Wrong Again

I struggle pretty frequently with trusting myself, trusting my thoughts, my decisions, everything I do. I struggle with trusting God because sometimes I think He's pointing me a certain direction and then it turns out I'm wrong.

When I was with Mike, as I said in my last post, I was ready to marry him. I was beyond positive that he was "the one" and that I'd spend my life with him. I prayed about him and thanked God for him all the time. There was NO doubt in my mind about him, whatsoever. But I was wrong. You know what that did to me? It made me become the person I described above.

I thought that if I could be THAT sure about something, feel THAT secure, that surely it was from God. Especially since I'd prayed about it and felt I'd found exactly the kind of guy I had prayed my whole life for. And I was wrong.

It's been a long 2 years, trying to put myself back together. Sometimes I feel like I haven't come very far, but then recently I've had some people tell me they see how much better I am now. It's nice to have that affirmation from others.

Anyway, I find myself struggling, once again. If you read my last post, you saw that I was seeing someone new. I mentioned how safe and secure I felt with him. How much I admired him, how happy I was to be with someone who was praying about us from the very beginning and encouraging me to do the same.

Well, he called things off on Monday evening. To say I was shocked doesn't even begin to describe how I felt. After it was all over, I just sat there and cried. Cried myself to sleep. The next morning I actually had forgotten about it briefly, until I looked in the mirror at my red, puffy eyes. Then I remembered and I cried some more.

Long story short, he just didn't feel the way I felt. He said he prayed about it and wanted it to work, (and I believe him) but he couldn't force feelings. Which I get. But it still hurt.

Here's where I am struggling. We were BOTH praying. We were BOTH praying for guidance, for clarity, to figure out where we should take things, especially with my "big decision" looming over us. (PS: I decided against the big life change after carefully considering pros and cons and feel very confident that I've made the right decision). So, with that big change no longer being an issue, I felt like I could breathe again. I felt like I could really focus on praying for the right thing with him without it feeling so urgent (because I was running out of time to make my decision).

The biggest difference with this guy was that it was the first time in two years that I haven't just been waiting for the end to come. With every other guy I've talked to or dated, no matter how positive I felt about things, I was always just kinda waiting for the ball to drop. For the call or the text to tell me they'd lost interest. Or, as in a lot of the cases, for the guy to just stop responding to my texts and completely disappear. The other difference was that I never once found myself comparing him to Mike, which has been an issue in the past. I've never said anything to any of the guys, but when a guy would say "Musicals? Men don't watch musicals", it was a strike against him because Mike loved musicals. I'd constantly be thinking things like "Mike wouldn't have said that." or "Mike would have done it this way", and it wasn't good because I was never going to find someone to quite measure up, to be good enough. With this one, though...I never had to think that because everything about him was just that good. Some of it was different, but it was always a good different. The only time I made a comparison was when he told me he'd pray about us and I remember thinking "That's something Mike never would have said." It was at that moment that I realized how special this guy was.

It was because I prayed so much about him and felt so secure with him that I felt like it was God telling me to go ahead. I felt like it was right. We were moving the right direction. But that's not the message he got, and that just completely messes with me because we were praying for the same thing.

How is it that two people (or many people) who are praying for the SAME THING can come to two completely opposite conclusions? Is one of us wrong? Are both of us wrong? Which one of us is wrong? Did he just not give it enough time? Did I not pray enough? Did he not? Did I just fall too fast and scare him away? How could he act the way he did around me and then claim he had no feelings? What made me feel so secure and so sure about him when I'm usually so insecure about things? I have a million questions. I miss him. I miss talking to him every night. I miss how everything in my life was finally feeling good again after such a crappy 2 years. My parents saw how much happier I was. My coworkers all knew (that stuff spreads when you work with a bunch of women) and were all gently teasing me about the fact that I was dating a younger guy. But they were all happy for me. I was confident enough about him to talk about him and tell people about him, which is something I don't do much because it's embarrassing to talk about guys and then have to tell people it didn't work out over and over and over.

So, that's where I am. I'm hurting and I need someone to hug me and let me cry, but I've gotten none of that since this happened, so maybe once that happens I'll feel better. Maybe not, though. I just know that, out of every single guy I've ever dated, I'd choose this one again and again. He stood out. The thing that sucks is that now the bar is set even HIGHER than it was before. :P

Someone New

God's timing is sometimes really, really confusing.

I had some big plans. Plans I haven't told many people about because they weren't set in stone yet. Still aren't. But as the time draws near to start putting the plan into action, something has thrown it off.

I met a guy.

Now, I know what you're all thinking. Ok, no I don't. Because I don't even know who reads this. But my last post talked a lot about my experiences with dating. About 8 months after Mike and I broke up, I jumped head-first into the dating game. I went on a LOT of dates. There were a few I got fairly excited about, but most didn't make it past date #1. A couple lasted until date #3, but none lasted longer than that whether by my choice or theirs. So, because there have been a few I liked, I've mentioned "meeting a guy" to several people, several times over the past 2 years.

But this one...

We've made it past date #3 and I feel like it's still going strong, as we have plans for next Friday already (a whopping week and three days away). I mean...I feel like you don't make plans in advance like that if you're not interested, right? And did I mention that those plans involve him meeting my entire family? And did I mention that date #3 involved me meeting his family? I didn't? Well, it does, and I did.

