Saturday is my very favorite day of the week.
I get to sleep in and wake up without an alarm. And then there's just a natural rhythm to the day that is completely pleasant, fun and pretty much all about me.
This is an enormous contrast to about a year ago when Saturday was just another work day, as was Sunday. There was no rest working for a relentless boss. I take responsibility that I set no boundaries and I've learned a lot about saying no since then. But still there were enormous expectations and insurmountable responsibility. I thought I was playing the part of a conscientious worker. I thought that was what I wanted - a Director-level position in a corporation where I was handling all the marketing responsibilities. So I guess I was making the right decisions at the time but there was literally no rest for the weary.
Also at this time last year I was plagued with a decision to end a relationship. I've been in four serious relationships in my life. I've been married once which was a complete failure, and another instance where I wish I knew then what I know now about saying no. In other words, I had no business marrying that guy or even, really, going on a 3rd date with him. The other three relationships have been great learning experiences with some OK guys. The last one, a relationship with an OK guy, was really a toughie. We got together at a time in my life when I was my most vulnerable. I didn't have a lot of support for advancing the relationship from friend to boyfriend, then to live-in boyfriend. But there was something about him that I loved deeply and I thought that would conquer all.
I don't want to trash him in my blog or even talk about him at all. This blog is about me talking about me and taking responsibility for my life. So taking responsibility, what I should have done was listen to those who weren't in favor of the relationship in the first place. It wasn't that they didn't like him, they just thought maybe I wasn't in a place in my life where I was available to make great decisions about anything. They were right. What I wound up doing was getting my act together which was necessary, important and difficult. But we didn't grow on the same trajectory. It was like he went one way and I went the other way. His choices are his choices but I learned an awful lot about keeping my side of the street clean and boundaries from this relationship. I learned that I was indeed taking responsibility for my own life which was good. But I was also taking responsibility for his life, and wanted him to grow and change, it seemed, more than he did. Ultimately he didn't change some fundamental things that made it impossible for me to continue living with him. I changed to the point where I would rather be single than live with a grown man unable to display passion for life and unable to take responsibility for his life. I don't want kids and am not a maternal person. But living with him was like living with a kid. I also felt like I was spending a lot of time picking up the slack in the relationship that I could have been spending either resting up appropriately to handle the demanding job I had, or pursuing interests of my own. It was a painful year trying to figure these things out and it's really only a year after the relationship ended that I can truly stay on my side of the street and not make the decision to break up about him.
I did the breakup in baby steps. I moved out first - that was a herculean task in and of itself and required courage and a tremendous amount of hand holding from my friends. He literally begged me not to go. Repeatedly. But his actions were incompatible with his words in terms of making any kind of sustainable change in the things that were affecting me in a negative way. It was so hollow and his attempts to control me were becoming painfully transparent. It was so sad. I think I thought at the time I moved out I'd just give myself a space outside of the relationship where I could rest properly and then we'd spend time together as a couple and everything would be fine. But literally the first time he visited my apartment and brought his big huge backpack full of crap over, and messed up the apartment within the first couple of minutes he was here, I was just totally certain of what I needed to do. A hundred years ago it was a similar situation - I had had a short relationship with someone that was intense, mostly because I was drunk the entire duration of it so there were a lot of those kinds of boozy passionate outbursts, both positive and negative, that accompany those sorts of encounters. I broke things off with him in the appropriate alcoholic way, by calling the police, and didn't hear from him again until I drunk dialed him several weeks later and he came over for ... well, you know. My life was a lot more unmanageable then and I own my poor choices as well as my good choices. I'm not perfect. But the point of tying this together with my last boyfriend (by the way, liquor is no longer a factor in my life), is that after that drunk dial encounter, this dude wanted to start the relationship over again. I woke up with a hangover and was completely sure that was a one and done situation. And he dutifully left but started up with the phone calls and whatnot again. The sex was phenomenal, as tedious a person as he was, he certainly pulled my trigger. So when he offered to come over again, this time I wasn't as drunk to receive him because I wanted my wits about me. (Oh my I have learned some things about what alcohol does to my thought process since then.) He showed up and with the haze lifted, he just didn't look right to me. And what he did was exactly what my last boyfriend did. He took his shoes off, distributed his items all over MY house, and acted like he owned the place. My reaction to both scenarios was exactly the same. Put your shoes back on, pack your shit and get out of my house. Territorial. Like a dog baring her teeth. Maybe that's bitchy (also like a dog) and it's probably wildly codependent considering I let people walk all over me until I just can't TAKE IT anymore. But sometimes we learn things quickly and sometimes things take time and pain to become clear. So my most recent boyfriend didn't last very long after I moved into this place. I wanted to wait until the Blackhawks finished their Stanley Cup run (I love sports in the same way a dude loves sports) but when I was ready, I was ready. He cried and acted confused but I was truly relieved.
That's what my life looked like a year ago. Drama caused by my own bad choices.
Today I have a reasonably peaceful life. I work at my job 9-5, Monday through Friday. Most of my responsibility is to write, which makes me deliriously happy and brings me a tremendous amount of satisfaction. The end result of my writing projects is a return in donations to actually help people. I get along with most of the people who work there. And I have enough energy left over to pursue my education, also a writing program. And then I get to teach fitness which I truly enjoy and gives me deep connection to something cosmic I can't quite articulate.
But Saturday ... SATURDAY is the best. I wake up and have some coffee. I usually have a phone chat with my Dad, we call it "having coffee together." It's the one time of the week when he's not distracted and pulled in a thousand directions by my mom or his job or my niece and nephew. I putter around the house straightening up or performing a light housework task. Then I go out and meet some friends for anywhere from an hour to three or four. Today was particularly enjoyable as we kibbutzed over salads and then shopped for rings at a punk rock place. Nothing heavy, just catching up on our lives, connecting and being important to each other in nonspecific but essential ways. I usually depart from these social encounters and come home for some quiet time. Occasionally I nap, sometimes I write, once in awhile I read. But it's just that sort of peaceful me-time that I've never given myself before. I've always either been in a relationship or too caught up with work to really sit and smell the roses. There's a scene in that hateful movie Eat Pray Love which I resent ever having watched for a second because it was so trite - although the movie was less tedious than the book, but when she's in Italy (the only time that story has any merit), she uses an Italian phrase about the sweetness of doing nothing. That's what my Saturday afternoons look like - the sweetness of doing nothing. Then around 3:45 I get my workout clothes on and head to the gym for spinning followed by a blast class where I perform the Ed McMahon function to the instructor. I do it because I'm good at it, occasionally I teach the class sort of "under the table" because the teacher has been grooming me to teach blast, is one of my best friends and had an instrumental role in helping me get on the schedule as a spinning instructor in the first place. I love showing off my high degree of physical fitness and get a charge out of performing extremely difficult and high intensity moves with ease, for an audience. Usually I have to scoot home really quick after the gym to get ready to go see a movie and have dinner with friends. Nothing ever too fancy, just fun fellowship with people I love.
It's all so pleasant, so restorative. I titled this post after lyrics in one of my all time favorite Chicago songs, which, incidentally, captures what I believe to be the "essence" of living in Chicago, as well.
I hope your Saturday was equally as enjoyable.
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