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All the things.

| TeaKisses

As much as I would like to tell everybody in my life that I am completely over my past relationship and that I am fully ready and capable to move on…I don’t think that is completely true. My ex-fiancee is on his second “relationship” since we broke up and it will be 5 months in February. I am not quite sure how to read into this and whether to read into it at all. We have not talked since christmas and I know that is a good thing considering the last time we talked he practically tore me to bits. What confuses me though is how someone can be in a relationship and say that they are completely past their previous relationship when their previous relationship was so serious. He was prepared to marry me this last christmas and spend the rest of his life with me. I am the one who did the breaking up but that does not mean that I had it easy, there have been days when I have regretted my decision and wished that we were back together. I know it is best that we never got back together, but I miss having that companionship, that constant friendship.

I am now at a place where I feel happy that he could move on and is in a good relationship with someone else but I also know that I am not in that place. I still think about him often and I long for our friendship too much to get another man involved romantically in my life. Not to mention the school work and other things I have going on in my life. A relationship is not where I want to be right now.

I am slowly starting to find out that being single is fun and can be a really uplifting and growing experience after not being single for almost two years. As a teenager I longed for guys to notice me even just as a friend but it never really happened, I was always craving that relationship with a male. Only once I graduated from high school and gained a little perspective was I able to be friends with guys but under those friendships were always the awkward undertone of me being infatuated and them being uninformed. I was never fully able to be friends with a guy and not have any hint of romantic desire driving my friendship with them.

This is the moment that I discovered online dating, not a bad thing but definitely not a good thing…just a thing that happened. The first guy that I dated was four years older than me and the relationship only lasted approximately 3 weeks. I was much too clingy and over bearing, I wanted our relationship to move quickly because I felt as though I had missed out on so much relationship time that my friends had gotten. Needless to say, he was not a fan of a young clingy girlfriend so we broke up. I am glad that didn’t last long, he had much different morals that I did and it was not going to be a good situation if we kept dating. The second guy I met and dated online was the one who ended up being my fiancee and best friend. We dated for five months and then broke up because our relationship was getting too serious too fast. (see a theme?) We got back together nine months later and dated till June when we got engaged and then I broke things off in September. I do not have a fantastic record for relationships and I’m really good at pushing things and making things go faster than I really want them to.

I am the worst at being patient and need some help. But now after being single for almost five months I’m good with where I am, I have a long way to go yet before I am ready to be in a relationship but I’m on a journey. After all, the journey is what makes you who you are. This was fairly heavy and I’m not sure who will all read this but if I know you, just take this with a grain of salt and know that I am putting myself on the limb here and sharing with you personal details. If I do not know you, I hope you can take from my story something that makes you think. If you are a potential boyfriend, please know that you should talk to me and really get to know me before you judge me.

One day at a time

| TeaKisses

If you read my previous blog post you will know that my life has not been all that fantastic as of late. It has been almost a month and a half now since we broke up and I’m not going to say that I’m doing 100%. It is a struggle but I’m hanging on, moving one day at a time.

These are both amazingly strong women and I definitely consider them both to be role models. I wish someday I will touch somebody else’s life like they have touched mine. Sometimes God sends angels in the most bizarre packages.

How not to get engaged.

