I Just Had to Walk Away

I've been doing a lot of evaluating in my life, mostly of the people in my life.  I know there's a lot of talk in the community about drama, and honestly, I don't really believe in it.  Drama belongs on stage, not between people.  However, I've found that there are people in my life that create a lot of drama.

I know drama seems to be the catch-phrase of people my age and younger.  In other times these people would be referred to as being gossips, selfish, back-biting, and greedy.  I don't ever recall my mom or my aunts referring to a situation or a person as "just a lot of drama".  I'm sure it may have happened, but it seems to be a new phrase that's used to explain the kind of fiasco you expect to see on Jerry Springer.

For the most part, I try to avoid these kinds of people.  I don't like the people who gossip behind each others backs.  I don't like people who use other people.  Most of all, I don't like all the cheating, lying, and stealing that you hear of around here.  I'm just not that kind of person.  I like my life to be calm and peaceful and I like the people in my life to share that same belief.  It's a lot easier to maintain your own grounded sense of calm when the people around you share that same focus.  As a result, I've tried to attract people into my life that live in a smooth, relaxed kind of way, even if they are busy with hectic and sometimes chaotic lives.

I didn't even realize how much I wanted this until I'd met with the local homeschool co-op.  I spent every afternoon after the co-op ended talking with other mothers about purely enjoyable things.  I got to hear stories of adventures in other countries and challenges other parents faced.  I was able to enjoy sharing my own passions in life, which was absolutely wonderful.  It was relaxed and casual.  Unlike other visits with friends that really were a lot of drama, when I left I felt pretty good about myself.  Often times I got home feeling like I could take on the world because I'd actually had a really good time.

This wasn't the only place I'd run into people who were so grown-up and civil.  When I went out to the local knitting group I found it was much the same.  The people there were wonderful.  I guess I just didn't realize how much it meant to me until I started going to the co-op, seeing my kids enjoy time with other kids their own age while I got to enjoy being an adult.  There was something about the experience that woke me up.

A light was shone on the other people in my life.  I started to realize how I'd surrounded myself with a group of immature people who acted like they'd never left high school.  It's not so much that these people were horrible people, but they were gossips and were looking out for their own desires.  They were always number one in their books, even if what they were doing wasn't ethical in the least.

Two of these people had a very similar mentality.  It was all about their bottom line.  It was all about how they could benefit.  In many cases it was all about how they could get money out of us, be it money for food, money for gas, or whatever it may be.  It's all about getting something out of helping us, and the more they can get, the more willing they are to help.

In other cases, sadly, it was the green eyed beast that took other friends.  They were jealous of us.  For whatever reason, they seemed to think that we had it made.  I have the perfect man, the perfect family, and the perfect life.  This isn't exactly something I've seen with one or two friends.  It's sadly common.  They talk about how incredibly wonderful Chesh is (without seeing all the rough times we've suffered through) and how I'm so lucky to have him.  They tell me my kids are so wonderful, even though they never see them when they've got me at wit's end and completely worn into the ground.  I keep hearing how we have everything, yet they don't seem to see that for so long we didn't have a car or we were living off what little we could scrape together because Chesh was out of work or didn't make enough at his job.  They never saw how hard I had to work at everything without very much help, and when I did get help, half the time I was charged an arm and a leg for it, or it came at some other extreme cost.

With these sorts of people, often times they didn't look at what they had.  It wasn't uncommon for them to receive help from their family, or live with their family when they had nowhere to go.  Friends and family were often giving them gifts of things when they needed it, or giving them rides without receiving anything in return.  They could go eat with other people when they didn't have money for food, or people would gift them a car and in some cases even pay for all the needed repairs to make the car run well again.  These free hand-outs were often ignored because I had something they wanted, be it children, a significant other, or whatever else it may be.  They don't see that there are things other people could be jealous of in their lives.  It's one of those "the grass is greener" moments.

I'm just not willing to put up with all of that anymore.  I don't need "friends" in my life that are just trying to help me out so they can get something out of it.  I don't need friends that are going to make my life more difficult because of their own jealousy, whether it's by avoidance, being cruel, or otherwise trying to interfere with my life.  I don't need friends that are going to be gossips and back-biters.  My life will be of a much higher quality without that kind of negative influence in my life.

It's not easy to have to walk away from people I liked to consider my friends.  It's not easy to walk away from people who were such a huge part of my social support network.  These people filled a void in my life for a very long time, but I just don't need them anymore.

