....I believe I've waited long enough, where do I begin?
I've been in enough relationships that this song hits me on many levels, on the level where you are so unhappy and exhausted with trying, that you grow silent and refuse to not only fight anymore, but not to try anymore.
On the level where you reach out to someone else for happiness, and find yourself alive again, learning to walk, and talk....maybe for the very first time really being heard and understood and loved for it. For exactly who you are and not your potential.
On the level where you risk it all to dare to touch and manifest that happiness in the physical gratification and mutual expression of desires both familiar and exotic Its at this moment that you swear to your heart that you will never leave and you feel so alive in those fleeting moments of joy that you finally never want to die.
On the level after so much grief and unhappiness, when you finally wake up again with that knowledge that your past has helped you find yourself and your future. Your future unfolds in small moments, stolen from time and secreted away for just the two of you. In a connection that is so strong that no matter the time or distance that may separate you, you feel moments of single minded determination together. A force to be reckoned with, indeed.
Every time I hear it lately I can only think of my A-Team, and the circumstances that brought them to the brink of such unhappiness that they would make the choices they have; to risk everything, and see me. I remember feeling like this in my own marriage...well more than one marriage actually. Where I had no where left to turn but to leave. Where I had stayed so silent, inside my own head, not willing to try anymore to be heard or understood. And wondering what had happened to the wonderful boy/man I married. When, and what had made him change from the guy that couldn't keep his hands off me to the guy that sat in a room next to me and never said a word...as if I were suddenly beneath his notice, or invisible.
Its funny how you never really understand how much you change in a relationship, you only see the other persons changes. Not until you are done, do you understand that it's a mutual growing apart that really destroys love in relationships. It's never one person's fault. And there are always two sides to every story. Always.
Sometimes I look at unhappy friends in marriages, especially ones who their spouses claim, "have changed." And I look at them and wonder if their spouses aren't the monsters they made them into by their behaviors, or lack of attentions, the obvious result of a loveless marriage. After all, as people we aren't born suspicious, jealous and paranoid. We are made into that by our experiences and unwillingness to forget the past. We allow the past to continue to hurt us when we can't let go of it, or believe that people can and do change.
See the error is in that they will change for us. No one changes for someone else. Everyone changes because they want to. Period. There is no other way you can change. You can fake it..for an 8 hour work shift or maybe even a ten year marriage...or a twenty year one...but eventually you will be yourself. It's impossible not to be.
Each time I felt I'd waited long enough, I took that first step and with strength and support, I learned to walk again. I learned to be happy and find that happiness and to even be selfish about it. Because it's my life, and I only get this one. My awareness is now. And no one else is ever going to make me happy or sad. Only I can do that with my choices. And I choose to have a life worth remembering instead of a lifetime of missed opportunities and waiting.
What do you choose?
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