Where I want to be

I really want to take a new direction for this blog.
I started trying to chronicle a whole variety of different things from my perspective, movie reviews, food reviews, funny anecdotes. It just didn't match up to anything coherent.
I recently stumbled on a blog called Baggage Reclaim (www.baggagereclaim.co.uk) which has changed my entire outlook on life. I realise that sometimes we go through difficult things in our lives and sometimes we are forced to look inwardly and see that there are aspects of our personality that need to change in order to achieve happiness.
We may have good friends in our lives and family members willing to put it all on the line for you but sometimes it makes less of a difference what these people say than you making that change yourself.
By reading stories of women who were able to build themselves up after being broken down I've been able to look at myself and realise that there are so many things that I've never dealt with in myself.
I never understood why people place so much emphasis on relationships, why break-ups are such a big deal.
I realise now that being in a relationship, especially one that you're totally invested in means having to share yourself and having to stare at yourself in a mirror and ask yourself if you like what you see. Many people feel like they lose themselves in a relationship or that they learned things they never knew about themselves.
As you know by now I've just been through a break-up which shook me to the core because he was my first love.
This has prompted me to go on a journey of finding out who I am and what I want.
I feel like I need to rediscover myself, or even find out who I was to begin with.
I want to tackle issues like self-esteem, complacency, loneliness, compatibility and love, both self-love and external love.
I invite you all to come on this journey with me and share your own thoughts on happiness, love and discovering one's self.

Cut off the limb

My mom told me a story to help me get over my break-up. It went like this...
Before she met my father she was in a relationship with what she belived to be the perfect man caring, fun, attentive, handsome. Her friends told her he was cheating on her but she didn't believe it until they forced her to go to a matinee screening at the local cinema. She gradually realised that she was sitting behind her boyfriend who was sitting next to another girl. She had to sit put for an entire three hour Hindi movie while the man she thought she loved cuddled and kissed a girl that wasn't her.

So I asked her what she did. "I ignored him when I saw him in the street, I didn't take any of his calls and after a few weeks I stopped crying and three months later I met your father," she said.
So why is it that I find it so hard to cut ties?
I've emailed, smsed, called all to ask for closure. I mean we split up on a break but a break is always a break-up. If you need a break from the person you love it means that you don't really love them. I've been stressing out that I'm the bad guy, the one who caused all the strife, the unreasonable one. My ex made me believe that I emotionally broke him, made him feel like dirt and broke his heart beyond repair. The first blow came when I decided that I needed to start thinking about dating again. Checked out Tinder and saw him already on there. Then I see that he's flirting with a girl on Facebook and that really tipped me over the edge. All this time that I've been feeling guilty and feeling awful he moved on within less than a month. I guess three years didn't make that much of a lasting impression.

I was so upset. I was upset to the point that I cried like a baby in my car and a hobo looked at me like I was pathetic. And then I realised what was the point of feeling bad when I had caused my own sadness. I'm not as strong as those people who can maintain all the rules and regulations of Facebook. I can't be friends with him on Facebook  and not look at what's going on and what's the point of being friends on Facebook anyway, we're not friends in real life. And why should I have his number just to keep telling myself not to text and call him. Back in my mom's day the extent of losing a number was throwing the slip of paper over the balcony or tearing it into pieces. They didn't text then check every 2 minutes if the message had been read. So I deleted his number off my phone, I blocked him on whatsapp, I blocked him on google chat, which I never even used before. I thought I'd feel sad and maybe I still will but right now I feel relieved, I feel free that I never have to know where he is or what he's doing. He was my first love, I guess I can remember the good times and what I took away from the relationship but I can't remember him. His face, his voice, his smell they all need to fade into time like your grandmothers worn sofas which suggest the pattern of roses but you can't quite be sure or ever confirm that's what they were.