Should I Stay or Should I Go NOW?

       I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about STAYING in a relationship. Now, don't get me wrong, I am a leaver by nature. I will skid out of a relationship so fast a guy won't even know what hit them. I have been known to end conversations abruptly, give ultimatums, and text: "Go run your game on some other poor naive innocent girl cus I am DONE." The last is a true story. I used that as a way to escape my 'you're so hot I can't keep my hands off of you but you're not the guy I need' 2 year relationship. I have learned to leave in an effort to avoid being ditched. My heart does not have revolving doors. I have NEVER given any man a second chance that broke my heart so bad enough that I had to break up with him.. It's called a break up because it's broken. Right? Wrong. See I am an eternal optimist which can be truly negative on my heart. I see the proverbial glass half full all the fucking time! So much so that I have stayed in relationships that were doomed from the start because I knew somehow that this would all just work out. No car? No job? No place to live? No problem! You have nice blue eyes and you're kind, and I like the way you make me feel like I'm the only girl in the world, and I happen to have all three of those things for you to use at your disposal. Please walk on me. I am a door mat. Please wipe your muddy boots on my back. FUCK NO!!!! Who in their right mind wants to live that way? Not I. And so I leave, after years of staying with all the wrong guys, I leave. I leave before I get left. I find lots of excuses to leave. I leave, flee, when it's fight or flight I fly. Now, don't feel all bad for me and think "this girl has major commitment issues." I'm actually a very monogamous person. At most, I have loved only 3 men in my entire life and I am well into my thirties. I have left a lot more than that though behind. Dozens! There may well be a trail of broken hearts along my skid marks. All of this staying and leaving makes it pretty damn hard to make up your mind sometimes. So that's where I am at right now. Trying to rewrite the chapter of my life that has been a continual cycle.
  
           I am what you would call a go-getter, a juggler, a jack of all trades, and yup....I'm pretty amazing. Some men even find me irresistible. Not because I am Heidi Klum or Angelina Jolie's body double but because I put them first. Did you need 20$ for gas? Hey no problem! What? You're going on a skiing trip with a girl from work even though I am pregnant with your child? SURE!!! You have fun now! Ya, right, poor pathetic me. Well the fact of the matter is, we all make mistakes cause we're all human and it doesn't matter what everyone thinks all the time. At least not to me. No one else has to live with the consequences of my decisions but me. Only I can decide what affect these have on my life. I have learned quite a lot along the way though. I have learned that if you continue certain cycles in your life without pausing for reflection that you are destined to repeat the mistakes. Even if you leave that abusive/commitment phobic/fuckstick! Guess what I have learned as the ultimate guarantee? You will find another one! You will shortly find a tall,. dark and handsome stranger who will seem better than the last guy but in fact, isn't! In fact, he may be worse!!!! Who wants a guarantee like that? If I bought a car that continually broke down and left me stranded, and I saved money for a new car I would NOT go buy the same year make and model. Would you? HELL NO! But that's what we do as women, we do it all the time. We stay, we think this model is cooler, has a nicer paint job and goes faster but when we look under the hood the same mechanical quirks remain. So I started hauling them off to the junk yard. But I did make an effort to sit down and reflect on the damage control. What were the valuable parts of this relationship? Why wasn't it worth salvaging? Why did I wanna thumb it on the freeway rather than climb back into that car? So for me, I think in part, I need to be needed. What I am learning is, I need you to be a big boy too.
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          I am so good at taking care of people that I forget to take care of myself. I do run around saving the world constantly. I do this blog and I work 3 other jobs, plus I am a full time very involved hands on mom. That's job number one. That's the job I am okay exhausting myself for. I know that no matter what though, it's ultimately my responsibility to teach my son to respect my boundaries. If you've ever flown on an airplane you have heard the boring flight attendant spiel about what to do in case of an emergency. What they tell you is to put your own oxygen mask on first. Before you can help anyone else, you yourself have to be breathing. My problem is, I value people more than anything else in my life. I am a spiritual person who believes you don't have to be confined by religion. All of us are spiritual whether we acknowledge it or not. Jenn A is Agnostic, indifferent, and she has been part of a religion she no longer identifies with in her life. Does this matter to me as far as our friendship is concerned? Not one little bit! Whether or not she chooses to believe in God, I choose to believe in him for her. For me, He is a very real, very present source in my life. If you know me, even just talking in the grocery line at the store, and we talk for more than 5 minutes I will be able to point out to you the exact correlation between you and God, in your own life. I feel it is a gift I have. I have a close relationship with God, and my personal Savior Jesus Christ. I believe we are all born with an innate sense of right and wrong. I think with my heart more than anything else. I have learned to trust it. Even though, in the past she has been broken and badly bruised, she still sings a rhythm to me that I can hear. I have learned to trust her, she doesn't lead me astray.

