Lessons Learned

Every chapter in your life contains a lesson or lessons that needs to be learned. I think I just finished another chapter and learned some extremely valuable lessons.

You know "they" say, whoever they are, to never make someone your everything because when they leave you are left with nothing.

Lesson 1: Thats not true.
When you love someone with your entire heart they become the center of your world. You do anything and everything to make them happy, laugh and smile. There's nothing wrong with that. The thing you must know is that if things don't work out, your life is not over. She's gone, but I'm still here and while at times I may be lonely and hurting because she's not calling me and telling me that she loves me, I have an obligation to MYSELF. When she came into my life I was strong, independent and intelligent. Now she's left out of my life and I owe it to myself to once again be strong, independent and intelligent ON MY OWN. Which takes me to

Lesson 2: COMPLETE YOURSELF FIRST
Your relationship will ALWAYS fail if you're looking for someone to complete you. I've learned this with my last relationship. If you aren't happy with yourself, you honestly can't expect someone else to be happy with you. If where you are in your life does not make you happy, if you look in the mirror and smile don't smile at yourself, don't be surprised when they aren't happy and don't smile at you. See my thing is this, I always go into a relationship with half of a heart expecting that person to give me half of theirs to complete my own. The issue with that is that one of us will always die, metaphorically speaking of course. If you give me half of your heart, what do you have left to live with? I may feel complete but you're half empty, how long can you last like that? Not long. Never again will I go into a relationship expecting someone to give me half of who they are. I have learned that I need to go in 100% committed to me, complete in myself. When you want someone to complete you sometimes you can be overwhelming and whenever they mess up it hurts you more than it should because you're attached to that person. I don't ever want to be dependent on someone else to make me happy. I have always been able to make myself smile.

Lesson 3: Keep yourself happy.
When you're miserable, your relationship is miserable. This comes from anything, trust issues, distance, homework, stress, family... anything that directly influences your mood can put a damper on your relationship. In my case, when you have two people who dream, breathe and live success, your relationship will fail because you are both over achievers in everything but "us". In time you begin to forget about "us", "we", "together", "relationship", "our happiness" and "quality/us time" and begin thinking more about, "me", "myself", "alone", "friendships", "my happiness" and "me time". Once this happens, there's really no turning back. In April right around my birthday I found out my now ex-girlfriend was flirting with women on the internet. That's about the time that "me-time" became more important that "us-time". That's about the time that my mind threw in the towel and said I quit. I was miserable... and in turn my relationship became a jail house for both of us. For her because I didn't trust her to go out, talk to people, use that specific website, or even leave her house. For me because I couldn't trust my girlfriend and because of that I felt trapped in love. I felt like I loved her so much but I was hurting so bad. My love kept me tied to her even though I was crying myself to sleep at night. I was miserable. My relationship was miserable.

Lesson 4: Never change yourself or your friends for your relationship
It's impossible to be happy with someone who wants to change things about who you are. In the beginning of my last relationship, she hated my dreadlocks. She talked about them something awful and even had the nerve to sniff them on our first date. That hurt my feelings intensely but instead of calling the entire relationship off, I combed my locs out. They were my pride and joy, I had nursed them like my babies watching them develop and grow from comb coils to beautiful sun kissed locs. I don't regret taking them down today, I've seen that we live in an extremely discrimination based society and women with locs aren't looked at or taken as seriously as a woman with a press and curl. There were things I didn't like about her and I changed them. In time I got her out of some of her ways, I should have never changed them, I should have walked away. She had an issue with me having male friends. When we started our relationship a majority of my friends were male. They looked at me as a little sister that hung out with the guys (mostly because the girls pissed me off). That's who I've been my entire life. I've been the girl who chills with all the guys but has their respect and gets the dirt on ALL the hoes LOL. I lost a lot of friends for that relationship, that should have never happened.

Lesson 5: Look before you leap
Never get in a relationship with someone to figure out who they really are along the way. Know that person, their values, beliefs and mannerisms ahead of time and that will probably keep you from going through Lesson 4. I was with this woman for a year and for some reason she still thought I was flashy and expensive when I'll take a pretty stone of the beach over a diamond any day... Ha! It tickles me to see how much I must really mean. People please if you don't do anything, just look before you leap.

So while I sit here thinking about the past year of my life, I can say that I learned a lot of lessons and I improved in many ways. I began to focus on my classes, making Academic Honors all year but I also missed out on a lot of girls nights, sleepovers in each others rooms and just hanging out because she didn't like that. When we broke up she said she wanted to be free... It hurt but as I was pleading for us to work things out, I realized... I just want to breathe. To my own beat. My own rhythm. My own style.

I wanted to be Victoria Ashley and not "represent" her in the process. It's no fun being "tied down" because that's exactly what you are. We suffocated each other in our own ways and all I can say is that I AM ME. I AM FREE AND IT FEELS SO DAMN GOOD TO BREATHE.


.An Inspired Mind.

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