Groundhog day

I believe that this is what they call a breakthrough. Actually, in re-reading my posts over the last two years, it seems that I am due for a major breakthrough. Every six months seems to be the cycle. At least I am consistent in having the same breakthrough over and over again. I am nothing if not consistent and predictable.

All of this is a result of the drama of a few weeks ago. It seems that I am still trying to work through what happened. In my last post I shared with you how a friend opened my eyes to the fact that all relationships have their own troubles. That in turn got us talking about a friend of mine who has been in the ridiculous and impossible cycle of on again off again for the last 8 years. While I had compared my situation to hers over the years, I truly saw my situation as "different" and as "not as bad". I mean, my situation as a whole was completely different and less sad than hers, right? I may have been wrong. Okay, I was wrong. See? I can be wrong.

In a nut shell, my friend Carrie is in love with a man who is also deeply in love with her (we'll call him Mark). Circumstances, however, prevent them from being together, publicly. She can see him, spend time with him, talk about her feelings with him, and have intimacy with him, but what she can't have with him is the committed every day love and attention that yields downtown condos, marriage and kids. She has to make the decision of whether seeing him for a few hours a day or week, compensates for her giving up everything she ever wanted for her life. And you know what? She has bravely made the decision over and over again that that compensation is not enough, and has decided that she wants and needs more for her life, and has walked away from him. But over and over again, love has overpowered that brave resolve, and she has gone back to him. You see the big problem is that they do love each other so deeply and walking away from that type of love is actually a kind of death.

So how are our situations so much alike, if not the exact same? For starters, I am surely guilty of being "over" Big and then going back to him over and over and over again. And worse, I am finally conceding that the circumstances that keep us apart cannot be overcome. There, I said it.

And there are two very important points I need to make here:
1. Neither myself, nor Carrie, nor Big, nor Mark, are blameless in this predicament. If anything, we should be rewarded ;) for believing in love. But we are guilty of stubbornly believing in love and in believing that our love is "special". In my newly formed opinion, the only reason the four of us are in this viscous Groundhog day, is because we didn't have the balls to have walked away that first time. Had we done that, which I believe most people manage to do, we would not be in this emotional mess.

2. These circumstances could have been changed because they are after all, a product of choice, daily choice. These daily choices reflect on who we are as individuals. Meaning that to change the circumstance you would need to change the person. And people don't change, fundamentally at least.

So where does that leave Carrie and I? Stay tuned....