Common Denominator

I'm in a real funk lately and it is getting old and fast. There isn't much I can see right now to change things, so it is here that I come to get the garbage out of my head in hopes of atleast getting things processed on some level. Please bare with me. I'm hoping there is light at the end of this dark, dank and cold tunnel.

How honestly do you think you see your life and those in your life? Surrounding me are questions such as this, and I can't seem to escape them no matter how much I try. I'm faced with hard questions with even harder answers.

Do you ever really know someone or do you only know what he or she wants you to know? I've had this conversation a few times with a very special friend (love ya, Jane) and it is now a question weighing heavy on my mind.

I'm coming out of a 15-year marriage that has taught me many things about myself and about my ex-husband. This past year has been one filled with trials, tribulations, tears, laughter, struggles and most importantly a new appreciation of who I am as a person. I've learned I'm stronger than I could ever imagine. I'm softer than in the past, not so edgy or ready to snap. I used to think I had a good life, but I think it was all smoke and mirrors, so I've also learned to be a bit mistrusting. This mistrust is new for me and not something I'm comfortable with and hope to change.

The smoke and mirrors is bringing me back to how well you really know someone. Do I really have this Polly Anna view of the world, or my world at least that I only see what I want to see? I wonder this because I've come to find I was married to a man, boy really, that I never honestly knew and if I did, it has been years since I truly knew him. My children are in a place right now that I don't really recognize them for who I thought they were as people. I'm not pleased with the character they've shown lately. It isn't so much that they’re not doing as I want them to do, but more to the point they aren't showing the character with which they were raised. I look at this situation and am probably hardest on myself than anyone else in asking, 'Did you see only what you wanted to see?' Of the family of four that I used to be part, I'm the common denominator of all these people in thinking people not being who I thought they were. Is it me? I think maybe it is! How could 3 people be so good at smoke and mirrors that I'm convinced of one thing but it actually being something else entirely? True to pattern, and it's an ugly pattern, I take the blame and the hit for this one! It is what I do and do it well.