The Recurring theme

I write to express myself. to get all the thoughts swirling in my head, out, and throw them into the great beyond, ie the Internet. I write to process feelings. these aren't fleeting feelings, moments of anger, sadness, happiness, pleasure, pain and suffering. everything I write about has been a recurring theme in my entire life. And what I'm always thinking about, dreaming about, longing for and questioning about.
I think I discovered through a lot of self-reflection time and journaling, what this all comes down to. What the "base line" or recurring theme of my life is. I used to think it was only about being alone. I wanted someone to be with me every day, as a marriage partner is, to have and to hold, to wake up next to and go to bed and spend all my days with. But the truth is, I love my alone time. I really really do. I think even if I had someone, I would find myself wandering away from them just to be alone and not have to talk or help or do a damn thing. So if it isn't "being alone" as the reason why I have to find "the one," then what is it? Since most themes to our lives, our biggest issues, our deepest struggle, come from childhood, I started to look at the recurring themes or issues I had throughout all the years through college. What stands out? Is there any connection to them all? And there was. There is. And it's this:
I feel like I'm always being left out. left behind. forgotten.
I'm sure oldest children of the family all have this to a certain degree. Since we were the first and alone for how ever many years, and then a new baby comes, and suddenly we're not that important anymore. This could be exacerbated by that child needing more special attention for one thing or another. I won't delve into all that, here. But it continued as I grew. The day before my 13th birthday I broke my leg. Not just broke it, but snapped the femur in half. I saw the x-ray. It looks exactly as you would think it would. a clean break in the middle, 2 bones side by side, that should've been one. I had 3 best friends. one a grade younger that lived on my block and then the other 2 my same grade at church, and we called ourselves the 3 musketeers. The day I broke my leg everything changed. The friend from my street moved with her family out of the state immediately following my leg snapping incident. Actually she was there when it happened and I remember vividly (even though I was in shock from seeing my leg sway like rubber when I lifted it after I had tripped over my own feet in a racquetball court and fell just hard enough for it to snap, apparently) her trying to climb into the ambulance. They were like no, you can't come. We both couldn't understand why my best friend, a 12 year old, couldn't ride along with me. She was at my house with me until the day she left, which I think was only a week later. My other 2 best friends forgot me, or maybe it was I was just too boring to be around, since I couldn't go bike riding or walk around the mall, or even go swimming at the beginning. I missed my very first church youth camp, which they roomed together at, even more solidifying their best friendship status, and everything was forever changed. One good thing did come from that summer of solitude and mostly house confinement, and that was that I started journaling for the first time. And not "diary" journaling, which is just talking about what you did that day and what you ate for lunch. This was deep feelings and emotions and shit. I'm pretty sure I still have some of it. Might have to look for it later. But anyways that summer I felt left out, left behind, and most certainly forgotten.
College came along. I had reconciled with one of these girls and we had become friends again. We went to different schools, but we visited each other, so that was a nice feeling of gaining a friend back. I made the biggest group of friends that I've ever had, in my 4 years at Baylor. And these were all what I would consider really close friends. I went there with 3 of my high school best friends. And I made even more. It was the greatest time of my life up to that point. Everyone was so close because we didn't have family there. we were each others family. I made the first friend to have ever said the words "I love you," to me, and to this day I haven't let her go. To be clear, it was always friendship. This blog is not in any way a story on how I liked any of my girl friends from the past in that way. Never did and never will. Just to be clear. Also, I seriously thought, naively, that all of these girls I had become such close friends with, or had come to college with and kept that friendship with, that our friendship would remain as strong as it was college and continue that way throughout our whole life! I had absolutely no idea of the reality of it all. I hadn't watched the end of Felicity yet. I didn't know what to expect. I hadn't heard her big speech senior year about how cruel college is and how it's not real. "Graduation comes and whatever you've been working towards, or whatever your plans are, it just pulls you away. You don't have college anymore to rely on, to keep you together." I didn't memorize that by the way, it was in my scrapbook on a page titled "best friends in college...now strangers." After college ended and everyone got married, like practically the day after graduation, I was so lost. I kept trying to force friendships to live, but most died. If not all right away...eventually. And again another blow to the head of " being left out, left behind and forgotten.
I feel this every time I make a new single friend and she then gets a boyfriend, gets married, has a baby...I keep getting left behind. I'm constantly reminded that I'm not the cool kid that gets to sit at the cool table at lunch. The table of life which is getting married and having kids. Why not me? You start to spiral down that there's something wrong with you, you're a loser, you're too shy not confident enough, not pretty enough to attract attention from a potential partner, so how could you expect to ever have someone? Whatever it may be; lies start to feel like truths, all because of this base line of feeling left out, left behind and forgotten. If everyone else is in this place of what true adulthood is supposed to mean, how can I not feel like I'm being left behind? When I'm not in the same place as everyone else? It would be the same as not advancing to 8th grade and having to repeat 7th grade...over and over and over again, for the rest of your life. Not only are you the oldest 7th grader, with like a beard and hair on your chest (if you were a guy), but you'd feel like there's something wrong with you, not just academically speaking, but on a maturity level. I mean I haven't been forced to grow up in the way my friends have, with taking care of a baby full time or caring for a husband in all the ways a wife does, which is a full time job. But I'm not some immature slacker either. I know no one's saying that I am. But I do wonder if they think I'm sad or pathetic, or a loser, because I haven't found somebody yet. Haven't settled down and started a family, like the "normal" thing to do.
