I find it interesting that Flocky and I both have similar feelings sometimes - he oftens says that as he listens to me or reads this blog it's just like his experiences. I feel the same as I listen to him too.
So there's a time when you realise it is not a dream and it is actually happening and you look at your life and reflect and I think you feel some disappointment and regret and of course there's this stepping into the unknown. In 1998 I set up my business and I stepped off into the unknown and it was a leap of faith - a huge leap of faith as I didn't know much about running my own business - I'd ran other people's businesses and been involved at high level in some household name businesses. But it was different. I had an 8 year old and a 5 year old daughter and whilst I had been pretty successful up until then I had existed in a corporate wrapper. Now I was out on my own. I had to work it out for myself, do my own billing, chasing invoices, timesheets, expenses and VAT and all that good stuff. Mrs. F. was there doing the accounts (bless her). I recollect that first day and my overwhelming thoughts were - as I sat on the train - I am probably earning 4 or 5 times what my fellow travellers were! In a day I'd earn what they earnt in a week! Now that may not be a good thought but I remember having it and being very worried about it but around that time I finally realised what my true worth was to major corporations and it was worth them paying me that sort of money as I was good at saving or making them millions.
That excitement and trepidation and in many ways being isolated from everyone as I started is kind of how I feel now. It is like stepping off a dark staircase and not knowing where that next step is and your foot travelling further than you thought it would and you feeling you are going to fall when suddenly it lands with a shuddering bump. That is how it feels like now. It's all different, it's all exciting but also it is also very frightening too. There's actually a fear of the unknown but also something slightly rebellious about this. By that I mean that there are some 'habits' I've got into that I don't much like and I want to change those. I want to cut loose of some of the commitments that I've grown used to (in many ways to get out of the house) that I don't need to do anymore. I can just release myself from these commitments and go and do more rewarding things. I like the fact that if there are three ages of man and I've done two of them - I ought to make the most of the last one! :-)
It is difficult moving away from the Status Quo and taking on a new life when comfort and normality and habit guided, regulated and monitored your life. Imagine that we are now given an opportunity to put all that we have learnt in this past 56 years (in my case) into some context. To use all that knowledge, hard won and we carrying the tattooed scars of our life to date to use all that to live a life less ordinary and to develop relationships that circumvent and erase common problems of jealousy and greed, that are loving and mutually beneficial, to make someone else's life better or more than that more than one person's life better even a tiny little bit. That would be worth living for and expending your energy to do? To make someone else's lot that little bit better. To be a better friend, to be more tolerant. To not make the same mistakes again and to use the experiences you had to not repeat those mistakes and to talk and communicate better, to do good to one another to love and be loved in return.
Surely a better life is out there beyond my mind's eye and current imagination? I have to remind myself that no matter what emotions I am going through at the moment, how sad I feel for myself but more for Mrs. F. and my daughters A & L, it won't last forever. It won't actually be as bad as if I stayed here - I still feel I would have just descended into a deeper depression and would have been no use to anyone.
The key to this is to realise that the future (yes I know the NOW is the real thing) is going to be good because it is totally in my hands to have learnt from my past and to make sure that those lessons are used to make my life better.
It isn't how I imagined it to be, how could it be? I wanted something different (well my ego did) and the reality struck home - "you can't have what you want!" You can have whatever comes your way and that's it. You make the best of what comes along and you do your best.
I was lucky last year to have someone actually drag me up and talk to me seriously about my terrible lack of confidence (I know you can hardly believe it). I was finally made to believe in myself in the most wonderful ways and even today they hold me in as high an esteem as I hold them. I finally believe that I can be attractive, intelligent, funny, kind, affectionate, caring, loving, deep, intellectual, artistic, poetic, creative, musical and so many other things. All of these things I was when I was younger and they got kicked out of me by a gradual process of erosion of my soul and who I was. I doubt it was deliberate at all. It just happened. I like the story of the married couple and the wife who changed her man over a period of years and moulded him to her desires, clothed him differently, stopped him doing what he used to do and after 10 years he was so changed that she shouted at him one night "You aren't the man I married!" :-)
We all change, we adapt, we soften and we become compliant. I wanted an easy life and I never wanted to argue or fight. What was the purpose? So here I am 40 years into a relationship unable to articulate to the woman I knew all those years ago what the hell happened and how we ended up here. I hate that we hardly talk anymore but I have a short memory for we haven't talked for years. I hate that we are here - but here we are - I can't do anything about that. I like that many people I know are saying that it "isn't me" but I don't want blame and I don't want people to take sides. I hope that this is a case where we are both equally to blame (if indeed blame is the right word to use - I don't think it is). We aren't taught how to be good to each other or how to behave, how our lives will pan out and the stresses and strains of modern life are bad enough but no one tells you what you need to do - well not until it is too late.
