The State of Ben

*I'm reposting this from my Myspace*

To be short, I'm doing better. I'm still not great, but I'm functional again. I'm still increadibly hurt and confused. I'm also kind of upset at a few folks who think I should have 'just gotten over this'. I don't think love is just a switch you can flip on and off when its convient for you. Jen was someone I was completly in love with, expecting me to just stop on a dime is plain silly. Yes I understand she doesn't love me anymore, and I have to accept that. Doing that on your own with absolutely no closure to the relationship isn't some kind of easy task. Understand, that this is someone I figured I was going to marry in a couple of months (hell I had a ring designed and finally figured out how to propose), and someone I completly trusted. I really thought Jen was my soul mate. No things weren't always 100% perfect, we both made mistakes, but I seriously thought I had a commitment from her to work through them.

While I am feeling a bit better, I still feel fairly lost in the woods right now. While I was with Jen it felt like we were both working towards this really great future. I really thought we both had the same goal in mind. Get decent jobs, get married, have kids, do something with our lives together. Now I don't have that anymore. I'm back exactly where I was 6 months ago, and I hate it. I'm tired of getting bounced around from dead-end job, to dead-end job. I'm tired of putting in all this effort and realizing later that I haven't moved anywhere in my life. I'm tired of making the same mistakes over and over again, and honestly I don't have the first clue as to how to fix it. I know I have to get another job, but I just don't have the energy (or emotional reserves) to take another dead-end entry level job. I don't want to get another job, look up a year later and realize I'm in the same damn place just with a different job. Thats why I've been so careful in my job search to try and avoid anything that even remotly stank of dead-end. Thats the reason I didn't take the first available job opening in Michigan despite how badly I wanted too. The downside to this is of course that I've obviously cut out a lot of opportunities that I shouldn't have simply because I was afraid they'd lead nowhere. I needed to take more risks, but even than those risks probably aren't going to pay off. I've got the education, but none of the experience or contacts to land a really decent job. Honestly Jen was someone I was willing to risk everything on, and thats a decision I'd made just before she came down for the last time. At least if I ended up falling on my face again, I thought I'd have someone there to help pick me up for another try. Unfortunatly thats not the way things worked out, and I have to find another path through the forest on my own. I really feel like I'm at a crossroads at my life, but I can't see the paths and I don't know where they lead even if I could. All I can see is the sign post, and I know that I can't stay here looking at it much longer.