| TeaKisses

*SIGH*

So much has been going in my life lately…I know I haven’t updated this in a very long time but in the time that I have been gone I got engaged! I know this should be exciting and it very much is…was. I was not expecting him to propose so soon and when he did I was dumb founded! I didn’t know what to say, of course I said yes, how could I not?!? There was a handsome man kneeling in front of me asking to spend the rest of his life with me, it seems like a dream come true and as much as I wanted it to be it wasn’t. From the moment I said yes to his proposal I was second guessing my decision, I didn’t know if I was ready to settle down and I had not yet made up my mind whether I wanted to do it with him. (Now I know this seems really ridiculous and everybody said that I shouldn’t have said yes, but I couldn’t say no). He did ask my parents the day that he proposed and they said a tentative yes but wanted to wait until we could have a discussion together, they were not expecting him to propose that day. After he asked me we got home and I was overjoyed, after all this was what I thought I wanted. My mother did not talk to me for about a day and a half and when she did she was in tears the whole time and my father although he tried to be supportive and happy for me, I could tell that he was not completely sold on the idea of me getting married so young to someone I had met on the Internet only a year and a half prior. We continued to plan our wedding and discuss a wedding date which ended up being the subject of most of our arguments, we fought a lot in the two and a half months that we were engaged. We fought about the table arrangements, what kind of food to serve, where to have our wedding. Needless to say we were not in a very healthy relationship. Almost as soon as we got engaged he went off to camp to work there for two months meaning I would only get to talk to him on weekends and only for a couple hours which would be a huge stretch from our routine of talking a couple hours a day. While he was away at camp I had a lot of time to do some thinking and really figure out whether this was something I really wanted. In the last two weeks of us being apart something hit me, I knew for a fact that I couldn’t marry him. It was like all of the questions that I had ever had in our whole relationship just came and slapped me in the face. I was a complete mess for those two weeks, crying myself to sleep every night not wanting to admit to anyone or myself that this was something that I couldn’t do. There was one day when I had just had enough of pretending to be okay, I told my mom that I was having second thoughts about everything and that I didn’t think I could continue my relationship with him. She asked me why and this was the tough part, how was I supposed to put into words all the feelings that I had been caging up inside my mind and my soul. How was I supposed to show my inmost feelings and lies. I told her that him and I had to many major differences and that I had so many bigger dreams for my life then feeling like I was settling for something I wasn’t completely happy with. I knew that love wasn’t a fairytale and that love is not like it is in the movies, but I also knew that love had to be better than what he and I had.  I  then continued to call him and I told him that we needed to take a break so I could collect myself, I needed time to figure out how I was going to break up with the man who thought I loved him. I kept putting it off which only made things worse. He came to my house to surprise me a couple days after I told him we needed a break. He took me out for supper and we hung out a little bit but when he left I knew what I had to do. There was no option anymore, I was no longer in love with him and I could no longer lead him on. I moved into residence at university the day after and proceeded to catch up with friends and get back into the groove of school. The worst part of this was that everybody still thought that we were engaged and I wasn’t going to tell them otherwise until I had broken up with him. He came to see me the day before my birthday which was about five days after I moved to school, he had baked me cookies and brought me ice cream. I felt so bad because never in our year and a half relationship had he ever baked me anything. I sat him down on my bed and read him the letter that I had written out earlier that day because I knew when it came to it I would have a hard time saying what I needed to if I did not writhe it all down. He took it well but I was a complete mess, he held me while I cried then we talked for a little while then he left and I have not seen him since.

Many people ask me how I let it get that far, I don’t really have a good answer to that question but I do know that I felt as though if I let this go I would never have anything like this again. I didn’t want to give up having a best friend and someone that loved me for potentially being single forever. In our relationship I felt very put down and like all my dreams, talents and ambitions were being forced down so I could fit the square mold that he was trying to put me into. I am more than a house wife who will wait around for her husband and answer to his every beck and call. I am a loving person and I know I will make a great wife someday…SOMEDAY! If it is God’s will for my life I will fall in love again, but for now I am single and I am free to make my dreams happen one day at a time.

Good Morning World.

| TeaKisses

It has been about a month since my last blog post because I have been so terribly busy with all my assignments and tests and choir practices that I never had time to sit down and think about what I want to say. I only have one exam left and so I feel like I deserve some “me” time.

So, for the past week or so I have been taking a picture outside my window ever morning when I wake up hoping to see a change in the scenery after a while. I haven’t been seeing much of a change at all because even though it is close to the middle of december we still have very little snow.

Here are a few of my favorites:

The blue sky and the clouds are beautiful.

