Camping with Consequences (Marnie)

This weekend I went camping with some friends. It's the first time I've been camping since I went backpacking with Rebound. I had never been backpacking before and Rebound basically taught me all the ropes: he checked over my gear, spent hours talking to me about how to use the wilderness as my toilet and other tricks of the trade. In the end the backpacking trip was a great experience! But it was a week later that we had "the talk"...

He's the first guy I've tried to be friends with after trying the dating thing. He took to the change very well! Probably because he had made that decision a month earlier in his subconscious mind while he started pulling away (but left me in the dark). But I'm ok with that now.

Being friends has been mostly good and very revealing as to why it's a good idea we don't focus on just each other. The more we talk, the more I agree we aren't for each other. That left me feeling really good about moving on. Don't get me wrong, I was very disappointed and very sad to lose the potential of a relationship with him (who doesn't when you are single and 37??), but in the end, it's been a good decision.

However, this trip down to the same general area, with my new sleeping bag that he helped me pick out, and all the new camping skills he had taught me left me constantly thinking and talking about him all weekend long. And that bugged me! When I talked about him, I sounded like I still had a crush on him like when we first started dating! Do I? If I weren't me, I would have thought so! And that brought me down much more than I thought - and it was almost like I was going through the loss of him again. I had to get past that relationship AGAIN. It was so annoying! I say annoying because I really thought I was well on my way to moving on to bigger and better things! And proving to myself and the world I was ready for the "right" someone to come along.

I'm sure the weekend was therapeutic for me because apparently I had some left-over processing that needed to be done to really move into the "friend" relationship. I guess I can't just tell myself when I'm done mourning over a lost relationship or make myself feel complete again after losing something that really made me happy for a time. That sucks.

It requires time. Time and conscious effort. And unfortunately, I guess I needed both.

NOW I hope I'm done!