perspectives

Apologies for the delay - I was away climbing a mountain in Africa... my family was going to Africa anyway and I love climbing mountains, so why not!  Plus, for me, climbing (and conquering) mountains often puts my life back into perspective for me.  It gives me the time to reflect and forces me to think about and sort out all of the crap that I tend to put to the back burner... this trip was no exception.

I had a lot of time to think about Joe and I.  I missed him and, truth be told, he is the only person I could have imagined myself with on that mountain.  I couldn't understand why after all this time, all these battles, all the chaos and crazyness of it all, he walked away from it.  Then, I realized, he'd been walking away for a long time... in fact, I am not even sure if he was really ever even...'there'!  I don't mean to sound dismissive about the fact that he truly loved me, but I think he was always just as hesitant as I was about marriage together.  It's not that we didn't love each other (and I would argue that we still do), but there was always something amiss about it all...

I had no doubt that we loved each other - we shared an amazing chemistry (that I'm still not sure we'd find elsewhere)...but we fought it.  But, we both fought it...it was as if we didn't want to fully admit it was all there...

It took him almost 7.5 years to actually ask me to move forward seriously; when he did, it was over the phone, just two weeks after the most amazing weekend we had shared.  When we discussed moving forward, it was always about his job that couldn't be moved and the fact that I would have to move to Singapore and move my career prospects.  When I booked a trip to go to Singapore, he couldn't take a single day off from work to be with me...and that was in the midst of all the chaos of fighting with my parents!

As hesitant as I always was about fighting my parents about Joe, I think he was just as hesitant.  Not because we didn't love each other or think that we'd make a great couple, but for the simple reason of the amount of chaos that would ensue if we did fight for what we believed.  Perhaps we were both just wanting to avoid mayhem.  Or, as I've eluded to in the past, perhaps it was just never meant to be - our timing was always off.  We were always ready to fight when the other wasn't.  (Although, having just spoken to him for the first time in months (a week after posting this originally), somehow we ended up briefly discussing this and he still thinks that he 'was ready to anything it took to make it work'... all talk, no action???)

Many people I know (many good friends) always said that we'd end up together.  But, Joe is engaged and moving on and I am not one to break up a relationship and be that selfish.  He is happy and I will continue to move on and be happy, myself...

The biggest question that I could not answer... would I be able to see past my own barriers and fall in love again?  Hiking on that mountain, there wasn't a single Indian person there (and there were hundreds).  Was I being realistic to only look at/date Indian people?  Yes, it was important to me, but I had never actually imagined myself dating or kissing a white guy!  Could I?  Could I get past it in my own head to actually have an open enough mind to date someone other than who I had pictured myself with all these years?

Standing at the top of Africa's tallest mountain (and the world's largest free-standing mountain), it made me remember that there is soooo much more to life.   I am a small speck in the grand scheme of the universe...

I was incredibly lucky to have found my soulmate and to have shared ten incredible years with him.  He was only one person, though.  I am lucky to be surrounded by many people who love me and it's time to get back into the world of building relationships, meeting people and moving forward.