Complicated

Regardless that I am getting accustomed to accepting that there are many aspects of life that I will never be able to comprehend (God, what happens to my children, why he left/doesn’t love me), it is still such a battle within my head to find homeostasis when things aren’t clear and lain out in color-by-number steps. This ‘new chapter’ of my life is really fucking with my head. I’m not sure what I am supposed to do and not do. The really strange part is wondering if there isn’t a set way to thing that I am supposed to do or be or think. Maybe there are several options that are valid and I simply have to choose. Maybe not.
Starting to date again is both liberating and terrifying. It makes me feel that I can experience a good portion of life like I hope to one day. Maybe there is someone else out there I can build a life with and even fall in love with. However, it has been so long since I have dated, and I’ve never dated with intention of possibly finding a husband, at least until him. That’s not why I’m dating now (although, it for sure is in the back of my head), I’m really just trying to experience living and emotions again. However, with that thought in the back of my head, it changes everything. Makes every date, conversation, everything, have a possibly bigger meaning and the consequence more sever. It also, has created this guilt/terror dynamic. I chose the man I want to spend my life with. In my head, he was/was going to be my husband. It’s hard to not feel like I’m cheating on him and giving up on him. Which, I guess I am giving up on him—or at least trying to force myself. He gave up on us a long, long time ago. Why shouldn’t I? My friends say I’ve held on for too long the way it is. However, what if he comes back and I’ve fucked it up? What if I would have had faith a little longer?
In addition, how am I supposed to be with dating? What are the rules now? What is right and wrong? Do I date several people? Do I not date at all? What do I owe the man/men I go out with? How do I have healthy expectations and not fall into something due to codependence or loneliness or weakness, and how do I open myself up to the possibility of something real and lasting while trying to guard again the previous list? I don’t want to screw things up with him (not that there is anything to screw up—he left), and I don’t want to screw things up with someone else if they are potential life mate, I don’t want to be a needy, romantic wimp and fall into something with someone when I shouldn’t.
To top it all off, he’s in my dreams nearly every night. We are slated to be at a birthday party together a few days before what would have been our anniversary in the next couple weeks (which I really want to skip, but I feel like I have force myself—both to be there for my dear friend on his birthday, and in an attempt to start living life and quit hiding from him—even if it hurts).
Maybe I’m making things too difficult. I’d actually like to think that. That it’s just my neurotic self. That things will simply work out they are meant to be. However, I’ve lived too long, hurt too much, and seen too much to not be aware that there are consequences to every single choice I make, every move I do. However, I am in territory that I have no map for, and I feel like every turn I make or don’t make will/can affect the things I want most in life, but I’m not able to see the consequences for each turn. Actually, I am. I see multiple consequences (good and bad) for each turn. If it were just me in control, I would be able to choose what is best. However, obviously, this path is not solitary and up to me. The other characters in this story have just as many choices and paths to choose or ignore as I do, and their choices or inactions affect my path as well, as they already have so greatly.
Talk about over thinking! Good grief.