You enter in a whirlwind of flowers
Confetti, white satin and golden rings
Having pledged your forevers
Nothing else matters – for now your heart
Is full of all the goodness life brings
But somehow, you have to learn to play your part
And when the goalposts change or disappear
And you stumble on the ever-shifting ground
That this is love, lived out, and feeling more like fear
Because there are no two ways – you’re in the trap
And left to wonder, if only you had found
Out about all this beforehand, before ‘no going back’
If you could have forseen – known the future first
Would you still have gone through with it?
Would you be alone now – would that be worse?
Or would you still have picked the heartbreak route
Of shattered expectations, broken dreams and shit-
Storms, one after the other; your wonderings moot
Because in the end, love is what it is
Filled with pain and hurt and disappointment
Tearing at the heart you’ve designated his
Yet in the silver linings, there is Good to see
You make things work because of your commitment
And in the end, there’s wonder, and it still feels ‘meant to be’.
The Well Tempered Bards 
This is wonderful, Lizzi. And speaks exactly what it’s like. For some, anyway. 🙂
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Yup. All I know, really.
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hmmmm…. yeah. I know what you mean. I have asked myself as well… about doing it again despite what I now know would happen… yup… I would do it again…. you know, Im sure. Sometimes the tough roads are worth traversing to get to the really special ones.
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Ack. On the whole, I think I would, too. That bugs me sometimes.
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I hear ya. Sigh.
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Having actually realized the “alone” part, no, I’ll not say it is worse. I’ll go with “equally shitty in different ways”. I enjoy my solitude, but not always the lonely. I enjoy having the bed to myself and miss feeling the warmth of someone I love next to me. It is a catch 22 indeed, but in the end, I will do it again because I believe in it. Love is too powerful a feeling to be easily discarded and I have faith that it will find me again. Somehow. Somewhere, even if it finds a way to hurt me a few more times before it’s over.
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That, right there. That’s why, I guess. *sigh* It matters too much, doesn’t it. Yet I guess we all get stuck into a ‘grass is greener’ or (at the very least ‘that grass over there is DIFFERENT’) kind of a place at times. *hugs*
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Yes. God, yes. And your response to Zoe. Yes.
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*hugs*
Silver lining – we all have each other to commiserate with, and we all UNDERSTAND.
Together we’re stronger, innit.
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This makes me wish I could look into the hubby’s mind and wonder how would he answer those questions down deep. Is he happy with the love he chose so long, long ago or would he rather have someone he didn’t have to take care of. To button my pants when I can’t, to tie my shows when I’m not able or would he rather have someone whole but who couldn’t dare love him as much. I wonder….
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The thing is, in the end, these questions are unanswerable and tie us in knots. It’s his behaviour and choices now, which count. Look to those 🙂
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In this light, I tell my daughter to make sure she is ga-ga in love before making a commitment, because it where’s thin if the ga-ga part isn’t there in the beginning, it will never last through the changes. (More for women than men, I think)
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I think different things work for different people. I’ve never been gaga. It was a considered decision. Obviously a lot of warmth and love, but never really giddy.
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I was ga-ga and it has helped through the thirty years of ups and downs. Always getting back to that when things are tough.
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That’s good 🙂
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wears, not where’s OY!
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The only ones I would do again are the ones which resulted in children. I don’t do pain well, as you probably have noticed…
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Ah but I guess it all leads to the person you are today, and I like that chap.
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You’re right, it does, but choosing to crumble again is not high on my list of priorities. You’ve seen me crumble. It ain’t pretty.
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Fair point. And one I agree with – you don’t have to repeat past actions – I’m not suggesting that. We’d all prefer to be ‘better’ versions of ourselves, I reckon, but we are who we are, and as long as we have friends and good work to do, we’ll be alright.
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Indeed. I’m still getting used to this detached sobriety, too.
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It’ll get there. You’ll get there. We all will, in the end.
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Well, that’s not cryptic at ALL.
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I’m not sure I agree with you. Because to be able to work through something, through the tough times, it takes two souls who are willing to do it. And my ex wasn’t exactly willing to. And it’s hard enough living in an abusive marriage without having to think you’re guilty of breaking an unbreakable bond by thinking about getting out.
But I suppose what you experienced is what happens in most marriages. 🙂
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But it’s a great poem, making me think, which is what I like 🙂
And it is indeed a catch 22 because I’m now alone. And I too would like to have someone next to me when I go to bed at times, and someone to hug me when I wake up 🙂
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Yes – the catch 22 is that we’ll never know unless we take the path, and as long as we’re on this one…*sigh*
It’s never easy, and I guess we just have to look for the silver linings and hope we made the right decisions. I hope that you find someone to hug you when you wake up.
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You are right, we never know until we decide to take the other path. Which is why so many people stay in their abusive or unhappy marriages.
I think we need to look at it in a slightly different way. We shouldn’t hope we made the right choice. We should KNOW that, at any given moment, we ARE making the right choice for us at that time.
Whether because it is indeed the thing that will make us most happy in the end, or whether it is because we are not ready to face the challenges of the other path. And, writing this, I’m thinking maybe I should take my own advice 😉
Thank you.
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I’d still suggest that people make wrong choices and then learn through their mistakes, otherwise it’s rather an all-encompassing ‘off the hook’ for whatever behaviour they exhibit. It might be true to say that however people behave in the moment is explainable because of the circumstances surrounding that moment and the history leading up to it, but I wouldn’t say that necessarily equates to the right choice.
I hate when I start giving advice I *know* I should apply to my own life. Never easy.
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Yes, that’s what I meant with my comment. You make a choice and learn from it. When you’ve learnt enough, then you can move on to a different lesson. It was the rigth choice for you at that moment in time because you hadn’t learnt the lesson yet 🙂
And I totally understand hating to give advice you know you should apply to your own life. This is exactly what I did. I mean, come on, when will I forgive myself for making the choices I made, for not listening to what my heart was telling me 10, 20 years ago?
Somehow, I have to believe we’ll make it through 🙂
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Well, I guess we all have to live with the consequences of our actions, whether they’re mistakes or inspired, genius choices or whatever. It sucks though…and certainly you’d find life easier if you could forgive your former self.
Which is where I shut up, having just run afoul of offering advice I cannot apply to my own self. My goodness!
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Yes, I shoudl probably go to bed too before I start writing things I regret later (not directed at you, but at me, right?). I can’t even type without typos anymore. Time for bed, definitely!
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Lol. Bless your boots! Sleep well
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I don’t think it’s EVER okay to remain in an abusive marriage. This poem was entirely autobiographical, and never intended to apply to anyone else’s relationship. I know people who’ve had incredibly happy, very blessed marriages, and who have never come across the stumbling blocks and challenges I have, and I’ve known people whose lives have been turned into travesties by their marriages…this one was just for me.
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Don’t worry, I didn’t take it as you telling us how to live our lives, I wasn’t offended. I just felt the need to pour my thoughts, the thoughts that arose from reading your poem, into a comment. I’m sorry if I made you feel bad, it wasn’t my intention.
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Nooo I just wanted to make sure it was really clear that I wasn’t suggesting that anyone should ever stay in an abusive relationship. I’d not interpreted the poem that way and it was useful feedback to think that it *could* be 🙂
I really like that you poured out your thoughts, and that my poem made you think so much 🙂 feel FREE. Really. Poetry’s meant to do that kind of thing.
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