My Mother's Footsteps

I've learned more about love & relationships since January of this year, than I've learned in my entire life. A life accumulation of various lessons where now put to good use.  Since I was 12, I watched my mother fall in love with men who didn't want to be with her, who only came to her when it was convienant for them, while they had freedom to do, come, and go as they pleased. It was acceptable to bring men home from the bar, and send them home the next day. It was normal to talk about your sex life around the grill with Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and friends. The first time I followed in my mother's footsteps I was 13. I loved him as much as a 13 yr old could love someone. With a feverish passion that edged on obsession. I wanted to be his girlfriend more than anything in the entire world, but when he didn't want that, I took whatever I could get. That's what I was taught to do. I spent the next 10 years of my life loving him as much as a 13 yr old girl could love someone, even though I was 22. I open this blog with that, because I believe that relatinship to be of the most significant of them all. The dynamics had changed a handful of times, yet always ended the same. Us not talking. I've spent the last 12 making repeated mistakes, trying to hard, clinging, pushing away, crying, humiliating myself.

So this is what I've learned... being honest with mysef & not supressing my urges to be who I am is the absolute best thing for me to do. Men, relationships, love, lust... it's all going to come and go. It is exciting & fun if I don't cling to that which is already right here, right now. Something better is always on it's way. My attempts at pushing for something somone is not willing to give me rob me of my serenity, and ignite addict tendencies. I control nothing. Attempting to do so wrecks havoc on my serenity.

-I do not owe any man, any thing. I'm not obligated to do shit.
-It's okay to get angry, and it's okay to tell them you're angry. I'm a woman, and I get hormonal.
-Trying to find out what they want/are looking for and being THAT, or revealing only my qualities that support that while supressing the others will get me nowhere.
-I have wants & needs. I have every right to express those, and if he (whoever that is at the moment) cannot or does not fulfill those, there is someone else who will.
-Patience is powerful. They almost always come back somewhere down the line.

It has taken me 13 years to unlearn so much of what I was taught in my young adolesence in regards to relationships. It has been a marvelous un-raveling of pain, denial, control, & fear. For me, the best thing I can do is