Plant Your Own Rose Garden

Where to begin? Many of you have read about my divorce. You’ve read about my pain, my happiness, my desires. All this ‘my, my, my’ almost makes me sick, but it is a blog about me after all, so I beg your forgiveness. I really am not this narcissistic. Usually, my time and energy is spent towards taking care of and worrying about others. Which – is how I find myself in this predicament. If I had put myself first, my needs first, my desires first, my dreams first, I wouldn’t be married and divorced twice. I wouldn’t be without a job. Who the hell knows where I would really be, but it wouldn’t be here.

Someone once asked me, “If you and your child had fallen out of a boat, who would you save first?” Some may answer, “I would save my child”, but this is the wrong answer. You can’t save someone when you yourself are drowning. Now to say I’m drowning would be a bit melodramatic, but I think you get my point. I am useless to help others, to be an inspiration, to radically change the world if I am not taking care of and protecting myself. I have to come first. And the very act of my selfishness will enable me to help the very people I love the most. It is through selfishness I can show my unselfish heart.

And thinking along the lines of “saving” myself, I had a realization. I’ve been waiting, and wanting, some man to waltz into my life and give me all the things I always wanted. Whether it is affection, or excitement, or gifts, whatever it may be – I’ve been waiting. And when they come with their gifts and their silver-tongued selves proclaiming love and all that other nonsense, I have no ability to see beyond the outer acts. I accept them. Even when they are full of crap. I’ve longed for flowers, for romance, for wine, for dinners, for travel, for words, for someone to cherish me the way I always hoped someone would cherish me. I’ve watched the romantic movies and read the books about how love should look and feel and be.

What I should be doing is giving it to myself. So that, when a man comes with questionable intentions and offers me these things, I don’t feel the need to accept. Because these are the things I can, and do, give myself. I’m not impressed by the mere act of some man giving me roses because I’ve already planted the garden right outside and have the ability to walk out my door and cut my own flowers and put them in a vase. From myself, for myself. I’m not overly impressed when a man tells me I am special, because I already know and tell myself just how special I am.

So when the man comes, the right man, the one who would really love me – it is him, and only him, that will matter. I won’t be won over by tricks or deception because I will have the strength, the sense and the perception to see what is false and what is real. I won’t be dazzled by the drama, the romance of it all. It won’t be new.

I’ll buy my own ring, read (and write) my own books, treat myself to fabulous dinners, read poetry to myself and know within myself I am deserving and special and beautiful and worthy.

And when he comes, when the man I’ve always wanted arrives, the only thing necessary for him to show me is his heart. For his heart will be the only thing I can not give myself.