I just watched "A Marriage Story' on Netflix. I think it's Scarlett Johansson's best work yet.
It's crazy how quickly people can fall in love and how painfully that can deteriorate over time.
I've always been afraid of relationships that require me to change who I am in order to accommodate the other person. In some ways, I feel like I haven't learnt the benefits of compromise yet in a romantic setting. I still haven't found my self and my own independence in this world. I'm not ready to share a life with someone else for the long haul — That I know for sure.
I've recently been reading about the different feminine archetypes, and I realise that I embody both The Lover and The Maiden.
"She desires to experience passionate connections and meaningful, intimate relationships. She is vulnerable, playful and free-spirited. She also sees life and people with curiosity, awe and innocence." Then comes the shadow self, "Whenever connection isn’t happening with a significant other, the shadow lover takes it personally, contracts or becomes needy and then withdraws as a way of coping. This is their way of getting power back because their emotional dependency renders them quite powerless." I see this in myself and in my past relationships, but I've been working very hard to care for myself better in order to overcome this and love unconditionally (eventually). "The Lover can appear as one who knows no boundaries and can overdo everything, override her own needs and her body’s needs." I admit that I can be very impulsive at times, and I can give in to the point of not knowing who I am and what I want anymore, and that's not healthy. The good thing is that "She also guides us into our little girl’s heart and helps us to feel what we really need." This, I am extremely grateful for. I can trust my heart to be my guide.
I've been thinking a lot. Not as much as I thought I would though, I guess I got most of that out of the way in the last 4 months. Has it already been 4 months since you first brought up the idea of going on a "break"? Time flies. I honestly don't know how I feel about most of it, still, but I'm glad that I finally found the courage to step back into myself and ask myself "What do you want, Alyssa? What do you really want? What do you want?" It's all to easy for me to put my wants aside for a future that seems almost too-perfect.
My friend Gwen said something to me once. She said, "I can't tell a friend who is in their 20s not to do something just because it's something that I wouldn't do now that I'm in my 30s. That would be depriving them of life experience. When you're in your 20s, that's when you go through these things. I can't expect you to act like I would because I've already gone through them."
What she said was extremely wise and mature. I never thought of it that way. We all go through different stages, and we pass through different seasons in our lives. Sometimes, they intersect (which is great) and other times they don't. C'est la vie.
She's right though, our experiences make us who we are. Everything happens for a reason.
I just want to be better than the person that I was yesterday.
Right now, I would choose my career over a relationship any day. Previously, I thought that I would, but I knew that my soul was dying a little bit on the inside and the fire was burning out. I tried to chase my career, but my heart was longing for adventure.
You gave that to me. You helped me to feel alive again, and for that I have to thank you. I think that at the time we both wanted the same things — Adventure, freedom, new experiences and the dizzying joy of falling in love and learning to love someone else. Change does catch up though, and we were growing individually, but apart. Then you moved into a different stage of life.
Maybe you were an Angel that God sent me to fulfil all my wishes, open my heart again and guide me back onto the right path.