Instead of having people like that, I'm finding people that are more on my level.  I never thought I'd hear myself saying this, but most of the people in our lives are younger than me, and in many cases, Chesh too.  That's not out of choice, but more situation.  They tend to be the people we've ended up exposed to, so that's where our friendships come from.  They tend to match in maturity to their ages.  However, now I'm finding I prefer people who are closer to my own age, and definitely closer to my own situation.  I don't even mean people who are in a rough financial spot.  It's more that I prefer people who are also parents, preferably homeschooling parents, but I'm not exclusive on that.  The people Chesh and I need to be surrounding ourselves with, and truthfully enjoy more are mature, responsible people who really understand that life is about living, not about the details.  Sure, we may be stuck on a lot of details in our own lives right now, but that will pass, and I think everyone realizes that these phases happen.  Bad things happen to good people, then they get better and everyone moves on.

On a deeper level, I think we've been experiencing a lot of problems because of the people we've surrounded ourselves with.  Instead of focusing on positive people and keeping ourselves in a positive direction, we've surrounded ourselves with a lot of people who bring negative stresses into our lives and bring us down.  If the world really does work in the way that what you put out is what you get in return, then we've been getting exactly what we deserve, if nothing else then because we've been immersing ourselves in so much negativity brought on us by the people we surround ourselves with.  I've noticed that when we focus on surrounding ourselves with good, positive people, we all end up a lot happier, and in reflection a lot more good comes into our lives.  This should be a signal that we should change our crowd and work harder on the people and families that we find uplifting.

I have a feeling things are going to change for us.  We're going to be facing much more positive in our lives.  Whenever you cut out the dead weight, things suddenly seem so much brighter.  I've noticed that when things seem brighter, often times they often keep with the trend of actually being brighter.  Letting go of these people might just be that magic solution we needed.  We'll be taking a step forward in our lives.  Maybe walking away from the people who have been holding us back is exactly what we needed to bring ourselves a little more happiness, and with that happiness, we'll finally start seeing things turn around for the better again.  It's only a matter of time.

Who knew finding hope and a positive outlook would be as simple as walking away from the people who have brought us so much pain, negativity, and conflict?  Who knew that would be all it takes to at least feel like things might just be turning around?  I feel better already, and our situation hasn't changed, just the people involved in our lives have.

The Spiritual Journey of Dreadlocks or A Learning not to Be Vain

So, a friend of mine has been writing about her journey with dreadlocks on her blog, Otherwise Quite Good.  She has sadly decided to end her journey with dreads.  As much as I loved her dreads, I understand that it's not a good choice for everyone.  It's going to be a different experience for each person.

In her blog she wrote about the pros and cons of dreads from a newbie perspective.  While I understand that's her experience, at the same time I'm finding that I don't recognize it at all.  A lot of what she's saying is pretty strange to me.  Every experience is different, and I guess mine is very different than hers.

The biggest reason most people I know do dreads is maintenance.  Dreads are supposed to be a pretty easy, care-free hair style.  Of course, when you ask people who have actually had dreads, you get a very different story, depending on the method they use.  They're also an exercise in patience.  I think if it weren't for the dread community I'm involved with on Ravelry, I'd be pretty lost right now.  I certainly wouldn't know what to expect and I'd be doing a lot of things I've now come to realize are just some company's way to make money off people with dreads.  In truth, I'd probably be combing them out by now too.

What most people don't understand is that dreadlocks are a spiritual journey.  It's not something you can undertake lightly.  You've got to seriously think into it before you do it because they're just not going to look the way you want them to any time soon.  They may never look the way you want them to.  It's going to take a while before they even look halfway decent anyway.  It's a long term commitment.  It could take a year or two, and for some people, that's quite some time.  You've just got to have faith that the dreads will come out okay in the end.

I've had to learn the hard way that having dreads means giving up on vanity.  It means letting go of preconceived notions of how we should look.  Yes, dreads tend to look wild and horrible in the first year.  I know a lot of companies that make dread products will tell you that it takes up to six weeks to have great looking dreads, but the reality is that's just not likely to happen.  I've gotten to talk to one woman with fantastic dreads that spent two years watching her dreads go through all kinds of evolutions, shrinking, thickening up, and looking wild.  Mine have been going strong for nearly six months and they've still got all kinds of crazy loops and things.  Some of them are flat.  Some of them have weird little spots that just aren't dreading the same as everything else.  The roots are pretty wild and I've got all kinds of fuzz.  I've attacked them with a crochet hook for the first time, but I'm not even going to attempt to get rid of the roots.  I'm not going to bind them down or crochet them in.  I just want to pull in the loose ends so my hair stays together.  I've picked up a bit of finger rolling, but for the most part, I'm just leaving them to be crazy.

