Love Roller Coaster

I was in like with a man.  Ok I am still in like with a man.  As a result I have been a on a love roller coaster.  It is a love roller coaster a majority of which was self-imposed.  And while I have been on this roller coaster I lost myself, but today I am getting off of this ride.  Today I am regaining that woman I let go of for the past few weeks.

I have been dating this guy for almost two months.  You may remember I wrote about him a few posts ago. When we met there was this instant connection.  When we were together there was an unquestionable chemisty.  The first month I was riding high on a cloud of happiness and joy.  For the first time, in a long time, I thought that I might have found someone that I could spend my life with.  Yes I know it was a little too soon to predict that, but sometimes you have these feelings that you can't explain.  I had it.  And I had it bad.

Month two has been a downward spiral.  I went from being this vibrant, strong, dynamic woman to being this woman I am kind of embarrassed of.  My friends told me this.  I knew, yet I couldn't stop.  I was on a one-way ticket to Crazytown.  Suddenly my thoughts were revolving around the actions of a man.  My mood was determined on a man.  My daily happiness was dependent on a man.  A man.  A MAN.  As if any man should have that kind of power of me.  I was waiting by the phone to hear from him.  I was holding my breath every time I texted him.  I held back the things I wanted to say.  I did all of this in the hopes that he would realize that I am the one for him.  And in the end I think when I lost myself, I lost him too.

But I also must confess my roller coaster was not just him.  A few months ago I took a test that confirmed what I already subconsciously knew.  I am a girl who needs her downtime.  I need some good old fashioned by myself, doing what I want, not speaking with anyone for hours, alone time.  And for a long time I felt guilty about that until I realized that if I don't take the time to have some quality alone time I will be imbalanced.  Well yesterday it hit me.  I haven't had my alone time in a couple of months.  Trying to balance work, family, friends, the guy I am dating, and all my extra-curricular activities I was running on E, shoot I was skating by on fumes.  As a result, I have not been myself.  Couple that with my own insecurities and dating someone that pricks those feelings is a molotov of disaster.

Today is my fresh start.  Today I decided that I was no longer going to be a shell of my former self.  It's back to the basics.  I am am re-focusing my energy on myself.  Because in the end I am the most important person in my life.  It is past due time for me to start acting like it.  So I told the guy all of this.  Granted, it was in an extremely long text.  I didn't want to go another day with all this bubbling up in my chest.  And I am not giving up complete hope that that we can make it, but for now I am letting go. I am jumping off of this roller coaster mid-ride.   I am not going to wait around for someone to pick me.  I am picking myself.

Family Matters

This weekend my mom and I went down to visit my dad's side of the family.  It was a three hour trip that took four hours both going and coming.  But to me and my mom the almost 24 hours that we spent with our other family is just the beginning of reconnecting a family that has been separated for years.

Allow me to explain.  This was an important trip for me.  My mom and dad were high school sweethearts.  both grew up in the same city.  A former factory town without its factory has now become a shell of it what it used to be.  To me going back to this city is always depressing.  It kind of reminds me of those parts of Baltimore that you could see used to be great but have been abandoned years ago.  Anyway, growing up I only was able to see my dad's side of the family around Christmas.  We lived in the Midwest and the rest of the family was on the East Coast.  Any family besides my mom and dad seemed like a countless stream of magical family members.  It was hard for me to keep up with the faces and the names enough to really have much of a connection with anyone.

Then my dad passed away.  Suddenly the real person who linked us all together was out of the picture.  Communicating with my "countless stream of magical family members" seemed awkward.  As the years went by the awkwardness continued to grow.  Combined with the fact that my mom has very little of her long term memory left, it has been hard to find out more information about my dad and his family.  It felt like the only memories that she had were from me.  And some of those memories were from the point of view from one very imaginative child.

I always felt like there was a part of my life that was missing.  For many years I always wondered why I looked the way I did. And one day I felt that my questions had been answered when I found my dad's birth certificate.  On the certificate it stated that his father was from Hawaii.  I had figured it out.  I was Hawaiian!  Made perfect sense. This finally explained my curly hair, my reddish skin tone when I tanned, and the fact that I love pineapple and Hawaiian bread (just kidding on the last two).  I brought this information to my grandmother (my mom's mother) she told me that she didn't think that really was his father and that only my dad knew who his father was.  I was heartbroken.  I was going to continue to be a mutt.  But I realized then that I had more than a few unanswered questions.

So between the passing of my father, and my uncle (his brother), and the invent of Facebook I knew what I had to do.  It was time to really make an effort getting to know more about my dad's family.  The trip this weekend was part of the beginning stages of this process.

The weekend was amazing.  It was short, yes, both my mom and I learned a lot about my dad and his family. Some of it was happy.  I heard so many funny stories.  And some of it was sad.  It was sad to see the struggles that his family had.  But I was happy to know how much my aunt and uncle looked up to him, much like I look up to him as well.  My dad, despite some of the unfortunate circumstances in his life turned out to be this amazing person, amazing husband, amazing father, and amazing brother.  And it just made me tear up to think that I am no longer able to have this amazing person in my life.

I was also sad to confirm that I might never know who was my real dad's father.  It is a piece of my history that may always remain a mystery.  However, I am so glad and blessed that I have living history only a short four hour trip that should only be three hours away.  A special shot out to my aunt who is one of my number one fans!  Thank you for the first step of many in strengthening this bond.

Crazy Girl Syndrome

I have a disease.  It is called crazy girl syndrome.  Maybe you have heard of it?  It is that thing where you are dating someone, it's going well, and then all of a sudden you freak out and create problems that aren't really problems.  Does anyone else have this issue?

For the past few months I had been on a dating hiatus.  After the last guy I dated I figured that I needed a break from dating.  In fact the last few people didn't work out and I felt that I saw the signs and chose to ignore them.  As a result, I decided to step out of the dating game.  I focused on myself and other things and didn't deal with the drama that comes with dating.

That was until I met this new guy.  He is like a breath of fresh air.  He is sweet, funny, intelligent, and super handsome.  His spirit is as attractive as his physique.  He is a guy that makes me smile.  We can talk for hours about anything and everything.  He is a man that is a good father. I wouldn't say that he completes me, because I don't think that it takes a man to make you whole.  But he inspires me to do better and be better.  We are compliments of each other.

But then that crazy girl syndrome thing kicks in.  Suddenly his non-response from a text has gotten me acting all kinds of dumb.  I got paranoid.  I assumed the worst, I mean I am a realist/worst-case scenario kind of person.  So I immediately think that I have done something wrong because heaven forbid that he could actually be busy.  But after a few days of his silence I realized that I have all these insecurities that are bubbling up to the surface.  I realized that in some of my past relationships that I was so scared of doing/saying the wrong thing or not being the annoying/clingy girl that I actually become a self-fulling prophecy.  

I hope that we can get past this snafu.  That he will remember all of the good in me, as I remember in him.  I hope that this is a lesson learned rather than a goodbye.  I take partial responsibility but not all.  I think relationships are about communication, openness, and honesty. All things that we said we would practice. But alas nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed.

I wish I was that cool girl.  That girl who let's things slide.  The girl that doesn't worry.  The girl who doesn't overthink.  That girl who doesn't assume the worst when her man doesn't call her back.  I wish my thoughts didn't play like a record on repeat in my head.  But I am just not that girl.  I hope that I won't always be.  I hope that in the future when this happens I won't let it get to me, that I won't create a problem that isn't there.  In the meantime, I am going to work on myself and strive to get this crazy-girl syndrome out of my system.  I just hope that I don't have to go at it alone.