On our first date, when I could tell there was already a strong interest on both our parts, I told him of my plan, the big plan that he was suddenly in the middle of. I told him that it scared me because I have to make some big decisions in the next few months and I don't know if that's enough time to determine if his presence in my life should affect those decisions (assuming he's around that long).

So, he knows about all this and has still chosen to date me. He's praying about it. He's praying about us. He asks me if I'm praying about us. (I am). I can't even tell you what it means to me to be with a guy who wants to be with me, but who wants to make sure this is what God wants, too. He tells me that thinking and praying about me keeps him up at night. I don't like that he's not sleeping, but I love that he's putting that much into it.

I was really happy with Mike. Incredibly, blissfully happy. I would have married him at any point along the way, because I was that sure he was the one. But just the handful of conversations I've had with this one, I'm realizing what a huge thing was missing between me and Mike. It was God. And it's a HUGE thing to be missing. It's one of those things I don't think I understood fully until now that I'm experiencing being with someone with whom I share that important detail. Mike never told me he was praying about me or for me. The one time I told him I'd pray for him (before a big job interview), he basically brushed it off, like it wouldn't really make a difference. NO guy that I've dated has ever, EVER told me he would pray about us.

It's funny because I feel so at peace about everything with this new guy. I feel like all the things I've been stressing about regarding these big decisions and this big change are suddenly not so stressful anymore. Yes, I still think about them...but it's different.

The idea of completely changing my plans for a guy I just met seems ridiculous. And it is, so I won't be making any big decisions just yet. But every time I'm with him I feel like I would give up just about anything to stay with him. The more I get to know him, the more blown away I am by everything about him. I look at him and I can't even believe this is happening to me. It doesn't seem real. It seems too good to be true. I feel like I should be scared to death right now, scared of getting my heart broken again. But somehow, I'm not. I'm not really sure if that's just me being stupid or if it's from God and I'm supposed to feel peace about it. He makes me feel safe, and that's something hard to find.

I know it's soon, and I know the last time I got into something this fast it didn't work out. But I feel like this one is based on something more solid and in many ways, already off to a better start. I just hope I'm not wrong.

When Sleep Eludes Me

It's 3:48am and I'm wide awake. I need to be asleep, but I woke up thinking about things and now I can't shut my brain off.

My last post was a year and half ago. In a lot of ways, not much has changed. I'm up because I'm thinking about Mike. And I'm crying. Yes, that's right. Just 2ish months away from the 2 year anniversary of our breakup and I'm crying over him.

The last year and a half has been interesting, to say the least. I jumped really hard into the dating scene shortly after my last post. I think at one point I had counted about 14 guys that I'd gone on dates with, probably from September of 2013 until March of 2014. The vast majority of them were only one date each, some only two. Since March, I think there have only been maybe 4. I hated that I'd dated that many people. I hated going on that many first dates. I hated that none of them KNEW me and I had to have the same conversations over and over again. I just wanted someone who knew me like Mike did. I was tired of starting at step one with all these people and never getting beyond that. I didn't really have any BAD dates, so that's good. I've heard some horror stories.

And you know...as much as I've really liked a few of them....not a single one comes CLOSE to Mike. Not a single one gets me like he did, or makes me FEEL like he did.

I don't even get that excited about dates anymore. I don't get nervous, either. I haven't since Mike. I just feel numb, emotionless. No point in getting my hopes up, because none of them go anywhere.

I just want to feel that spark again, to find someone who can love me and who can help me love again. But then other times, I still pray that somehow I'll get another shot with Mike, and that this time it will work.

I've been thinking a LOT lately about how much I want to try to make him talk to me this year, or at the very least write him a letter. I've spent almost 2 years holding all these things inside me that I want him to know.

I think the thing I want to say to him the most is that I wish he would look back on his time with me with fondness, remember the happy memories, remember how deeply I loved him and his little girl. Focus on those things instead of the negatives. Instead of seeing me as the girl who, in a desperate, emotional state, opened up too much to his daughter's mother, I want him to see me as the girl who was crushed and heartbroken and felt she had nowhere else to turn...who was desperate to figure things out and make sense of what had happened. I understand him being upset, I really, really do. But I wish he understood where I was coming from. We have all made poor decisions when in heightened emotional states, so to hold that against me and use it as a reason to never speak to me again seems ridiculous. The thing that I hate, though, is that I did nothing but tell her how wonderful I thought he was. If she said something negative, I countered with something I loved about him. I said nothing bad about him, I was just distraught and trying to make sense of things. But he felt I'd betrayed him, he felt he could no longer trust me, and he told me he wanted nothing to do with me.

I feel like, maybe, I would have had an easier time with things if I felt we were on good terms. No, it didn't work out. But we loved eachother intensely, even if it was a short time. Well, maybe it was short for him. I'm pretty sure there's a part of me that still loves him pretty intensely. I sometimes wish I had more negative stuff to look back on, so I could be glad I "dodged that bullet"...but I just don't feel that way. I miss him terribly, I miss his little girl so much that seeing her recent preschool picture on my friend's refrigerator almost made me lose it. I hate that I'm not getting to watch her grow up. I miss her running and jumping into my arms every time she saw me and I miss her little voice saying, "I love you, Jamie". I miss them both, the family I almost had and then lost. I just want him to look back on our relationship and say "She was special. She really, really loved me." and just be happy about that.