I’m up for trying again. Love, careers and experiences of all sorts await. If you don’t see me where you expected me based of what you’ve gotten to know about me in the recent past; well that’s a good thing.

What happens when you make up you mind about the means to an end because the end is truly something you want and about half way through the means with which you need to get to your end you think to yourself, “gee, this could work, but I could change by the time I get there.”

For close to three years I discovered a different type of means to my end of what I wanted for myself. A relationship, a free bird mentality out the window and another person outside of myself to base some of my life’s decisions around. Honestly, I kept one foot out the door throughout much of the relationship, but in all, I saw a future for the two of us and did my best to mentally prepare for that.

Learning to care about another person’s dreams as much as my own wasn’t easy. I took to myself when I left home at 18 and did a lot of self-fulfilling and self-destructive stuff along the way. Whether another person intimately cared for me at any point was not something I considered important. Yet, I found myself quite seriously involved with another person who brought out some of the best characteristics I never knew I had in myself. I loved; plain and simple and that alone felt great.

On the other hand, there was the growing apart thing that I didn’t like so much. An age difference and me being the older of the two by a couple years caused some striking differences in developmental perception in your young adulthood. I graduated, got a job, quit, got another job, wanted to quit, wanted to move, wanted to start a business, wanted to move against, etc. These were all ideas I thought could work and was willing to pursue.

All along, and progressively moreso, I tried working the image of “us” into these constantly changing plans. I accepted her for who she was but pained over the knowledge that our death blow could be because of our basic moral compases pointing in opposite directions. I suppose we tolerated and partially ignored much of this issue which brewed into an unpleasant batch of resentment and confusion.

The breaking point wasn’t pronounced or dramatic, but more of a disintegration or running out of gas. Sputter, tick, stop, gone.

Can’t really help but be sad about the absence. The absence of something that I cherished yet didn’t understand is something I’ll need to naturally deal with over time. I’ve been lucky to have dealt with it through my friends and my work, but the consequences of my reality changing so drastically are interesting.

Everything I’ve chosen to do over the past 3 years has been influenced by the idea of a person and what I needed to do to co-exist with her. That person is no longer a part of my life and now I need to change course because my original intentions were not fulfilled and cruising in the same direction won’t benefit me.

Much of the angst and worry I felt was knowing that being with someone who didn’t share the same values as me could take me somewhere I wouldn’t want to be, yet I managed to stay on board and make changes to my goals and plans that would have allowed me to stay on track. Why? That’s something I need to figure out.

But, I know I was wrong and I also need to act upon that. The time wasn’t wasted, but anymore living for the part of my life that has passed is wasted.

So folks, I’m up for trying again. Love, careers and experiences of all sorts await. If you don’t see me where you expected me based of what you’ve gotten to know about me in the recent past; well that’s a good thing