have them.
It seems like mine lately are really starting to balance out a bit more than they used to. This whole adjustment to my new life has been farely complicated, but day by day I'm getting a better handle on it. I feel so much more... alive than I did with her. I feel like every step I take in this new direction is as positive a move as I could possibly be making. For almost two years I did nothing but stress myself out and push myself as hard as I could in pursuit of something that I'm not sure I ever really wanted.
I look at how hard I was working and how much money I threw away at things that just weren't important and I kind of cringe. I was pushing myself into 60-70 hour work weeks to try and save money up so she could go to school, so we could save money to buy a house, to pay for a wedding, to try and start a big kid life when in all actuality it seems from my perspective that these are things that she never really wanted from me. I thought all this time I was doing the things that a MAN should to provide for his family. I thought putting yourself second to everything else in life was what you were supposed to do to show someone you loved them.
Turns out I should have just settled for a life of mediocrity to make her happy.
I refuse.
I want to live LIFE. I don't want to simply live day to day worrying more about my situation than what it is that I want to do. I want to get ahead. I want to stop struggling the way so many people do in their day to day lives. I don't want money to be the primary determining factor behind everything that I do. If I have a couple of days off, I want to be able to cruise off to wherever, just because I can! I want to go on impulse to the store and buy something stupid. I want to be a little kid at the age of 40, working to live not living to work!
And that's what it was all about. That's what I thought I was spending all of my time doing. Now I am starting to realize, that if that's what I want to do with my life, then I need to really step up and take a look at the things that I was letting drag me down- and get rid of each and every one of them. The first step was made for me, and that was the hardest one. I was living with a negative, downtrodden person that was unwilling to help give me the drive that was needed to get ahead. When the chips were down and things needed to be done to do work, she couldn't push through what was supposed to be a temporary discomfort to get to find the bigger picture.
Today I can say, I'm happy with it. I'm being told every day that people appreciate me so much more than they did before. That the person that I am today seems to have so much brighter of an outlook and is so much more fun. At first being told these things offended me. I thought for the longest time that it paid too much disrespect to who I was while I was with Onnolee, but I realize now that it's the truth. I was so blinded by my dedication that I neglected friendships and ignored possibilities to get out and have fun.
Which is rather ironic considering she told every single person that she knows that I had been cheating on her with everything. That I had done nothing for the last six months of our relationship but lie and philander. Too bad there isn't a person out there that knew my side of the story that could say I did anything but live for her. I made my mistakes, and while I was slow to act on admitting them, I did at least come clean- pride was a hard thing to break down.
You live and you learn though. Walking through life living on blind faith just doesn't work. Things aren't going to be exactly what they want them to be without a lot of sacrifice and a lot of hard work. If the person I'm with can't accept that, then that's not someone that I really want to be with, now is it?
"All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.A life lived in medicority is a life lived in sin" - Scott Alexander
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