Over the past nearly six months it's been a test of faith.  Because I used the twist and rip method for dreading I ended up having to hold my breath while they nearly fell out entirely at the beginning.  Over time they slowly started to dread up again.  I've been lucky enough to watch my hair grow, not shrink up through the process, but I think a large part of that has to do with the length of the dreaded hair.  Much of my dreads aren't very solid and haven't thickened up much, but I'm sure that will change in time.  I've had a few heart attack moments with my washing routine as too much apple cider vinegar caused my hair to start to slip and come undone.  For the first four months or so I just let my hair do whatever it wanted.  I ended up with one dread eating another, so I eventually went through and separated those that were starting to grow together.  That's pretty much the only maintenance I've ever done.  I've toyed with palm rolling, but my dreads are too narrow and short for that to be practical.  Like I've mentioned, I finger roll now and again, but it's done nothing for the shape and form of my dreads.  It's more just something to do with my hands than something for the appearance of my dreads.  I've got to release that vain side of myself that wants everything to be perfect and beautiful, kind of ironic since I wrote not all that long ago about my own vanity.

The thing with dreads and maintenance is it only takes as much as you let it take.  I know there are some people who are obsessed with it.  They palm roll daily.  I know some who crochet their hair once a month in order to get rid of all the wisps.  There are some people who go in for routine maintenance monthly.  Maintenance on dreads can, in theory, take a lot of time.  If you choose to palm roll daily, or even after every bath or shower, that can take one to two hours, especially if you've got long dreads or particularly thin dreads.  This can be a huge time drain often making people feel as though their dreads are like children, requiring so much time, attention, and care.

Choosing my style of maintenance didn't take much thought on my part.  I know a lot of people refer to them as "dreads by neglect", but the truth is they're really just "au natural" if you really get down to it.  Dreads by neglect are one of three major ways to make dreads.  Backcombing, or backcombing and crochet are the most popular style of dreads.  Twist and rip are far less known about, but they're another common choice.  Dreads by neglect are simply forming dreads by neglecting your hair.  Don't brush it, don't comb it, and eventually it will knot up.  If you want to have some control in your hair's natural sectioning you rip apart and separate the dreads as they start to form, kind of sectioning them as they develop.  It's the most natural way to let your dreads develop, but requires a lot of trust and faith in your hair.  Your hair does what it wants and you really don't know what you'll end up with.

The natural dread maintenance plan pretty much means letting your dreads develop the way they develop.  Some people will let their dreads eat each other, forming massive dreads, but that's not my style.  All I do is rip them apart when they start to blend together and try and pick up the wisps when I can.  Some who use this natural method do use a crochet hook to weave the loose ends in once or twice, but after that wait for the hair to pull in on it's own.  Eventually it will dread.  They don't use any methods to pull the dread closer to the roots.  I've had dreads with two inches of undreaded hair at the root, but over time they've grown closer to the scalp.  Now I just have about a comfortable inch on most of them.  At the most I throw a little bit of nag champa oil in my hair to make it smell nice, especially if it's got a tinge of that vinegar smell right after washing.  Sometimes I use amber oil or dragon's blood for variety.  It doesn't take much and all I have to do is put oil on my hands and rub them into my dreads.  It seems like every time my hair moves the scent subtly escapes for days on end.

Styling has been a little more of a challenge.  I can't just tie my dreads up with other dreads because they're just too short.  I'm still in need of hair ties, scarves, and bandannas.  I have to do something with my hair in the morning because I don't have my friend's luck with gravity solving all.  I look like Medusa or that character from Starcraft.  I'm starting to rely on the things I can do with my hair.  Thankfully my hair is starting to grow so I'm finding I can do more and more each day.  I can finally pull it into a single pony tail!

In the end, I think the most important lessons any potential dreadie should learn is that the process takes time, potentially a lot of time.  It could take a year or two for your dreads to get out of the wild phase.  Maintenance is really not as necessary as some will try to tell you.  The dread product companies will sell you on the idea that you need their products to expediate the process, but honestly, you don't really need them.  The best thing you can do is let your hair do it's own thing and enjoy the ride.  These are the things I'm glad someone told me at the beginning of all of this!  I have to wonder how many other potential dreadies would keep their dreads longer if they only knew what they were getting themselves into in the first place.

