friday musings and meanderings

Self-esteem is a funny thing. I've never felt quite right, never felt like I fit anywhere, and it's almost like I wait for the negative validation to reinforce all the things I feel about myself. So the man I spent ten years with is head over heels with someone else, two short months after we called it quits, while we are still living in the same house. They are always on the phone. She picks him up and drops him off, and drives past me digging in the front yard like I don't exist, like I'm a problem that needs to go away. He's taking her on picnics and feeding her the bread I baked, the groceries I shopped for. This offends me, somehow, and I'm trying to figure out why, and why can't I just let go of this. Another way to look at the situation is that if he is so quickly able to disconnect, he was never connected in the first place, and there's something inside him that just...can't. He won't take the time to examine his own behaviour and goes out and makes the same mistakes again and again.

I want more than that, next time around. But this has me feeling down, this sense that I can so easily be replaced, and I start to think that there's something about me that's just not good enough. Is there?

Are his insecurities my problem to solve?No. Are his actions really a reflection on me. No again. But what is this sadness that curls about me like midnight fog, that comes upon me in the moments when I am truly alone?

In two more weeks he will be gone, and I can really be alone, private in my space, free to mourn or sing, or whatever, as I please. Two very long weeks. In a few weeks after that I face nine or ten hour days, with a commute, in a job that doesn't pay me enough, so that I can spend even less time with my daughter. But that's not a high price to pay for my independence, for my chance to step back into the driver's seat of my own life. I'm not an empty shell, waiting to be filled, I am already complete and waiting to show myself to the world. Waiting until it feels right, not really waiting at all, but curling up with a good book and a mug of tea, enjoying the solitude and the silence of the season's change. I will know when the time is right to move forward, and start thinking about being with someone again.

I have a job interview tomorrow in Guelph. Assistant supervisor in a child care centre. I was going to stay away from ECE work, but it's what I know, and what I'm best qualified to do. I have to look at it this way in order to retain my sanity - it's a way to earn a living that is not really high stress, that is a lot more active and engaging than a desk job, and that pays more than minimum wage. It does not feel me creatively, but I have other ways to nourish myself. And since the weight loss, I am more physically able to do the work than I ever was. If only it wasn't an hour on the road each day, summer and winter, costing gas money and wear and tear on a car that's only half mine. I'l keep tutoring, for the extra sixty or ninety bucks a week that it brings in, and I'll manage. As long as there's more to my life than just my work. And there is. There's me, at the centre of my own being, learning how to be whole and authentic, and open in ways that I've never been before.