To Be or Not to Be....that is my Question....

When I was a young girl and all the other girls were talking about how one day they would get married and have kids, I wanted to be a motion picture director and my hero was a young Steven Spielberg and a long passed Alfred Hitchcock.  My mother followed men all over the place, was the "married in six weeks woman," while tossing her daughters to the side for any man that came along.  I swore I would never be her...

Even as a teen, I wanted a boyfriend but shyness, looking too mature for my age and always being the new girl in school kept me from really dating until I was almost twenty.  Even then, I didn't imagine myself married and thought of myself as always being alone.  Then, I had my first relationship, and all the talk was that a long relationship ends in marriage...a bit of an odd terminology, don't you think?  I didn't marry....several more long term relationships...I didn't marry...Then I did marry, and the relationship still came to an end.  Throughout all of those experiences, I always worked on my career, with great success.

Now, you are probably thinking, that I didn't turn out to be my mother, and instead, I fear intimacy....I think  I turned out just like her.  I've been married many times, without walking down the aisle, and I didn't know it until after I said, to a man whom I have held a torch for about 25 years, "I'll give everything up for you....everything to be with you."  I am my mother.  I may not have mental illness and I may not have her abusive behavior, but I am my mother.

Why would anyone be willing to give up everything for one person, because why should you have to?  In a day in an age when I can run into a coffee shop to write a quick blog that can be viewed by anyone in the world, check my bills and return phone calls on two different phones....why would anyone have to give up everything, and why would I say that?  This person of 25 years had never given anything up for me and, even though he had a habit of popping up throughout the years, never had done more than just that...pop up and re-enter my life, then leave.

So, what happened to the girl who wanted to be a motion picture director?  At what point, did I go from wanting to be something to wanting to be someone else's something?  Which person is really me, the girl or the woman who covertly mimics her mother's behavior with men and relationships?  Are they both me, or am I trying to force myself into the mold of a woman in a relationship and not really meant to be in a partnership, unless there is a payroll attached?  Is it a good thing to be on your own, or do I want intimacy and not have the skills to maintain it?  Ah....to be or not to be with someone....that is the question.....I really want the answer...