The theme even followed me to Colorado. I was desperate to start a new life, make new friends and see if anything life long was there waiting for me. Little did I know, there was a life long friend there waiting for me! She's my godsons mom. She proves all my theories wrong. But at the time she did leave me.  She eventually did move away to be with her boyfriend, along with other friends from my church community group, just moving on with their life. Along with the guy that said he loved me and wanted to marry me. Along with one best friend in particular, although she cannot be blamed for it. I didn't know at the time her own battle was beginning. I was just feeling left out, left behind or forgotten by all of them. I know I'm not being realistic that the level of a friendship should remain the same forever, or that everyone should stay in my life at the same intensity that it grew to be at one point in our friendship. And I know I shouldn't take it personally. I've learned not to. But it does go back to why I want to be married, to have that one person. That level and intensity of friendship and more...(I like the sound of that) would only increase as time went on (well hopefully, or there's a problem). If I saw my person less and less and things started to change, well then that would be a huge problem. Most likely you would see that person or communicate with that person on a daily basis. Not something a friendship could maintain forever. Unless by some miracle you meet someone that is like you and never gets married, then maybe. But I've never become friends with such a person...I'm usually their lucky charm to finding love. ;o)
I'm much better than I was about my friendships. Letting them be what they are, not forcing, but trying to maintain those that give a little back, those that have proved their interest in keeping them. Just because I don't talk to them every day or see them even every month, doesn't mean our friendships aren't strong. Every one of them is different. In childhood and in college, they were all pretty much the same. I saw them every day. It was easy to. I went to school with them, they lived on my street, or in my dorm, or in Baylor Landing apartments, or you could walk across a pretty small campus to see them anytime you wanted. Now it's a 20, 30, 45 minute drive. Or a 7 and a half hour drive to the line where Texas and Mexico meet, to see my best friend and my godsons, in a place called "Hellrio" for a very good reason. If a 110 degree dessert land with scorpions, tarantulas and snakes isn't Hell, then I don't know what is. But I will and have, driven that distance to see them, because we both value each other so much and want to be in each others lives forever, and no place is too horrible or too far, to keep us apart. Now if she moved somewhere normal, like a city with a Target in it, then I'd probably move to live near them. It pains me that I'm not in my godsons life as much as I want to be. I am via videos I make of me reading books to them, but I'm currently out of children's books, as I don't have children. And it just now occurred to me that I have a library card and can check out books to read to them, and not keep buying them. I was only buying ones I wanted to own anyway. Anywho, that was way off topic, sorry about that!
I'm not sure exactly how NOT to feel left out when friends get married or have a baby, because I am left out, literally. Because I don't have those things. They aren't doing it purposefully like mean girls at school. It's just life. But I feel like I'm missing out on the life they have. I'm left out of this special married world and baby world which is literally a different world. I can't relate at all, and it makes me feel like I'm being pulled even further away from them, and not by distance. I guess that I have to trust that one day I'll be in that world and have friends in that same world. Because the single world isn't a world just full of a bunch of single people. Maybe you have friends in it for like a minute. But before you know it a black hole has formed and sucked them out of the universe you were sharing and pulled them into a totally alien one...the married world, or even just the boyfriend world. The single world is a lonely one. One where most people only vacation in for awhile...but don't live in full time. I don't want to live here full time. But I have been, for what seems like eternity. I feel like I bought a house with a 20 year loan on it, and I can't sell it or get out of it. I'm stuck here.
But I suppose that can change at any moment. It does for others, and it will for me someday. I hope. I don't mind vacationing here for awhile, but the occasion visitor to my island would be nice. And eventually have someone living in the single world with me, decide to move with me to that other world. I'm not saying it's a better world, but it's definitely a "couple's world."

the art of letting go

I say that as a jest. I do not know the real art of letting go. I'm sure there are people out there that do, or think they do, and write books about it, but those are probably the people I've never listened to or refused to hear, because everyone's experience is different. Everyone's timing is different. Some people never accept something, or fool themselves, trick themselves into thinking they've accepted something, or let go of something. I think letting go is a daily thing sometimes. Or you might let something go, like a remark of a coworker and never think about it again. But I think in that case, the comment probably didn't sting that bad in the first place.
I'm no expert in letting go. It's taken me years to "get over" hurts and feelings of "there must be something wrong with me, or I'm not good enough," from losing the only 2 romantic loves of my life. Especially since at one point they both wanted to marry me and told me so...a lot (no not at the same time, c'mon). But I'm definitely past all that and over them, they were never the right one for me, and I can definitely see and feel that, for real now.