          Because I am a leaver, and a Stay-er and a go getter and all of these other things mashed into a blender and pureed, I am a good person. The only person who ever told me I was bad was my mistake of an ex husband, and we all know how that ended up. I simply do not feel the need to treat people badly. I have been treated very badly at different times in my life. Sometimes in an effort to not be lonely, I felt even more alone. For some religions it's called "The Golden Rule:" Simply treat others as you would like to be treated. For me, it is a Christ-like attitude of putting others before yourself.

        In my journey of self discovery I stumbled across something one day in a magazine that said: "Putting yourself first. Think it's selfish? It's not." What?! Aren't selfish people always putting themselves first at the expense of other people? So wouldn't putting others first at the expense of yourself equal selflessness? Well I am not mathematical at all (My inability to balance a check book can attest to that) but I have learned that Sacrificing my own happiness+putting others first+exhausting all my resources does not equal happiness and peace of mind. For me it equals exhaustion and resentment. So how do I break the pattern?


       The infamous lyrics Stay by The Clash:

Should I stay or should I go now?
If I stay there will be trouble,
If I go there will be double,
So come on and let me know,
should I stay or should I go?

It's always tease, tease, tease
You're happy when I'm on my knees.
One day it's fine the next it's black,
So if you want me off you're back,
Come on and let me know,
should I stay or should I go?


          I mean who hasn't been here before? Sometimes I have to fight myself to stay, or deal with the pain of leaving. Sometimes it hurts to stay, and sometimes it feels great to leave, and sometimes the path isn't clear. I see what I want and I go for it, as go-getters often do. That doesn't mean that I am not entitled to feel indecisive and feel like WTF is wrong with me? It doesn't mean that I don't need an hour or a week away from the person I love, and want, as a significant other. It doesn't mean that I don't want to be needy and clingy and touched and kissed and caressed and made to feel that I am the most--if not only--desirable woman in the world. It means, I have the freedom to choose. We all need to do some leaving and some staying. We all come with emotional baggage and crap to deal with, and flaws. We all have strengths too. We are human. We, as women, for the most part put ourselves last. We care for our kids, our men, our jobs, the house, the car, and ourselves fall second to last. The last for me, is probably sleep. I can never seem to get caught up on or simply get enough of some badly needed beauty rest.

          So in an effort to put myself first, I have stopped trying to stuff myself into other people's ideals. I have stopped trying to make myself perfect. A square peg, doesn't ever fit in a round hole. No matter how much sanding you do to make it fit, it will never fit as well as a round peg in a round hole.Only you can decide what fits where in your life, and prioritize accordingly.

          My hope for all of you, is the same hope I have for myself. That we will all rise above our own ideals, and help others along the way. That we will find a way to keep the oxygen tanks connected to our masks full before we fuel the tanks of others unnecessarily. I am still a work in progress but I am learning that you don't have to sacrifice your oxygen to allow others to breathe. You can simply point them to the nearest supplier, whatever that may be in their lives. For me, it's about helping people and leaving them better than when I found them before. It's not about rescuing every stray along the way, or allowing myself to be a door mat. It's about hope, and light, and scattering both along the way.