There is a fine line between doing what you want and doing what you need. It is on very rare occasions that those two merge into the same cohesive objective. And more rare than that is when they become a cohesive objective on my to do list.
I have not been blessed with wants that align with needs. And while I typically find that I agree with what is right for me, I fight it tooth and nail for as long as possible. I become my own stumbling block. More often than not I convince myself that I need to “stick it out”. I like to tell myself that with just a little more time things will change, things will turn around. It’s like waiting for the same process to sporadically produce different results, nothing will change and you could waste a lot of time waiting for something that will never come.
Over the past few years I feel that I have grown a lot. There are a few things that I have learned about relationships. Despite what I have learned I don’t wish the past away. I had the opportunity to spend some time with Pen Pal last night and we talked about what happened to “us”, when each of us knew that it wasn’t going to work out. I knew early on but lived in denial; not only denial but I fought it. Instead of letting things fade I tried even harder to keep them going, tried to prove that I believed in “us” – but it was all a lie in the end no one paid more dearly for it than me.
Despite that, I am glad that I didn’t cut it off so long ago when I first realized and I can’t even be angry with him for not telling me when he realized. We learn from both the good and the bad – and while things with Pen Pal were a heartache waiting to explode, they were neutral for a long time and in that time I was able to grow more than I ever would have had I not had him influencing my life in some way. One thing I kept saying was, “while it hurt”, and I meant that – while it hurt it still provided me a fantastic learning ground.
But we aren’t always supposed to incur heartache from “sticking it out” in order to learn. Yes, we make our mistakes and we get ourselves in a rut where we have heartache and it’s good to take that and work with it…but you don’t have to learn that way. Sometimes the heartache comes in a different form. Sometimes you have to give something up to gain something better. A few years ago a friend said, “In order to get something you must give.” In order to get love you must give love; in order to get trust you must give it; etc. Sometimes though we have to add a little “up” to the end - in order to get something you must give up something else.
Sometimes I find that I am not strong enough to do this. It ties back to what I want verses what I need. I know what I need to do but I lack the faith to believe that something better is waiting for me. Not something better just around the corner, because I know that sometimes it will be further away, just out of reach and sight -forcing me to take a leap when I cannot see the distance I will have to fall.
It is the fall into the darkened abyss that makes finding the strength to do what is right so difficult. But it is whatever lies at the bottom, waiting to break my fall, that will be best for me in the long run and makes taking that leap so necessary.