But the thing I could never let go of was this: "I have to get married and have kids in order to be truly happy and fulfilled." I think it's a wonderful thing to want that and desire it and hope for it, but it was literally killing me with unhappiness every time someone else got to that point before me, especially with marriage. I literally can't count how many friends have gotten married now. I'm not exaggerating when I say all of the friends from Baylor and almost all of the friends I made in childhood and after college. With the exception of some I have no idea what they are up to now...
So this bothered the crap out of me. I tried my best (which sometimes was not at all good enough) to be happy for them, but it just made me more aware that I don't have it, and that again, there is something wrong with me because I don't. At least before, we were 2 single gals both wanting to find love, so I wasn't alone in it. It was like losing love all over again. In a different way, but still. Things are never the same in friendships after marriages. Not that they can't continue at all, but they are definitely not the same. Time spent together is cut down drastically. But anyways, enough on that.
For so long I was letting this one tiny aspect of my life (and yes in the grand scheme of life, whether or not you get married and have kids, is tiny). Who you are as a person, deep down, your heart, how you live your life, what you do with your time here to help others, whether or not you are thinking of eternity and what happens after you die, your beliefs, your morals, all those things are the BIG picture. They ARE the grand scheme of life. I honestly didn't think that the love in my life that I had, in the form of friends, family, my godsons and others was enough. It wasn't everyday love, right in front of my eyes, laying in bed with me, or in their bunk bed in the next room, like my friends had, in the form of their husbands and children. So I clung to this idea that my happiness depended on it happening, like a leech to a leg. And like a leech to a leg, it sucked my blood dry. It's exhausting being unhappy. It's a real bummer and serves no purpose and obviously doesn't make you feel good, so one day last week I decided to let it all go: The idea that marriage + kids= true happiness, the being unhappy most the time part of my life, the trying and searching for "the one" at any event or group or meeting or whatever. I also let go of the idea of "who" this person could be, if they do exist. And by that I mean, gender- male or female. Now I know most people can't do this. I'm not at all saying it's a choice, because it's not. I just think some people like me see the emotional connection they find in a person that draws them together, and not gender or looks or physical stuff. I definitely fell in love with the personalities and connection I found, with the 2 guys I dated. I became attracted to them after we started dating actually. Friends first is always a good way to do things, for me at least. So, I'm open. For me, either way can work, if it's the right person for me. Who they are deep down, and how they treat me and what we have in common and all that real stuff, is what really matters. If you want to label me, call me bi. I don't like labels. People are not who they are by race or gender or sexuality. They are who they are by how they show you their true colors. I wish people would say there's Christie, she's caring. There's Bob, he's loyal. Maybe Bob's gay too, but who cares? It doesn't need to define you, be the only thing people see. 
I don't think I made a decision to let go of all that was making me want to define myself. I so much want to be defined as "wife" and "mother." but again, it's not saying anything about my gifts, my personality. marriage is a piece of paper and mother means you birthed a baby. I'm so not trying to trivialize  those things. they are VERY important and should be taken seriously, I just mean it's not everything that you are.  loving and patient, could be 2 words used to equal the titles wife and mother. But I'm getting off track here...back to me. I can't tell anybody how to let something go, what steps to take, what potion to drink. I would say it was a decision, but it really wasn't. It just sort of came into my head, or better yet, it just became me. It was like a part of me was locked until now. I wasn't willing to unlock it or maybe didn't know where the key was, or where it even was in me to unlock it! But I found it finally, even though I wasn't searching for it. I'm grateful I finally found it or was opened up to it. People were telling me for years-stop searching for love and it will find you. To me they were saying- stop being who you are and caring about getting married and stop wanting to be loved fully by another human being. That's what I was hearing. But I can still WANT this and HOPE for this, but not see it as the end all to life. Maybe it's too many "happily ever after" endings to Disney movies I saw. It brainwashed me. I don't know. But even though I knew married life still has challenges and probably more so, with another person living with you every day never leaving and breathing on you when you just want to be left alone, I still wanted that more than anything (still do), the difference is, I'm okay being single now. Not in a hipster cool "I'm just too awesome to be in a relationship" "I don't need anyone", or fake "sure I'm okay with it, whatever." I truly mean it this time. My life is awesome without being married, without "The one." I'm going to continue to have an awesome life and have fun and do all the things I enjoy. These don't include bars, clubs, group events at places or activities that I have no interest in, and online. I don't feel like I'm limiting myself. I need to not be in a searching mode anymore, or a wondering one either. Wondering and worrying and asking why, always lead to my unhappiness. I'm not going anywhere with it in mind that "maybe the one will be there!" I'll say, maybe I'll make a new friend! maybe not. But you can never have too many friends. You can have too many marriages, I think! haha. I just want the one ;o)