Read Think & Write

…an ongoing writing theraphy…

• 2017/ The end of a year is always a good time for me to contemplate my relationships. I am blessed with two healthy kids and a wonderful wife. My parents are still alive and I like to spend time with them. My mother in law is a very kind person and our kids are happy to spend time with their grandparents. Family has become more and more important to me. I have good friends around but I like to spend my time more and more with my family. I value the time with my close family nowadays a lot more than I did it a few yers ago. I still have the same old good friends, some friendships date back to kindergarten, but I really don’t care so much anymore to be with them. I struggle to admit that but I prefer to be with my family instead of them. Most of the time I prefer to be with my wife and my kids and I like to spend a great amount of my time alone reading and writing. Sometimes I feel sad about that. I feel sad that I do not longer have the desire to be with my friends and share my life with them. I see them sharing their lives with new friends on facebook. I do not have the energy to do social media stuff. I feel even sadder when I am with them and have the desire to be alone. What happened to me? Why do I feel this way? I see my friends still meeting each other for dinner and I am happy not to be there. Is this just temporary or will this trend continue? If so, where will it end? Are we going to lose our friends? It all comes down to the way you behave and communicate your desire to be alone. You have to explain your shift in your behavior. They don’t know that you still love them but prefer to spend more time alone. They just see you sitting alone in your house and not inviting anyone anymore. This must be strange to them. They don’t know how to deal with your new behavior. It is possible that they see it as an offense against them and they start to interpret all your actions in that new light. This further divides you from your good friends. It complicates all communications. Make the first move and explain yourself.
• June 2018/ Just read the paragraph above. I feel different. We had a lot of wonderful days and nights with our friends this year and I really enjoyed it. I don’t know exactly what changed but I really feel different. I feel good and I know that I can be alone and with my friends. Not at the same time of course but one thing does not exclude the other. There are times when I prefer to read or run alone and there are times when I enjoy to be with friends. I really made some progress in not seeing things as black or white. I started to become more moderate. At least I am trying. I really love to be a happy person and to make people happy around me. I am an optimist and I try to send this message. I try to make people feel good. That is when I am feeling good. I have great friends and we live in a fantastic place with great and supportive people. It is a wonderul community.
• April 2020 / A lot has happend since then. I still agree with my last words. However, my life is different. 2019 was a bad year for my marriage. Without the kids we may have got devorced? I was selfish. I was doing only what is good for me and I am still on that path but at least I think more about it and I try to find a solution. I guess it will take time and is not only in my hands. That is not true, I can change again if I try. I am not trying hard enough. I love my life as it is somehow. It is different and I am no longer sad as in 2017. At least I am alive and I live life to the fullest again. I will review this again in a few month. At the moment is crisis modus (corona) and we can’t say what will be in a few weeks.
• July 2020 / Crisis is not over but we can be out with friends again. A lot of people are still working from home. Nothing changed since April. It only got worse in my marriage. Summer vacation was pretty bad. We do not connect anymore. She is angry and sad and I am quiet and on my own. I do not know how to change this situation.