Blog Swap: On Settling

I have a wonderful (seriously, wonderful) post from Jasmine at Eat Move Write today. She approached me last week to do a blog swap because our situations regarding love and settling run parallel. I can only hope that I have as happy of an ending in my love story as she has had. She’s an excellent writer and certainly has a way with words. I hope that you enjoy her post as much as I did. Please check out her blog..it’s fantastic. I’ve literally spent hours there.

 

Heya! I’m Jasmine from a little blog called Eat Move Write.It’s a fun blog about eating (because I love to), moving (because I’ve got to), and writing (because I need to). I started my blog back in 2008 as a way to keep up accountability for my weight after a huge (I mean, like mega) weight loss. But, that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about.

I’m here to talk to you about settling. Or, rather, not settling.

The idea for this blog swap came about when I, as a fan and fellow bloggess, saw what Miss Lisa was going through during and after her recent breakup. My heart cried out to her and for her. Not so muchbecause she was going through heartbreak, but because the manner in which she was going through it: she was breaking it herself.

See, that’s something I know a whole heck of a lot about.

Jasmine dancing with her father at her first wedding, October 2003.

Back in 2006, I was recovering from food addiction, a 200-pound weight loss, and a recent exercise obsession when I woke up one day and realized I was married to the wrong man.

Woops.

My first instinct was to assume that I was clearly going through some sort of mid-20s crisis that would soon pass. Unfortunately (or, fortunately, depending on how you look at it), it didn’t pass. Rather, it grew, like a minuscule seed planted in the subconscious regions of my mind. Suddenly, I was looking through a whole different set of spectacles. I literally saw things differently. I’d been overweight since I was a baby. Without 200+ excess pounds weighing me down, I was free. And, I don’t mean free to meet men outside my husband.

I mean, free in a spiritual sense. Free in a womanly sense.

People met my eyes for the first time in what seemed like my whole life. People held doors for me. They smiled at me. They talked to me. They asked me my name. They asked me my story. People, not just men, but people, lots of people.

Except for one.

My husband knew me, he thought, like the back of his hand. He didn’t mean to take advantage, I’m sure. It’s just that we’d always shared the kind of relationship that required scarcely the push of a button – the autopilot button — to maintain. Our life together was the kind of mundane that isn’t funny enough to make the sitcoms, nor angry enough to discuss with friends, nor passionate enough to inspire lyrics or rhymes.

Everyone saw me change, marveled at my physical (and mental, and emotional!) changes. Everyone. But him.

When I had my grand awakening, it was a random Tuesday or a Saturday afternoon, and it was with slow-building horror. I didn’t want to realize; I didn’t want to see. I had no intention of disrupting our lives, of dismantling our marriage. There was nothing I wanted to do less than break my husband’s heart, unless perhaps it was to break my own.

On a yellow-hued Fall day, I pulled out of our driveway for the last time. At the time, I was torn, shredded really, in a way that only a divorced woman can be. I couldn’t have told you that day exactly why I was leaving. Writer that I am, I have always struggled to adequately put into words the horror of that goodbye, the anguish of those now-faraway choices, the desperation with which I clung on that day to that quiet voice in my soul whispering “go.”

Today, in another marriage, a marriage filled with both quiet moments of the mundane and also the passion of the “in love” that can never be put into words by those who only know the “love,” I can tell you why.

It comes down to settling.

Settling is what happens when you see the choice that could make you happy and you deliberately turn away from it for fear of the effort that would take you there.

In this way, settling is a choice, too.  It is a choice I almost made.

Do not take this wrong. I am a believer that happiness is not a far-off concept that one must chase. I realize that the roots of happiness grow right below our thick-soled shoes. However, that happy path is not always paved, and it does not always lead along the path most traveled. In fact, there are many times in life, when the lessons and the challenges we’ve faced are the preparation for a choice that will ultimately lead us through heartache and through to the other side, where understanding waits.

Settling is the choice to stay, to sit this one out, to forego the challenge, to stop the exploration. Lisa’s most recent heartache (Bless her heart.) reminded me of this. It brought back those feels, those feelings of confusion and confliction. And, it also confirmed for me the wisdom of these kinds of choices.

Today, my (new) husband and I follow a much more complicated path to happiness. It is filled with passion and also pain. It is not easy. It is not simple, and is, in fact, far more complicated than that other marriage with that very dear man. What it is, though, is real. At every turn, I find myself challenged. I am asked to grow in this life. I am asked to give, to try, to keep going even when I don’t want to, but I am never asked to simply maintain.

This is the reason we should not settle. The reason we choose to leave in some cases. And, the reason we choose to stay in others. It is never cut and dry, and each of us must follow our own path, carve out our own life, make our own choices.

I will leave you with a quote by one of the most profound individuals of our time:

“There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you arecapable of living.” ~ Nelson Mandela

Go big,
Jasmine Myers, http://www.eatmovewrite.com