I've still got a long way to go.  It's going to be at least six more months, I can figure, before my dreads look anything like I'll want them to, or more accurately, the way they want to.  They're still evolving quite a bit these days.  Maybe I'm unusual, but I love the wild, chaotic look of the dreads right now.  They seem very natural, very wild woman.  It's kind of freeing.  I wash them once a week, but I don't notice any of the scalp problems I've heard reported.  Maybe my hair is just responding really well to the soak I use, or maybe it's just what I'm doing.  No matter how I look at it, this is clearly the right choice for me and my hair!  On top of it all, I really am learning a lesson about myself.  Maybe I just need to stop being so vain.

Sometimes that's the biggest lesson you can ever learn in life, to release yourself from the things that are holding you back so you can recognize a new state of being.  I guess one could say that this is like the hanged man card in tarot.  You've got to look at the world from a different perspective for a while.  As a dancer so much has been built up on appearance.  I was convinced I would have perfect, maintenanced, clean dreads.  They were always going to look fantastic.  I would never have a single doubt about the end result.  Instead of getting what I wanted, I've had to learn to release myself to the outcome.  The dreads will be what they will be and there's nothing I can do but keep faith that they'll be beautiful, just like the other fantastic dreads I've seen before!

A Little Bit of Vanity is Good for the Soul

I've been noticing this whole thing with dreads has brought out a new side of me.  I'm not just trying to document the process of the dreads, I've got to admit, I'm a little bit vain.  I've started to realize that my previous amusement of taking my own portrait has taken a totally different turn.

Well, I should be honest here, part of this increase in vanity is because of my new phone.  I've got a smart phone and it's got a pretty good camera.  I can load those photos directly to photobucket or Facebook.  This, of course, makes it so much more enthralling to be vain.  I even have a whole album on Facebook dedicated to my dreads.  It's made the whole thing a lot more fun.

This whole vanity thing has actually done something good for me.  I'm a lot happier about my life right now.  I'm starting to notice that I'm a lot happier with the way I look.  When you look good, you feel good, and I'm starting to notice the balance there.  Yes, I look a lot more adult than I want to.  I hate to say it, but the past couple of years have really aged me.  I can no longer pull off being a teenager.  I definitely look like a grown up.  Maybe it's time I start embracing that.

Photographs are also documenting the evolution of me.  I'm noticing small changes in myself.  The youthful innocence I used to display in pictures was replaced with something a little sultry.  In turn I outgrew that and started to notice I just looked adult.  Now I'm noticing that I'm looking more and more my age, especially when I actually wear my glasses.  I have to say, I actually like the look of wearing my glasses.  I may just have to do it more often.  It's probably better for my eyes anyway.

Something productive does come out of vanity.  Yes, I've grown up a lot, but I'm actually kind of happy that I'm starting to look a bit more grown up too.  Maybe I still don't look as old as I feel, but at the very least I'm starting to feel a lot less like a kid.  I wonder if that's why so many people are overlooking me these days.  Maybe that's a good thing too!

Happiness Is a Houseplant

Most of my friend's houses are pretty barren.  They've got furnishings, sure.  They may have toys for their kids, pets, video games.  They've got plenty of noise with televisions or radios playing.  The homes have a lot of stuff, and sometimes even a lot of life, but they're still barren.  They're still kind of, well, lacking.

When I was a kid we used to spend a lot of time outdoors whenever we could.  In the winter it was much more challenging, but come spring there were plenty of things to do outside.  My mother helped us keep our own garden.  She would clip roses for us off the rose bush climbing up our porch.  We would disappear into the forsythia bushes and pretend to be bunnies from Jim Henson's Bunny Picnic.  The summer would bring trips to the beach or the reservoir, summer camp, and bike rides.  The fall would bring camping trips with our Girl Scout troop at Camp Cedar Hill and tons of Halloween adventures.  As I got older just going for a walk was plenty of reason to go out and get fresh air.  The world was so vibrant, green, and bright.  It was truly beautiful.

When I was little I remember not having many house plants.  My mom would certainly try.  We'd get poinsettia nearly every Christmas, but they wouldn't survive for long after the season was over.  I never knew if it was simply because they weren't a long-lived plant or because they just weren't getting the right care.  At one point we went over to Christmas cactus, but they didn't fare well either.  They were forgotten and dried up.  I brought them back from near death three times, but eventually I just stopped trying.  I even remember an ivy plant that grew in a goose planter.  It was pretty small and the neck curled around to it's back where the plant was potted.  I think I remember my mom loving ivy, but even that didn't last long.  We seemed to have no luck with house plants.  I just figured it's because we were so much better with plants that lived outside.

