No Gas, No Ass!

Often times, we learn our successes through failure.  Had you asked me this several years ago, I would have disagreed as I was raised to ‘play it safe’ and avoid taking chances.  It may be decision as critical as how we spend our money, what career we choose or what car we decide to purchase.  On the other hand, there are those trivial decisions such as what we are going to wear, what we will do on Saturday night or what kind of milk we buy.  Whatever the decision is, we always want to choose our best option, the choice that will cause us the most satisfaction, give us the most bang for our buck and the least regret.  At least that had always been my theory on life.

Funny how certain things occur and truly change your realm of thinking.  When it comes to relationships, I have had my fair share.  Although not all have been long-term, they have all affected me and somehow altered my thought process in some way.  Sometimes we let life jade us by the negative experiences we encounter and the perceptions that come from them.  What is important however is that we take something positive from every experience and utilize that to better ourselves in our future relationships.

Let me give you an example of this…  Several years back I ended a very destructive relationship with a person who possessed an addiction that truly devastated him, his family and at the time myself.  I truly thought I loved this person and wanted so much to help or ‘fix’ him.  It was quite some time before I realized that this was not going to be possible.  In turn, I allowed his addiction to control me, become my purpose in life.  Day in and day out I concocted plans of how I could change him, show him a better way, inspire him…  I held on to a time that I had remembered, a time that really never was.  A time that things seemed to be perfect and we were happy.  I fed into the words he spoke to me even though they were not true.  I wanted to believe that he meant them, it was all I had to believe in but his actions suggested something very different. I had been living with this person.  My family thought the world of him and leaving him was not an option, at least not until I exhausted all others.  I couldn’t face the embarrassment of failure. I had to make it work.