I haven’t changed, but I am not the same.

I was watching a tv show the other day and the premise of the show was that their son had been kidnapped.
It was painful to watch just because the content alone is the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. The moment that grabbed me was when the once loving couple turned on each other. The husband looked at his wife and said, “This is your fault.”
My heart broke because that is the reality of what normally happens.  When something horrible occurs, either you bond together as a team or you turn on each other.
Over watching something is not uncommon for me.  I thought about the moment she looked at her husband and he said those words to her and everything in their lives that lead them to that point.  Did she ever believe when she was safe in his arms that someday he was going to turn against her?
When you allow someone into your life you have to wonder how they would react in a time of crisis.  If the thought, “She’s going to leave me if….” Probably means that person won’t be allowed to get too close to you. I know as a woman that feeling of ‘safe’ is the greatest feeling in the world.

I was never attracted to the bad boys.  My first boyfriend wasn’t attractive to me until I saw the other side to his personality. That fiercely loyal side.  I knew when I told him my secrets and opened up to him that it wouldn’t ever be used against me.  For the most part, he did a pretty good job of it.  Being the ‘bad boy’ and also being someone I know would walk through fire for me (or in his case, thrown THROUGH the fire by one of my girlfriends) wasn’t always easy.  When it came down to ‘it’, that critical moment, those make or break times, he didn’t let me down.  I never questioned it because I didn’t know those ‘it’ times existed.  I was a teenager and the worst of our worries were if we were going to have a ride to the party we were going to that weekend.

When I married Dan there wasn’t a question either.  I never thought there would come a time when I would lose my mind and I was always there for him anyway.   As it turned out, our ‘it’ times came frequently. Many times I was the one that wanted to walk away.  There was a point in my pregnancy that I was pretty sure that he would have given birth for me if it would make me feel more safe.   He did all he could, but the end result is that I didn’t feel safe and needed to find someone that was on Team Kristine and if I couldn’t find that person I would just have to enjoy the rest of the time I had learning how to make myself feel safe.

I did learn a lot in between my first and second marriage.  I figured out the types of people I wanted in my life and types that I could do without. Personality traits that I were deal breakers and things that you overlook because the whole of the picture is bigger than the flaw.
When I finally decided to remarry again I was pretty certain the whole picture was better than the flaws, the personality traits were something that I loved and the overall feeling of knowing that I had finally found someone on MY side and ‘safe’ wasn’t even a question.   I was Fort Knox safe.

That show, when the wife looked up from the teddy bear she was holding and looked into his eyes and said, “you’re blaming me?” and you see that at that moment there is no going back.  That man she had chosen to keep her safe that she never felt would turn on her was.  I could feel her throat close in, because mind did watching it.

As I reevaluate my choices, I think about where I went wrong and how to avoid that pitfall in the future.  What was the one thing that would have tipped me off?   Yes, the neon banner  and marching band should have been enough, but again TH E BIG PICTURE was more important.
Maybe that is where this is getting me to, “The Big Picture”.
An old friend use to talk about cosmic consciousness.  It seems like lately I have been hearing things that I am finding pertain to this path that I am skipping along down.  For example I heard that women statically are attracted to certain features in men.  They may not be aware of them and clearly each woman is different, but they want symmetrical features, smaller feet,  long legs…Okay, I just realized that the studies that I was looking at is pointing to the fact that women should just be attracted to women!
Anyway, the thing is, I keep hearing things that lead me to believe that there is a certain ‘type’ I look for.  If you were to look at my track record you would say, “I finally understand why she picked Random and Odd to be her online name!”  there is nothing visually common between ALL of them.   I’m thinking that personally I am attracted to is someone that will be there in those ‘it’ moments and will still be there long after the walls have fallen. The thing is, the one I thought would…didn’t.  So where does that lead me?  I realize that looking at the relationship I am in right now is pointless because what I believed to be the ultimate safe wasn’t.

There is no way to avoid being with someone and not having the ‘it’ moments.  Closing myself off to caring if that person will be there will just make me bitter and mean.

I thought by now I would have it all figured out.  The only thing I do know is that in those moments I need to know that *I* am there and no matter how bad it gets, I can’t really leave myself and it does me no good to be the one that turns on myself and make myself feel worse.