When I got out on my own I tried a couple times to have houseplants.  For a while when I lived with my two male room mates and our small collection of cats in Sutton I had a small African violet plant that sat in the kitchen window.  I made sure to pick the most hopeless looking plant.  I told them it was because I was a miracle worker at bringing plants to life, but in truth it was because I was afraid it wouldn't last.  I would feel a lot less bad about killing a plant that was already dying than I would about killing a plant that was so vibrant and full of life.  I was pretty well a miracle worker for plants, much like my mother could be, but plants take dedication and care.  They need to be watered.  They're harder to care for than pets as far as I'm concerned because pets come and bother you when they're in need, but plants never do.  They sit there and silently suffer until they wither and die.  It's just their way.  Many don't need constant and daily care either, so they are that much easier to forget about.  My little violet thrived for quite some time, but it was the move out of that place that killed it.

A few years later, after the birth of my daughter, we got another African violet that also lived in our kitchen.  We lived in a beautiful, sunny third story apartment in Cambridge.  I didn't pick it out.  My fiancee at the time had decided it would be the perfect housewarming gift for us.  Our room mate didn't much care for the plant, but I adored it.  It was the perfect addition to our little home.  Unfortunately, that room mate brought with him a plague of bed bugs, so we had to leave, leaving much of our prized possessions behind.  As much as I didn't think the bugs would infest my house plant, but it wouldn't have survived the house we were staying in while my husband went into the military.  African violets aren't terribly known for thriving in a house that's kept at a standard temperature of about fifty to sixty degrees.  I left the plant with my room mate who promised to care for it.

When we moved to Texas I tried several times to keep a house plant.  In our first home we had a couple of kalanchoe plants, but they didn't make it.  I picked up a couple more after our first move, but they suffered the same fate.  I know I could have thriving kalanchoe plants.  When I was in biotech in high school my kalanchoe plant and my African violet were my babies.  Those were the plants I used for my particular projects, growing plants in culture.  They all did very well until their final transfer into soil in which they got infected with mold.  I guess I didn't get enough of the agar off when I transplanted them.  I was beginning to think I just couldn't raise house plants.  Maybe, much like things seemed with my mom, I would be better to have an outdoor garden.

Recently I decided it was time to try again.  Much of the reason I didn't have successful houseplants in the past was all of the other distractions I had in my life.  How could I remember to water a plant every couple of days when I could barely see the house under all the clutter?  How could I properly care for a plant if I was so wrapped up in all the things I needed to get done?  Then again, I'd have a bad tendency to put my blinkers on and go.  I'd focus on what I needed to do and forget about everything else.  It meant my poor plants got overlooked in the bustle of it all.

Off I went to the local garden center of Walmart.  I know they don't sell the highest quality plants, but I was just looking for a cheap house plant.  I wasn't looking for something fancy, and they were having a lot of sales.  I was certain I could just run in, pick something up, and go about my day.  It was harder than I thought it would be.  I live in a fourplex that faces west.  There aren't many windows, which is sad because I love rooms with lots of light.  This presented a challenge because most of my favorite plants required full sun.  I finally decided I would just pick a plant to put outside on our front porch, that way I could have some flowers with some color, even if I couldn't find any good ones to put up in my house.  I found a nice partial sun plant for our west facing front porch, then went on to pick out some pansies for our living room and a hanging ivy plant for our dining room near the window.  Plans changed when we decided to get it a nicer planter, which was too big for our small ivy plant, so I splurged and got two more ivy plants to hang it over the bar top between our living room and dining room.  It was a wonderful choice as our ivy is perfectly placed there.  The finishing touch was a small "lucky bamboo" plant I stumbled upon while looking to pick up the second and third ivy plants for our planters.  I gave that to my partner because he's not very good with green things.  He doesn't have the dedication to care for a plant.

As I was looking at my ivy, I had seriously considered a different plant instead.  As I walked up on the spider plants I remembered my grandmother's kitchen.  They had spider plants hanging between all the windows.  I remember sitting in their kitchen with the sun streaming in, looking at the spider plant babies that were jumping down from the mother plant.  I thought they were the strangest looking plants ever.  I remembered the kids in the environmental class in my high school growing up spider plant babies hydroponically.  Spider plants hold fond memories for me.  They're almost as dear to me as African violets and kalanchoe.  The only reason I didn't go with a spider plant was the cost.  The ivy was cheaper.  Since then I've decided that we need to get two spider plants, one to hang on either side of the window in our dining room.

