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Morning Musings
Jan. 25th, 2010 10:47 amHave become nostalgic today, related to a dream I won't share here. Just makes me think about choices in life, etc., about Atlanta.
Two terrible things happened in Atlanta.
The one I most often cite is my financial situation. I was debt-free with a good credit rating and an excellent job history when I first moved there. Within the first month, I had tied up all loose ends in that respect, and had a car payment on the new car I had bought right before I moved, and that was it. I had every confidence of finding a good job with all the pay and perks of my job in Illinois. I had a naivete' about it, not realizing back then how different things were there. Leaving Atlanta, my job record, while re-established over the last 5 years of working there, was scattered, and had more records of being fired than anyone short of a drug-user should have. Never mind that that was just how things were done there. Never mind that I lacked some subtle inborn sense of things that the natives (and there aren't too many natives in Atlanta) seemed to have to avoid *most* of those pitfalls. It had been devastating to my confidence in job-related fields. And all that led to my not being able to go back to school there and get my RN, as had been the plan (although I looked at other avenues as well, once I got there). If it weren't for Pam's generosity, I could never have gone to Core Energetics, which I will never regret, but it didn't really help with immediate job credentials, and in the end, I didn't want to pursue counseling as a career. So, when I left Atlanta, I had (have) about $10-20K in debt, not from credit cards, but from bounced checks, security deposits gone wrong, and money owed to the IRS because I didn't quite understand all the implications of a 1099. That's not counting the $25K I owe Pam.
So, I have a lot of past sins to make up for in that arena. Illinois offers me all that... to some extent, it's the devil I know, and my memory is serving me so far. I've set some strong steps on the path of getting my shit together in that area of my life.
The second bad thing that happened there was losing my best friend. It's a situation choked with irony, really. In the end, I think being in close proximity with him and his other friends made me feel vulnerable in the relationship in a way I hadn't during out long-distance friendship after high school. The irony there, of course, is that it was his idea for me to move there. My choice, to be sure, but his idea. The other thing that seemed to break our relationship was my marriage to a man that, in another irony, he had suggested as a good mate.
On both counts, he was right. That's probably another irony.
The other connections and friendships I made in Atlanta far outshone the financial and job-related distresses that also occurred. I grew more as a person there than I had in all the prior 32 years of my life. I will never regret having moved there. And, as hard as it has sometimes been to be married to my husband, when his own issues have come up and clashed against mine, these relationships helped me to work through it. Most of all, Core helped me work through it. I'm sure there will be more fires in life, but we've been through some terrifying ones together, and have come through them all, with a grace that would not have been possible, I think, if we hadn't had that foundation to rely on.
But, in the end, I was threatened by his friends, and he was threatened by my husband, and too much just rubbed the wrong way. I was early in Core then, and was at that dangerous stage where I knew something was wrong, and wanted to work through it, but wasn't yet good at quite understanding it myself, much less explaining it to someone else, even someone with whom I'd shared a vocabulary for years. I said some things very poorly, and they weren't what I meant, and between not realizing the damage done, and not having the tools to repair it even if I had, I helped weaken the foundation. When my husband's story (or, more accurately, his real response to an already-well-known story) came out much later, sounding like an accusation (which, on an emotional level, it was; even though intellectually, it wasn't), it was just too much. I said some things after that, that were taken the wrong way; later I saw how that could be the case, but that was years after several explosions had left us apart, by his insistence.
My later attempts to reconcile went badly. There were so many misunderstandings in his last long response to me, and the time limits imposed didn't allow me to send the response I wanted to send. In the end, I took the advice of a mutual friend, and simply sent a short goodbye. It tears me up to this day that he left with so many misconceptions. I still have the letter I wanted to send, mostly finished, until it became clear I couldn't make it in time. I haven't had the heart to re-visit it, to finish it just for my own sense of completeness. It was clear that he wasn't ready to hear it, though, at any rate. In another complete irony, it was clear that his feelings about re-visiting this and coming to a different conclusion mirrored my husband's when he considered re-addressing his thoughts on the incident that brought everything to a head. I completely understand both positions. Hell, I understood everything. What he wrote, and what he didn't write. But I'd somehow lost the ability to make him understand me. At least within the time limitations he'd imposed. Too much water under the bridge, maybe.
*sigh* I didn't mean for this to be as morose as it's becoming.
My finances can be fixed. My friendship... I don't know. I left it open. I still harbor hope. Hope that he'll stumble upon the apology given in the same public format the "accusation" was made. Hope that he'll question his own conclusions and actually ask instead of assume. Hope that we can re-build.
