This is from Disney’s Robin Hood, one of my very favorite movies. My college roommate and I watched it at least 348595739323 times. Seriously.
Does anyone remember how Maid Marion responds?
All the laughs this movie has given me, this phrase sticks with me the most. Because I live this and I have learned that, for me, absence does not make the heart grow fonder.
Marriage is hard. It takes work. I do not believe in happily ever after.
I believe in love. I believe in communication. I believe in building relationships and that the roller coaster of life can make this difficult.
I don’t mind being alone. I like it. I need to be alone. I will happily slip into my own world whenever given the chance. And when I’m alone too long…it’s harder for me to go back to the relationships in my life.
My heart grows forgetful.
But, after a while, it starts to ache.
I suddenly need someone to be close to me, to love me, to make me feel loved…and I find that I don’t have the skills to make it happen.
Like I said…forgetful.
I fall deeper into a dark hole…maybe I’m not worth loving, maybe no one cares, maybe so many things. Bad things.
I scream at myself to fight for myself. To talk. To say all the things out loud. To crawl out of the dark place.
It comes down to one thing. I have to love myself enough to fight for me.
Back in my twenties, well, I barely knew me. I didn’t function well in the real world. It wasn’t a fact of traveling the path I was on…I couldn’t even see a path. All the things I didn’t know…makes my head spin.
In my thirties, I gained a bit of strength, learned what I wanted to be and where I might fit in the world. I had kids who needed me to do real world things. I finally found an independent me.
Now in my forties, I like me much better, though the self-worth problems still haunt me. But, dude, if I want something done, I’ll do it. I have places I go. People to see. I have a life, a purpose.
Leaving me alone when I was twenty-something, meant leaving a shell. I was nothing without someone else. I waited to be alive.
In my thirties, I pulled away from that.
Now, if you leave me alone too long…I’ll be me. I’ll dive into my world and disappear, happy in me, in not having to live up to anyone else’s expectations.
But my life is not just me. I chose to get married and have kids. They are part of me too. Getting married in your early twenties when you don’t really know yourself means stepping into a roller coaster car and not being able to see the tracks. You have no idea how much you will change. When I was a kid, I thought I’d hit some magic age… twenty-something…and BINGO be happy, have a life, know who I am.
Well, no. That’s the real shocker when you “grow-up”. You don’t ever grow-up. You don’t ever know everything. You don’t ever reach a point in your mental growth and say, “Great. I made it.”
And this post got a bit rambly. Welcome to my mood for the day. This should end well.
Anywho…
Absence. Makes my heart forgetful. Makes me question. But it also makes me remember to fight, for me and for the relationships that are important to me.
So I push past the forgetful, to seek out and strengthen the relationships I need to have. We weren’t put on this planet with all these other people to be alone.
