The only permanent relationship

I’ve always been the rock. I’ve been the one people go to for advice when their life takes a turn towards confusion. As a result, when I need advice, some of the people who have heard my Confucian wisdom the longest just shoot it back to me verbatim.

In the end, there is one piece of advice that is the ultimate be-all, end-all, golden, A-number-1 rule that I tell people to live by: In the end, there’s only one relationship you’re guaranteed to have for life: the one between you and yourself.

This advice applies to everything. Basically, while other people are important, in the end, you have to be able to respect yourself and be able to look at yourself in the mirror every day. You need to do what you need to do to get through the day.

The thing is, I’ve never been very good at following my own advice. Much to my own determent, I’ve spent my life forgetting to take time for me and make sure I can look at myself in the mirror. I’ve been everybody’s rock and pushed my own emotions aside.

I’ve gotten better at that, but the way this advice first came to be – while it has become a proverbial cure-all – had to do with relationship issues friends had. I tried to get people to realize that a relationship won’t do anything for you personally unless you have your own stuff in order. You cannot live with someone else until you can live with yourself. It’s basically a variation on the ‘you cannot love someone else until you love yourself’, but I don’t believe that – I think you can love someone else without loving yourself and you can love someone else more than you can love yourself. In fact, I’m sure I’ve done both of those things. But I digress.

So why is it that I have so much trouble accepting this in my own fate? I’ve been lying to myself an awful lot lately, telling myself that I am okay with myself when, while I am okay with myself, I’m not as okay with myself as I need to be. I’ve been telling myself that I’m great as long as I have my little 2-inch stuffed dog ready to be in my pocket for when I need him. And I am great with my unnamed dog, but I shouldn’t need him. I should be great without him. (NB: Man is he worn out and in bad condition for a dog I’ve only had since the beginning of may. He used to have what I could describe as a cowlick, but he’s been pet so much, he only has a dark spot where the fur is almost worn out from my thumb.)

I look at the relationships I’ve had in the past that I thought would be or could be permanent, and I see how they faded. Truth is, some of them I convinced myself would pick up right where they left off, but things happen to make that not possible at times. Sometimes as much as I’ve wanted to keep someone in my life, they’ve had other ideas, and I cannot change that. Sometimes I’ve thought that a break is a good thing and when geography would allow for us to reconnect, we would – but other people get in the way. New relationships forge that keep me locked out.

And I have to deal with that. Because I’m living proof that the only thing that is guaranteed to last is exactly what I’ve always feared: my relationship with myself.

I’m a good guy, though. I guess if I have to be stuck with someone, I could do a hell of a lot worse.