Groundhog Day

Today is Groundhog Day; the Bill Murray Murray variety when he keeps revisiting the day in a place where he does not want to be, where he amasses information and thinks about what his life is all about and finally decides to embrace his understanding of life and human consciousness to good effect, even having a Zen-like approach to life.

Bill Murray found out about people during his Groundhog days. He learned to play jazz piano. He listened into conversations about people and managed to converse with others to define who they were and what made them tick. He became fluent in French and learned how to ice-sculpt; all very interesting and worthwhile I suppose.

My Groundhog days have not left me with such obvious skills. I have not learned a foreign language, though I some ways I have or am doing so. I have not learned the mastery of being a jazz pianist but perhaps I have been learning to listen to the music of others and try and make some sense of it all.

Perhaps what I have learned during my Groundhog Days is far more valuable than the mere acquisition of skills. Perhaps what I am learning from my Groundhog days is the remarkable difficulties that come from destructive emotions not only to myself but to others who have to endure such negativity. Perhaps I have learned things about myself that I would rather have had buried in a sealed vault. Perhaps I have learned things about others that I did not wish to confront. Perhaps my Groundhog Days are not over. Perhaps I have created such havoc in my ceaseless desire to make things right that I have fucked up once too often.

But I suppose, even if I have, which I do not think has to be the case, I have still learned, I have still been through the most incredible learning curve, I have still been bashed out of my comfort zone to the extent that I have felt bereft and lost and now a new learning and a new equilibrium is ready to take its place.

All of these things are so frequently seen as negative. If I had my way, would I have experienced all of this? Well obviously, in some ways the answer would be no. It has been atrociously painful and I have felt that I had no choice in anything I did. I was utterly helpless.
I know I do have choice. I know that I have the ultimate choice but it is not one that I want or am prepared to take.

So yes, it has been incredibly painful and I would not wish this sort of anguish on anyone.

However, it had to be. At some point I always knew that it had to be. In order to come to terms with change, one has to fact facts and move with the flow. In the longer term, which I have still not grasped but am gradually doing so, there should be huge benefit to my groundhogging. There lies in front of me a wealth of opportunity from this horrendous learning experience which by default makes it far from horrendous.

Time will tell. Time as a healer? Possibly but you cannot rely on time simply healing of its own volition. Apologies are no good without action, and this works on both sides of the situation.

I have said and done things which I am extremely ashamed of and yet why should I be ashamed of them in some ways? They were how I was feeling at the time. I felt a loss. I feel a loss but the loss can turn into a gain beyond measurement, if only there is still time to do so.

And in feeling a loss, people behave instinctively – fight or flight. The persistent part of me chose to fight. I’m tired of fighting.

Nonetheless, I am still ashamed and I have to live with that.

So I turned to resignation.

And what sort of comfort or stability is there in resignation, in the “woe is me” attitude? What sustainability is there in sitting in a state of disappointment, resentment, sadness when there is absolutely fuck all you are doing about the situation?

Resignation is stagnant. It is destructive by its apathy.

Can I change the situation? No. The person who I have chosen to care about is the person that he is, and I cannot and will not simply resign to this fact. I have to do more than that and embrace it.

I have to trust him and he has to trust me.

So I am hoping that I have turned my back on resignation and hopefully changed it into something more positive; realization.

We are where we are and hopefully we can move on from there.

He knows that what has happened has hurt me. He knows that I am upset and saddened but I really have come to the point when I don’t give a flying fuck about the cause of all this angst. My envy and jealousy have to be managed. I hope he still has the respect and love for me to help me overcome this one. It is not going to be switched off like a break in an electrical circuit. There will be times when I still require some reassurance but I am not going to reach out for this for I want it to come naturally.

He knows that my hurt has been intense. He knows that in some ways, I still wish that he could stop my hurt by stopping his actions, but that would never be fair and it would suppress him in a way that I never want him to be. I want him to be him, however difficult that may be for me. I just want him to continue to be mindful of my needs and my destructive emotions and just help me through this time of significant change.

But of course, his help is in some ways periphery. It is up to me to do the main brunt of work.

Only, now I realize that it shouldn’t be work. My Groundhog days have taught me much. Pursuing an answer, a solution is as pointless as pursuing happiness. There will be days when I want to hit something with the injustice that I might feel but those days have to disappear so that I can embrace the negativity of those days and embrace the emptiness as a positive thing. Perhaps this really is the biggest lesson I have had to face in non-attachment and this is the beginning of the end of my Groundhog Days. Perhaps this really is the time when I take it on board.

Of course, ideally, I would like to return to all the positive things that he has said to me over the last month; all the commitments, all the honesty about who he is how he feels for me, what he sees as our long-term partnership – in all aspects.

I want to feel that I am an extremely important person in his life and I hope that I can show him the reality of what he wrote a mere few days ago -“I’m so very glad you are my Zenmate. Nothing else could be as inti-mate. THIS is what I was lacking in my life all those years, without even knowing it.”

And this.

“ Of course you CAN (even now) be the things that no-one else can possibly be – someone who shares with me a passion, a dream, a vision of a better future, a philosophy, a way of looking at the world, a collaborator, a soul-mate……”

I’m a fiery beast. I am a woman of passion. I am desperate for a fuck! I am even more desperate for the caring and to see the look on his face when I know that he wants nothing other than to just stop and stare and take in all the positivity of our relationship.

Time will tell.

The changes have taken place. I no longer care about the cause. I may have some ideals on that but they are no longer resignation. I only care about getting back to the whole point that none of this has to have a detrimental effect on our relationship, that none of this means there has to be dilution in his time, energy or commitment to me and our relationship, that there can only be good to come from him being more content in life. I want to get back to the possibility that there need not be any change in his feelings towards me and visa versa.

Are the Groundhog days finally over? Has the little animal finally come out from its forty plus years of hibernation to embrace the dawning of the age……?

I hope so.

I feel different today; still nervous, still worried but trying to use these in a more positive way to look at reality in a calmer and non-attached way.

As another fiery woman famously said at the end of a famous film – “tomorrow is another day”.

Dear Scarlett, I always thought I was nothing like her. Perhaps there is more truth in that character than I could ever have imagined.

But tomorrow is another day, or hopefully today is another day.

It is the last day of the month, a month that I might not have chosen as my first one in a new era but one that probably had to take place. The month is now closing today. I do not wish to close this chapter completely. We have both learned something about ourselves and others during this time. However, I do want July to be better. Please. And that please is to myself as much as others.