Deciding to love someone...

"Trying to make someone fall in love with you is about as pointless as trying to control who you fall in love with."

I love this quote.  I believe it speaks volumes.  Can someone decide to love someone?  Can someone decide not to love someone?  I look at my life and I know that I have loved my husband.  I know that I have loved him in different ways.  I have had an undying love for him, and I have had a love that I hated for him.  In the struggling relationship it has been brought to my attention that I have "decided" to not love him anymore.  I never decided not to love him.  I decided to marry him.  I decided to have children with him.  I have decided to not live an unhappy life anymore.  Has the love diminished?  Absolutely.  I never set out to not love him...it isn't something I just decided one day.  Falling out of love with him happened over time....over many years.  Is it possible to get that "in love" feeling back?  What happens when you don't want it back?

What Does Losing Control Actually Feel Like?

"See, the human mind is kind of like... a piñata.  When it breaks open, there's a lot of surprises inside.  Once you get the piñata perspective, you see that losing your mind can be a peak experience"  Jane Wagner

When I am home alone I sit with music playing.  I don't watch TV.  I sit with the lyrics flowing deep into my soul.  My mind today is losing control.  I never felt that I had much control to begin with, but today I feel like it is almost completely gone.  I have never understood what it means to lose control, or lose your mind, until now.  My marriage is on the brink of collapse.  The word of "unhappiness" is being felt and heard by all.  There are some who want to fix things, and there is one who doesn't.  I am the one who doesn't.  I am not in this marriage emotionally or mentally.  I do not want to be in this marriage physically.  If someone looked deep into my mind and soul they would see a very lost person.  They would see someone who doesn't know what to do.  They would see someone who feels very alone, and who wants to be alone to figure out what she wants.  They would see someone who is grasping at something to hold on to, so she can have some type of ground to stand on.  Losing control and losing my mind is the same thing.  As I lose more control of what is going on around me the more I am losing my mind.  I am screaming inside for something...anything to become normal again.  There are so many things I want, but I just don't know how to get them.  I feel very superficial.  I feel like I don't even know who I am.  I feel like I am crumbling... 

prince charming verses soul mate

"Our soul mate is the one who makes life come to life."  -Richard Bach

When I was little I watched a marriage that was the epitome of dysfunctional.  I dreamt of finding my prince charming, my soul mate, to whisk me away and forever protect me and teach and show me love.  At the very young age of 17 I met my husband.  I wasn't living at home anymore because of safety issues.  He was a police officer in the town I lived in.  Of course I thought he was Prince Charming.  He said all the right things, he did the right things, he cared about what I liked.  We dated five months, then shortly after I turned 18 we got married.  He was my first, and my only sexual partner.  If I had to describe our marriage I would call it one of control, insecurities, and distrust tangled with happiness, children, and love.  Now after 15 years it is a battle of wills.  One might look at us and think we have the "perfect marriage".  It is amazing how difficult it is to deceive the people around you.  I love my husband and I truly believe he was my Prince Charming, but sadly I have realized he is not my soul mate.  I used to be carefree and happy all of the time.  I dealt with things at home when I was younger and I knew that my life would be better some day.  After getting married I changed to someone who struggles with happiness, and is very quiet, and not so carefree.  I miss my old self.  When part of my old self reappears then my husband will attempt to tame it.  My "box" that I mentioned in my last post is cold, dark, and suffocating.  I yearn to have a deep love, a deep sense of passion for my partner, a partner who loves every aspect of me and doesn't try to conform me to what they think I should be like.  I want someone who wants to do new things, try new things, and doesn't care about the world around us.  A soul mate is one I believe that will gladly do things for you, because of you.  Prince Charming is one who, I believe, wants to look good to other people while doing it.  I want my soul mate.        

marriage in a box

"A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it." - John Steinbeck

Do you ever feel like you are in a box in your marriage? Sometimes your box is enormous and you can move along freely, and then sometimes your box is so tiny it is built just to fit your body with no breathing room at all. Being married for as long as I have has given into many dimensions of the box I live in. There are times I can see light through my box, but many times I see total darkness. I wonder at times if I was different, or lived differently would my box be wide open with all the space I ever needed. I talk to the one who creates my box, but it never seems like it is enough. The more I talk, the smaller the box becomes. If I conform to the one who has created my box, then it gets bigger. Do you think it is because the more I conform the more the creator allows the box to be bigger to do the thing the creator wants me to do? I fight all day and all night to get out of my box, or to at least have the flaps open, but I can never quite get it. Today I am drilling a hole in my box to get to the light, to get the hole big enough to step out. I wonder once I get out if I would rather be back in my box.

your place or mine.....

What does "first love" actually mean?

I met my "first love" my freshman year of high school. We were in band together. I hated band, but I loved him. He warmed my soul. We never had a fight, and we never made love, but we had love. Because I am a girl, and was naive at the time, I thought we would be together forever. I was wrong. We lasted about six months. The break up hit me like a baseball on a bat swinging as fast as any major league ball player could hit it. I cried. I cried during school (yuck), but I never begged to get him back. If I remember right, I think I tried to convince him to take me back, but I never begged. He was the first and last boyfriend I ever cried over.....and ever asked to marry me.
I only heard from him once after that. He called me from boot camp. He asked me if I remembered "our word". Of course I remembered it! How could I forget "our word" when I had loved him so much? You don't just forget once the relationship is over. I remember all the small details of our brief, but AMAZING love. We ended that phone conversation with "our word". I had loved him with everything I had in that short time we were together. I knew after that phone conversation that he had loved me too. It was a young love, but it was my "first love".
Do you ever forget your "first love"? Does the love stay there and never leave? This leads me to apudne te vel me. This is Latin for 'your place or mine'. Am I at a place where I want to be in my life, or would I rather be somewhere else? Do I just keep moving forward with the way things are, or do I want more for myself, but do I have it all already? I don't know the answer to that.