I'm now starting to understand the benefits of having plants in the house.  It's kind of nice to see something green and alive in the house.  The whole house, as much as it still looks like your average poor family's house in a neighborhood that isn't the best, looks a little less low class now.  The front porch has transformed from looking like somewhere we simply store our recycling with an old beat up outdoor love seat and a couple camp chairs.  It still doesn't look that classy, but it's a step up.  When our kitchen and dining room are clean the ivy and small bamboo make a world of difference.  Plants are known to be calming and are thought to lower blood pressure, which is also wonderful.  On top of that, they purify the air you breathe and provide more oxygen.  It may sound strange, but the house has seemed a whole lot less stuffy since we've introduced plant life into the house.

Now that I have a couple of plants, I'm starting to wonder if this is becoming a new addiction for me.  I have to admit, just the act of doing the rounds to check on all the plants is so incredibly calming.  We've had these plants for at least a couple of weeks now, and the whole process of caring for them has been wonderful.  I've already been thinking about putting plants up to frame our dining room window as well as our living room window.  I'm more excited about saving up for new plants in the house than nearly any other item of decor, such as curtains.  It's amazing how something as passed over as plants can make such a drastic change in mental perspective.

Going to other friend's houses I'm starting to notice that void.  When I see a house that doesn't have any plants it seems empty.  It seems like something is missing.  The whole house seems so much more dead and stale.  Yes, I've got house plants now and I'm never going back.

Healing from a Painful Past

This whole thing with being healthy kind of amuses me.  So many people choose to live the healthy lifestyle in action, but in truth, they just don't get it.  They eat healthy foods.  They take care of their bodies.  They use green products and try to do their part to care for the Earth.  Unfortunately, they don't really take the time to look at all aspects of their lives.  Often times vital points are forgotten, most noticeably, spirituality and emotional health.

I have to admit, I'm a person that's suffered trauma.  Who isn't these days?  Everyone has some kind of painful emotionally trying baggage of their past.  All to many people claim they've healed from it by just ignoring it, or worse, denying it ever existed.  Instead of taking the steps to recover and become whole again, they simply look to all the things they can control in their lives.

Isn't it funny that health nuts tend to be the most common people to ignore their past rather than dealing with it?  This is also the demographic that seems to have the highest percentage of people who choose to deal with those painful experiences from their past.  It's really one extreme or the other with this group!

On the outside a lot of these people who ignore the painful past tend to look like well adjusted happy individuals on the outside.  They make a good effort to look so put together.  They seem to have the model family, but just a little bit of getting to them reveals the horrible truth.  They're really carrying this painful past with them and aren't really as put together as they seem.

Thankfully, I'm starting to surround myself with those people who really are put together and committed to working pas the things in their own pasts that they wish to change.  It's a beautiful thing, to see the people you care about as healthy and whole individuals.  It's inspirational to pick up and keep on working for change.

The latest convert to this way of thinking is my own partner.  I've known he's been hiding something for a while.  It's started to come between us.  Our relationship got so bad recently that we couldn't even sleep in the same bed together.  We were on the fast track to a break up.  Finally, after talking to my friend over at Otherwise Quite Good, I decided to talk to him, figure out where our problems were, and if we were just pulling on each other to work towards different goals.  If the paths of our lives were going in two different directions, why try anymore?  We needed to figure out where we were going from here.

As it turns out, his past was still haunting him to the point where it was starting to interfere with our happiness.  He didn't want to deal with the baggage he was holding on to because he thought it was too scary for him.  It was intimidating, understandably, and he wasn't sure how to ask for help.  He wasn't sure what the next step was.  All he knew was being broken wasn't working for him, and I was getting too close.  Once someone got beyond the surface, he'd be forced to deal with it, and he didn't think he could.  Getting too close meant he wanted to run away.  We were to the point of being ready to call our relationship off when he confessed what was really bothering him.  He's now decided he's ready to take it one step at a time rather than hiding away from it all and making the hard choice to be alone in life.

It's never an easy road for anyone, but the end result is definitely worth the challenges.  We're going to work through this so we can both be happier and healthier in body, mind, and spirit.  If this road ends with taking different paths in our lives, that's what it will be.  However, we'll at least know what is taking us down different roads is nothing more than our own life path.  It won't be a decision made by the baggage we both carry with us.