Defining my own happiness

This weekend I attended our annual multi year High School Reunion and as usual, it was pretty fun. As I look back on my years in High School I can’t help but reminisce on how easy life was back then. Some times during those years I remember thinking life was so difficult, but I think if I would have known then what I know now, I would have enjoyed those four years a lot more. I was so caught up in being cool, putting on the right appearances, and talking to the right people that I’m sure I missed out on some great friendships. As I stood around looking at the room full of people Saturday night, I must have said a million times to my friends “I don’t know anyone here”.

At one point in time, a woman came up to me and said “Oh my gosh you haven’t changed one bit since High School” and I had no clue who she was.

And that made me sad.

I spent some quality time with a guy I used to hang out with quite a bit. I will call him Mr. Cocktail. Mr. Cocktail and I had a unique friendship in high school and college and then we just drifted apart as we met other people and married our spouses. I see Mr. Cocktail once a year at these reunions and things just don’t seem to change in his life. I feel sorry for him. He is stuck between trying to do the right thing for his family and being happy and moving on with his life. He just seems drained every time we see each other.

It reminded me that happiness in life isn’t just one long passionate fairy tale. Quite honestly, I think if we experienced that kind of deep passion every day, we would take it for granted, just like we do everything else and life would become vanilla. But there has to be a happy medium. And I think in order to have that happy medium in our lives, we have to have some kind of consistency. And by that, I mean, it is not only important for us to co-exists and share in the life of someone we care about and love deeply, but we must also be able to share in the other side of the equation, the lows.

I have always believed that if you only had a few minutes, hours or days of happiness in a relationship and the rest was woeful, then why go to the extreme to hang onto those few short moments? It’s just not worth it, right? I am reminded of this again as I look back at the Hot Fireman. In one of our last conversations we had about the woman that had called me asking about our status, I told him that I felt sorry for the girl because she was crying. And he said, and I quote, “who the f$*# would cry over me?”

Well for one thing Mr. Hot Fireman. I would and I did. And you have no clue!

You see, from the beginning he said all the right things. Things that girls like to hear. Things that once we hear, we can never erase from our minds. Things like “I think we will be good together” or “I can’t wait to see you again” or “what would happen if we got married one day” or even, “I could see having a baby with you.” Yeah, those are the things that tend to stick in our heads. It’s statements like these that put us on our “happiness high”. And it was statements like these that allowed me to only see the silhouette of the Hot Fireman, because on the outside of this silhouette that I had created for him was a man, who I knew truly liked me, but one that was still being played like a puppet by his Ex Wife and hampering our time together.

Don't get me wrong, I don’t hold that against him in any way, because if my Ex was controlling the time I could see my kids based on his schedule, I would do the exact same thing and jump at every opportunity to see them too.

What I did learn about happiness from the Hot Fireman was that it requires an openness and willingness to put yourself out there, because if you don’t you will only experience limited happiness. And who wants that? We all deserve to be completely happy! No one wants to be held back feeling unsure, anxious and questioning everything. I didn’t want to be dependent on him for my happiness, but felt like maybe I was and I know this because of how horribly I feel now that I am not seeing him anymore. I was making him my only option for happiness and then wondering why I didn’t trust him and wasn’t happy. And that was not fair for him

I realize now that he got the wrath of my old relationship baggage and he didn't even know it.

Rest assured, I will not put off being happy again! I don’t want to be one of those people that places my happiness in the hands of others, and watch my life pass me by while hoping that everything else around me will change, instead of me changing.

I hope one day the Hot Fireman and I can be friends so that I can share this revelation with him and apologize.

In the meantime, I can only hope that he still reads this blog.