If you search for tenderness
it isn't hard to find.
You can have the love you need to live.
But if you look for truthfulness
You might just as well be blind.
It always seems to be so hard to give.
Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.
And mostly what I need from you. Billy Joel
It was pointed out to me recently that I was unhappy and ‘out of balance’ and that I couldn’t be in a fulfilling relationship without correcting those two issues. I don’t know if it is true – being unhappy or ‘out of balance’, but I do know that it has caused me to look deep inside and try to find answers about where I am now and where I want to be. Though the person telling me these things had been less than forthright, I was determined to be honest with myself regardless and search for answers.
I’ve been divorced since last October, though living alone the year prior to that. I had never been able to convince Holly to give our marriage a second chance after finding out about her affair and so ended a 39-year marriage. Happiness? Well, it is elusive in these situations, but it needs to be found and I was too busy feeling sorry for myself at times to get it back. I’d met someone with whom I’d thought I’d found it, but it was she who gave me the opening advice and who has disappeared without a trace. Yet her salvo lingers and I truly believe I have come up with important answers.
First – happiness for me must come from within. I can’t go out and expect to find it from those around me or from the things I do. I have looked inside myself and determined that I do like who I am and that there is an exciting life waiting for me to live. A burden of pain and depression had hung over me and it is refreshing to shed. There is a process to achieving inner/self-happiness and I feel I understand it, but need to enhance it. Accepting that it wasn’t what it should have been and recognizing the beauty of what I possess is all something I owe to this person and can thank her for that.
Balance is a little less definable, but equally important. Do I like my job, my lifestyle, and where I see things headed? These are critical issues I need to address. I’m starting with the sale of my house. It is a burden of both finances and memories and I need to rid myself of both. I love it – it is my home and the home of my family, but it is clearly much more than I need to own and maintain and the freedom to act on other parts of any future plans will be simplified if I let it go. I have talked to my father-in-law about moving in with him after selling and during the transitional time I’m going through and he’s all for it. He’s suggested more than once that I do it and would love the company. At 94, maybe it’s time he wasn’t living alone.
From there, I don’t know. I’ve spoken to Interlake Steamship about coming on board as a Merchant Mariner. I’ve given this much thought and like the idea of the adventures it would bring at this point in my life. I’ve also considered the purchase of the Tacoma with a cap, outfitted with what I need to sleep and perform work, and going on the road to see things I want to see and work in places I’d like to be for a period. It’s radical, but it’s doable. Naturally, I would write about all these life experiences for cathartic reasons and possibly to entertain and inform others down the road.
Alaska beckons, as well. Paul and my sister Cristin reside in Anchorage and it is a place I could live and work for a spell. What holds me from any of these things? Expectations, I suppose. Expectations for myself, for the way I’m wired to think I should live. I’m no electrician, but I’m re-wiring. We’ll see how it goes.
No formal exercise, but a day of digging, pressure washing and painting left me quite exhausted by quitting time.
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