But here is a new page. There's a few chapters beforehand - that's inevitable for I guess I carry baggage with me that needs to be dropped or discussed or something done about it. The new page is blank waiting for ink and a sentence to start it off. It is too simple to say "Once upon a time...." but that could be it I suppose. For now, there's the mitigation of the damage - there's the need to stop talking about 'the wife' and I suppose I call her the 'Ex' there's a point here that I shouldn't appear to be nasty about what's happened for I don't feel that. I met someone who was really still badly hurt by her breakup. I see that, I really do, but I don't want that damage on whoever I may meet.
So many things could happen for me - travel, work away, go to the coast or whatever course may be set for me. I really don't know yet and somehow I shouldn't worry about it but just do whatever takes my fancy. Time to dream of the Canal Boat journey, the trip to America, New Zealand and Australia, Thailand and Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai. I love Paris and Brussels, Milan and Rome - who knows - there's the world out there. Here I sit in my house of 26 years and whilst I have been blessed and honoured with travel and privilege, why not go and see this wonderful world of ours and just see what life may hold for me from now on.
I don't know if any of that may come true but in 2013 I dreamt of all sorts of lives I might have had. None came true because the very person I wanted to share it with was unable or unwilling to commit. That's not a problem either. The problem I think is that of regret because when and if you are given an opportunity to reflect on your life, how many times would you look back and say "If only......" I'd like to look back and say - wow what a ride, what a lovely world, what amazing people I've met, what great experiences I've had. As Hunter S. Thompson said "Buy the ticket, take the ride." Hell yea....
You only get one life (in this form) so we ought to honour that fact. The problem being that not many people recognise it for what it is and the gift we have been given is squandered as we don't really appreciate it until our dying throb. We wander through this life and instead of bringing joy we cause misery and injustice and hurt to others and they do this to us. Surely there is another way? Well I think that I will try and explore that in the near future once that page is turned. I feel that I have brought pain and misery to my family - I very much doubt that it is ALL my fault but again I didn't tackle it earlier but hey we all make mistakes, misread the situation and let things go when perhaps we should have said something. The same mistake will not be made again. Well that's my promise to myself.
I will certainly try and be more 'in the now' and forget the past and don't let it haunt me. You and I know that isn't easy, there's the utter regret of not doing things when I could have. There's hindsight on decisions made that in those days were the right things and yet looking back aren't :-) and there's those magic moments that promised to lift you out from where I was that never materialised - that promised so much and held so much vision for a bright future that soared and then dropped me to the depths of despair. That wonderful job, the meeting with my spiritual angel, the opportunities for great things and then the collapse of each one of them into heaps of ruin from sickness, timing, or just plain bad luck. But I'm alive and despite financial loss, health worries and the despair and depressions that they caused - I'm out the other end and I'm still alive and I'm still breathing and I'm not poor and I have good health and I have lovely friends and so what is my problem? I'm not in jail, I'm not really ill or anything like that. I have warmth, food and clothes and shelter. What the hell is my problem? :-) Of course, you and I know, there isn't a problem at all.
I know that the bad days are actually behind me. I know that I will have to deal with the disappointment of my marriage, leaving this wonderful house and the surrounding countryside and of course my daughters but they are fledging from the nest anyway. They are independent already - I made them so - they don't need me to be there for them until they want me to be there for them. I just have to make sure that I am there for them when they want. It is my covenant with them as their father after all. There IF and only IF they need me. As for Mrs. F. well yes - that hurts too but not so much now. We've had the heavy conversations and it does hurt to discuss breaking up stuff but, do you know, she knew what the problems were and it hurt us both that there wasn't enough common ground to get back together again. Interestingly, I'd say that may happen but I need the time to make sure it really could. I won't say no but there's so big a gulf that it would take a miracle but they too can happen.
Blimey this has been a long winded post. I suppose I needed to get this lot out of my head :-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment