Burning bridges

I guess we all have baggage from our lives, and we add to them gradually as we move toward the end, in what at times seems an ever accelerating speed. Some of that baggage is useful of course, as at times it can provide us with the knowledge and experience to tackle a problem presented to us.

Every morning as I brush my teeth I am reminded by my reflection that I am getting older, hopefully wiser, and that it is highly likely I am nearer the end than the beginning. In my last blog I talked about seizing the day, and the variety and lack of free time in my life is certainly in keeping with this. But I often stop and wonder what it's all about. How worthwhile anything we do actually is. Like a lot of people I tend to get irate at the smallest things, and more often these days. If I just stopped and thought for a moment I'd probably realise that actually it's just not that important. And how much of the perpetual desire to be constantly busy is really an excuse or a tactic for avoiding getting emotionally involved with someone.

A while back you may recall I mentioned a love interest. It was a great time, albeit only lasted 4 weeks. Actually it was longer than that, as latterly we were messaging each other on our mobiles or MSN.

What seemed to be happening though, is I was playing it from the point of view of looking for love, for an outlet for my strong romantic side. In return what I was hearing was a need for something very casual, and that's not what I want. Maybe I played it too strong, as I am apt to do, wearing my heart on my sleeve as I do, impatient. Who knows, but it was becoming obvious we were never going to meet again.

It may have only been four weeks or so, but it was a wonderful four weeks.

It's funny when I think about it now, because when we met I had actually been going to meet someone else. I was also in the wrong frame of mind as I had been bitten badly in the past at the hands of another, and I am now quite cynical about relationships, so in a way I was going along with a mind to resisting, to prove myself right. Which is weird I know, but that's how it was. So the person I was to meet introduced me to someone else, and we ended up chatting instead, and things went from there.

Sometimes you can meet your destiny on the road you took to avoid it.

My last, for want of a better word, "relationship", was nothing short of a disaster, and those who know me will remember the living hell she put me through, without any admission of guilt from her when it all finally, thankfully, ended. But it was me who prolonged it, and I should have walked away much earlier back then. So this time I decided, painful though it was, to cut loose.

I am now once again on my own, and happy to be so for the time being. Cutting contact was difficult, but it didn't appear to be that big a deal for them. They were my first romantic encounter since the relationship from hell, and certainly helped to put that back into perspective. I'm hopeful that I've opened the door again for someone who will be more right for me.

I guess one of the hardest things in life is knowing which bridges to cross and which to burn.