While on
what can be a very long journey indeed, the one of job hunting or trying to
create a job for myself if nobody will give me one, I found that I was asking
myself, perhaps not surprisingly ‘Where exactly am I headed, what is it that I
want…indeed how will I know when and if I arrive ?
Oddly
enough I don’t necessarily think that success ….’Is being ‘happy’. Even if we
have the security of enough money to pay the bills, therefore secure housing,
good health and a great family and friends, happiness is not a permanent state.
We can all have a bad day, even the most successful of us.
I think it
can involve meeting some of our goals that we set ourselves at various points
in our lives. I mean, I do believe that because I hoped for it so much, I would
have considered myself more successful had I been happily married and had
children, however, that didn’t happen but it doesn’t mean my life is a complete
failure, it means instead that we move the goalposts and life can still be a
success, just differently to how we first planned and imagined it. This
suggests that success is a point we can be always travelling to, and comes in
stages rather than somewhere where we arrive, then stop like on the bus.
Success too is a very relative concept, what is successful, or at least feels
it for us might not be success at all to people we come into contact with. This
can be very difficult and painful for us when we feel, or indeed are made
painfully aware that we have not met the hopes and wishes that someone had for
us, when they cared for us very much, like a family member or a friend who
feels that we have let them down. This can have very serious consequences
because trying to put it right, make amends can result in a situation even worse….
Many years
ago, I had been very much cared for by an older woman at the church I attended,
who along with her family did everything she could to ease my situation and
life made stressful for me by difficult family circumstances. However, she
truly believed that the answer to every woman’s problems was a husband.
Actually, I admit to perhaps these days being a bit old fashioned in this
respect, because I do feel that a happy marriage can be one of the most
enriching and beneficial things for a
woman. However, I also have come to the conclusion that it truly is a state not
intended for every woman, and there can be no bigger mistake than to try to
force it by settling for whoever comes along, or happens to be available just
so that you can get married. Sadly, this person died without ever having seen
me married and I felt a huge sense of failure at having somehow let her down,
and that I had not come up to the mark.
Many, many
years later, in spite of some might have thought the odds having been stacked
against me, I had bought a home, which was something that my parents didn’t
even consider they had a right to aim for, and it was their lot in life to be
lifelong renters, and I had achieved some considerable professional success. I
had always wanted to teach, and did have the potential for university, however,
family circumstances prevented further education. This is what I mean by the
fact that success can very often mean having to adjust to a detour in out lives
from what we first planned, and I had been a pretty successful nursery
nurse...in fact life was good.
Then I
along with some engineered assistance from the elderly match maker…met HIM!!
The one. Come to think of it he had obviously moved the goalposts a bit too
because he had been a qualified structural engineer but after a history of
health problems was driving a mini bus for a local charity…regarding the
‘health ‘problems’ I took the view of a
good Christian girl ..There but for the grace of God go I
Actually,
there had been several the ones, when I was younger and might indeed have lived
the dream of husband and babies, but I had always known that I would have to
pay for my own wedding, which I was not in a position to do when I was younger,
and perhaps most of all I avoided every chance of marriage, and I certainly had
the chances, because I dreaded having to introduce my intended to my mother who
would consider it her duty to inform him of the big mistake he was making and
while I was living in bed sits complete with elderly landlady I could never
risk any relationship ending up with me pregnant, And quite likely homeless.
Needless to say either from me getting rid of them as soon as a relationship
became serious or them being a bit fed up with the virginal church goer, I
either avoided or missed the married state
I started
worshiping at my new local church and met another elderly lady (several in
fact) determined to find ‘a lovely woman like me’ as she was telling everyone I
was… a husband. I admit I needed very little encouragement, a weakness for tall
dark and handsome men saw to that, and at ‘six feet three’ to my ‘five two’, he
certainly met the bill. So much so that I even managed to kid him as well as
myself that a healthy preference for fish and chicken over burgers meant that
like him I was a vegetarian!! Six months later, with the elderly match maker
having survived a near death experience which involved the tall dark husband to
be and myself taking care of her, and her insisting that we must hurry up and
get married because she wasn’t going to see Christmas…she was giving me away
and I was married, no longer having to worry about paying for the wedding…as I
said a little earlier life was good for me, true I had to pass on some goals
but I was doing Ok, and the church and his mother all helped….
Six weeks
later I was on my own, still the virginal church goer… and six years later saw
me in poor health, no longer fit enough for my career and on benefits, up to my
eyes in debt and coming out of the marriage penniless, in order to avoid going
to court for a financial split decided by a judge…Where I would have had to
sell the flat I had worked so hard to achieve owning in order to give my ‘husband’ in name only (
and I shall leave the facts to your own conclusions) his half share, to which
in spite of only having shared a home together for six weeks he was entitled..
At the time
of the marriage I was already 41, children were no longer a reasonable
certainty on my part and a definite no no, on the part of my beloved …I had
struggled for many years to achieve the financial security I had with the
purchase of the flat and money in the bank and in all considered sensibility.
In hindsight of course…I really believe that I should have protected my assets
and remained single…marriage for me was just not meant to be.
My
experiences, really have made me consider that success has to consist of goals
which are set by, and yes, adjusted too, when and if necessary by you yourself.
I have come to the conclusion that this is right because only you really know
your circumstances and what is actually even possible and or sensible or you in
those circumstances. I do not really see how other people can say what the
right signs of success are for someone else. It is true that the media defines
success and gives us blueprints of what it should be, but for example, for a
person with special needs it can be that getting and holding down a job of any
kind at all is fantastic success, and it can certainly be that personal success
is something very different indeed to what earlier in life you thought it was
going to be.
Valerie
