Conditions

I read in a blog once that the key to a happy marriage is unconditional blow jobs. I laughed and it stuck with me. I think they have a point. A very good point. I think the key to a happy, sustainable relationship is unconditional everything.

I am moody and fickle. I have a terrible time with monogamy. I am simultaneously smothering and distant. I have to talk about everything. Except some things - some things I will not talk about at all. I can be completely mood driven. And then I can turn around and act only on logic. I am difficult to love.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that these traits meant that other people's happiness was more important than my own. That in the case that someone else would incur greater happiness if I gave up some of mine, that I had a duty to do that. Being that I was so difficult to be with. So difficult to love.

So that's what I did. I served. When my partner had affairs behind my back, I felt like I deserved it and we moved on. When people came to live in my house and took complete advantage, I let them. When my family gave me advice about decisions in my life, I made them. Even if I didn't agree with them. Even if I didn't want the life that came with them. Who was I to question that? These people loved me and I was so difficult to love. I should give these concessions. Their happiness trumped my happiness.

Then I snapped. I swore to a period of singlehood. I evicted my tenants. I told my family to keep their opinions to themselves. It was not a nice way to treat the people that loved me. I had a lot of guilt about it. But it was necessary. And then I just sat there for a while.

Take a sledgehammer to your life and destroy everything. Then sit in the wreckage. See who comes to sit with you and I will tell you who really loves you. See who comes to pick through the debris and take what they want and I will tell you the people that you can live without. See the people who do both, take a little and sit a little, and I will tell you the people who love you conditionally.

I am so lucky. I had many in the first category. They weren't the people I had been putting the most effort in with, but they were there. And they stayed. For a long time I have made a social hermit of myself. I only spend time with these people. I trust them.

Now I want to increase my social circle. I love people, I want to be involved in more things and I want to meet new people as well. But there's a lot of social conditions out there. I still have a hard time distinguishing between when I'm giving and when someone is taking from me. I need some lessons in social negotiations. And, more importantly, I need to recognize what my bottom line is. How far I can go comfortably, without feeling like I'm giving up pieces of me. Without feeling like I'm sacrificing my happiness for theirs. Because, no matter how pious that makes you feel, it's not sustainable. I also need to realize that sometimes the price is too high. Sometimes, I have to walk away. This is the part that's hardest for me. To walk away from someone who is willing to love me, even conditionally. Because, as I said, I am oh so difficult to love. Or am I?

The Invitation - Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

by
Oriah Mountain Dreamer