I love the golden light reflecting off of the “castle”

The hoarfrost is spectacular.

Clear skies, golden light…what a good morning.

The final picture was taken this morning before my exam. Talking about exams…I can not believe that this semester is over. Time has flown by so fast I can barely catch my breath. I think I did alright in all of my courses but I know for a fact that if I work harder I can be better; the problem is finding the motivation to be better and work harder. I really hope that I can do well next semester too, I hope that I have settled into the routine of university life by now.

Forgiveness.

| TeaKisses

I have recently been dealing alot with forgiveness and pondering what it means to really, truely forgive. Whether “forgive and forget” is the best way to deal with problems; what to say when someone says “I’m sorry” off the fly for something they do not really need to be sorry for. What does “I’m sorry” mean anyway? Why do we say it? This week I asked my friends on facebook to give me their thoughts and meditations on forgivness.

This is the feedback I got:

One person said: 
“ I don’t know who this is quoted from. I found it the other day though, and I really like it. “Anyone can hold a grudge, but it takes a person with character to forgive. When you forgive, you release yourself from a painful burden. Forgiveness doesn’t mean what happened was okay, and it doesn’t mean that person should still be welcome in your life. It just means you have made peace with the pain, and are ready to let it go. “


Another posted a link to a YouTube video:
Forgiveness


Someone wrote:
“Wilma Derksen’s daughter was abducted and murdered in 1984, and Wilma has spent the last 27 years learning what it means to forgive. Above, I’ve posted a recent statement she made in regards to the new crime bill.”
Statement on Bill C-10 by Wilma Derksen

My views on forgiveness:
Forgiving means to not expect something back, to give up the debt that is owed you. Forgive and forget is inaccurate. You can forgive and still grieve, but once you forgive you no longer expect that person to repay you. God gave us forgiveness through His Son. Jesus payed our debt to God and his death continues to pay that debt.
Picture the person that cares about you the most, whoever it is. Picture them in your mind. Hear them say to you, “I will give my life for you, I will die so that you can continue to live”. Powerful right?
Forgiving doesn’t mean that your pushing away your pain. Pain is real, and you will never forget what happened.

You always remember your firsts.

| TeaKisses

You know when you listen to a song for the first time and you think to yourself “Hmmm, thats an interesting song”. Then you hear it again, it may be hours, days, weeks, months later but you always remember what you were doing when you heard it for the first time; or if you don’t remember what exactly you were doing at least you remember a general feeling, person or even place. We always remember our firsts.

A number of years ago I went to my cousin’s high school performance of Les Miserables; it was an amazing show and I cried because at the time I could not fully comprehend that it was his character that died and not him. Anyway. There was a smell, in the theatre, that I will always remember. It smelled old and musty mixed with the smell of a fog machine; I had never smelled a fog machine before and so I just assumed that this is what history smells like. Now whenever I am in the same space as a fog machine I feel depressed and all I can think about is the French revolution. Strange right?

When ever there are very emotional points in my life I tend to ‘pick’ a song and stick to it; listening to it over and over again. Applying it to that situation and the people involved. I have often done this for the various relationships in my life so sometimes one of those songs will come on the radio and either I will turn it up or turn it off. Depending on the outcome of the relationship I get good / bad feelings.

Now the inevitable. Your first kiss. Many peoples’ ideas of first kisses are romantic and perfect. Perfect guy, perfect scene, perfect music…everything; but I think that if people actually asked around for stories of first kisses the outcome would be very different. I always imagined my first kiss to be everything I described, needless to say…it wasn’t any of those things. Yes, I do often wish I had not kissed him; but I would be a totally different person and I have grown a lot because of the mistakes I made. The only reason he kissed me was because I had never been kissed; because I was willing to settle. Never Settle; especially on a ‘first’.

No matter what happens; whether you meet someone, smell something, or listen to something. You always, always remember your firsts.