In the meantime, I can only work on myself.
Two terrible things happened in Atlanta.
The one I most often cite is my financial situation. I was debt-free with a good credit rating and an excellent job history when I first moved there. Within the first month, I had tied up all loose ends in that respect, and had a car payment on the new car I had bought right before I moved, and that was it. I had every confidence of finding a good job with all the pay and perks of my job in Illinois. I had a naivete' about it, not realizing back then how different things were there. Leaving Atlanta, my job record, while re-established over the last 5 years of working there, was scattered, and had more records of being fired than anyone short of a drug-user should have. Never mind that that was just how things were done there. Never mind that I lacked some subtle inborn sense of things that the natives (and there aren't too many natives in Atlanta) seemed to have to avoid *most* of those pitfalls. It had been devastating to my confidence in job-related fields. And all that led to my not being able to go back to school there and get my RN, as had been the plan (although I looked at other avenues as well, once I got there). If it weren't for Pam's generosity, I could never have gone to Core Energetics, which I will never regret, but it didn't really help with immediate job credentials, and in the end, I didn't want to pursue counseling as a career. So, when I left Atlanta, I had (have) about $10-20K in debt, not from credit cards, but from bounced checks, security deposits gone wrong, and money owed to the IRS because I didn't quite understand all the implications of a 1099. That's not counting the $25K I owe Pam.
So, I have a lot of past sins to make up for in that arena. Illinois offers me all that... to some extent, it's the devil I know, and my memory is serving me so far. I've set some strong steps on the path of getting my shit together in that area of my life.
The second bad thing that happened there was losing my best friend. It's a situation choked with irony, really. In the end, I think being in close proximity with him and his other friends made me feel vulnerable in the relationship in a way I hadn't during out long-distance friendship after high school. The irony there, of course, is that it was his idea for me to move there. My choice, to be sure, but his idea. The other thing that seemed to break our relationship was my marriage to a man that, in another irony, he had suggested as a good mate.
On both counts, he was right. That's probably another irony.
The other connections and friendships I made in Atlanta far outshone the financial and job-related distresses that also occurred. I grew more as a person there than I had in all the prior 32 years of my life. I will never regret having moved there. And, as hard as it has sometimes been to be married to my husband, when his own issues have come up and clashed against mine, these relationships helped me to work through it. Most of all, Core helped me work through it. I'm sure there will be more fires in life, but we've been through some terrifying ones together, and have come through them all, with a grace that would not have been possible, I think, if we hadn't had that foundation to rely on.
But, in the end, I was threatened by his friends, and he was threatened by my husband, and too much just rubbed the wrong way. I was early in Core then, and was at that dangerous stage where I knew something was wrong, and wanted to work through it, but wasn't yet good at quite understanding it myself, much less explaining it to someone else, even someone with whom I'd shared a vocabulary for years. I said some things very poorly, and they weren't what I meant, and between not realizing the damage done, and not having the tools to repair it even if I had, I helped weaken the foundation. When my husband's story (or, more accurately, his real response to an already-well-known story) came out much later, sounding like an accusation (which, on an emotional level, it was; even though intellectually, it wasn't), it was just too much. I said some things after that, that were taken the wrong way; later I saw how that could be the case, but that was years after several explosions had left us apart, by his insistence.
My later attempts to reconcile went badly. There were so many misunderstandings in his last long response to me, and the time limits imposed didn't allow me to send the response I wanted to send. In the end, I took the advice of a mutual friend, and simply sent a short goodbye. It tears me up to this day that he left with so many misconceptions. I still have the letter I wanted to send, mostly finished, until it became clear I couldn't make it in time. I haven't had the heart to re-visit it, to finish it just for my own sense of completeness. It was clear that he wasn't ready to hear it, though, at any rate. In another complete irony, it was clear that his feelings about re-visiting this and coming to a different conclusion mirrored my husband's when he considered re-addressing his thoughts on the incident that brought everything to a head. I completely understand both positions. Hell, I understood everything. What he wrote, and what he didn't write. But I'd somehow lost the ability to make him understand me. At least within the time limitations he'd imposed. Too much water under the bridge, maybe.
*sigh* I didn't mean for this to be as morose as it's becoming.
My finances can be fixed. My friendship... I don't know. I left it open. I still harbor hope. Hope that he'll stumble upon the apology given in the same public format the "accusation" was made. Hope that he'll question his own conclusions and actually ask instead of assume. Hope that we can re-build.
In the meantime, I can only work on myself.
