I haven't had a lot of time lately.  Life has been moving at a breakneck speed.  I realize that while this speed messes with my sleep pattern and keeps me guessing about where my next nap will come from I really couldn't be happier.  It's a funny thing, I thought I was happy.  I had a shite job, lived alone, wanted to be left alone romantically, but I had family and friends that cared that I loved deeply.  I stopped really looking at myself and just muddled through life.  I would get irritated when well meaning folk would ask me what I wanted to do with my life.  I would think to myself, "this is my life and I am fine with it".  I really did give up and settle at that point. 

It was interesting...I figured that this was going to be life.  I would hate what I did every day and I would watch and support the people closest to me as they accomplished goals.  It's rather stark to see those thoughts in writing.  One should not assume that I didn't do anything it was just I didn't do anything new or let anyone new in.  I was going to grow old with cats.  You know crazy old cat lady?  It is fortunate that I could not complete that plan as I am not really fond of living with cats.  Especially indoor cats.  Litter boxes...need I say more?

As I am typing this I am laughing at my own silliness.  Had I been my own friend I would have shaken myself and talked some sense into me.  Sadly, for awhile I don't think I was my own friend.  I am reminded, by my wedding ring, that I have some very lovely and loving friends that did talk some sense into me.  More than that they shocked some sense into me.  I am a rather quiet person and often surprised when I am told that I am a stubborn, pig-headed, immovable person when I want to be.

It just seemed like such a good idea to be on my own.  My original decision was nothing more then I needed some time to spend on myself.  It sounds good but it really is just an excuse to shut out all new emotional attachments.  Or at least that was what it turned into.  I became flat.  I was never really happy or really sad I was just very internalized.  My family saw it.  My parents very patiently attempted to break me out of my "funk".  I wouldn't see it.  There were always excuses, I was tired or work sucked or I hadn't eaten enough.  I didn't notice that I was just so inside my own head that it looked like I was not participating.

There was good.  I figured out what I did want to keep in myself and what I didn't.  I was tired of letting my own wants and need be shifted to the side in order to make the people I cared about happy.  It didn't work and it made me feel bad.  I quit school, again, and realized that I didn't see it as a way to accomplish anything I wanted to do. 

A degree is an awesome accomplishment but it should not be the definition of ourselves.  In the work world it is simply a piece of paper that says you can accomplish the goals that you set before yourself.  Unless you are becoming a teacher, nurse, lawyer, or other job that requires certain degree fulfillments it is not absolutely neccesary.  It is one way in a sea of many ways to accomplish goals.

I learned that I was pretty.  This sounds absolutely silly but it was something I needed to learn.  And I needed to learn that it had a lot to do with the person that I am not just the outside.  A part of my pretty comes out of who I am.  This came as a surprise and it altered the way that I looked at myself.  It was like finally opening the window to hear what someone is saying.  The muffled message had gotten through that other people might consider I was nice or that I was pretty but I had never understood that.  I didn't see what they saw and I couldn't understand that they were so certain of it.  It really wasn't that I had a poor opinion of myself it was that I didn't understand the value of myself.  To say I thought I was a dime a dozen would be pretty accurate.

There was a moment when this all started to really crystalize for me.  I got fired.

Suddenly, I saw the grey and dark place I had been living.  Kind of like the allergy commercials where the person is all blurry and unclear and then suddenly everything is clear again. (no, I didn't start taking allergy meds)  :)

But I was looking at what I had been doing.  I had been working in a job I hated for people I didn't fit in with and watching other people live their lives.  It was time to start living again. 

I started to act.  Not all of that action was useful.  Some things could have been handled a lot better.  The person I had been before would have tested all of the waters and actions and organized it in a way that would have hurt the fewest number of people but would have been so watered down and neutral that it would have not even been close to what I wanted.  I really began to live.  I started to use my feelings as guidelines and not the requirements that I had always allowed them to be.  If I thought someone was mad at me or had a problem I would ask them and take the consequences of them knowing that I cared if they were mad or unhappy. 

I let myself fail.  I allowed myself to go outside of my comfort zone and I realized that I would never be a failure or a dead weight to the people who really cared about me.  I do now have some regrets in my life but not the ones I thought I would have.

I traveled in the time I was awakening.  I got a dog that I could never imagine life without.  And I found love in the most unlikely of places.  To say that he surprised me would be an understatement.  One day, he said to me that he really loved me and that he realized that this was a second chance to tell me how he felt and that he was going to take it.  I didn't hear him, I ran right back into the hole I had started to come out of and told him that he needed someone better than me.  In a marathon three hours I let him know all of the reasons that he needed to look for someone cleaner, nicer, less used, not so broken, and more capable than me.  I dragged out all of my failures and mistakes and how he really needed to find someone who was whole and really capable of loving.

In all of the learning I had been doing over the few months since I lost my job I had still been sure that I would live this new life alone.  Sometimes I can be pretty dim.

He told me he would wait and that he would be there and the door would always be open.  I ran away that day and the only people I told were my mother and my best friend.  The best friend listened and for the most part kept her immediate thoughts to herself.  My mother was a little more forward.  "You need to give hime a more direct response.  You can't leave him hanging out in limbo waiting for you, it's rude".  At the time I thought I had been very direct about my response to him and maybe she hadn't heard me say that I had said no.  So, I tried again a few days later.  I explained to her again and she was very clear in her response.  She said it was still dumb to think I wasn't good enough but that I hadn't actually looked at him and responded to him.  I had spewed crap because I was scared and I needed to give him an honest response based on how I felt about him not on how I felt about me.

Crap, she was right.

I hadn't actually looked and responded to him because it had never occured to me that anyone would feel that way about me.  He had been my friend for long enough that I had stopped thinking about that possibility.  Meanwhile, I started a new job and I shelved the thought process about love.  I knew that he needed an honest answer and as my friend I wanted to give him one but I was so scared of feeling anything romantic again that I lost myself in work.  It was pretty easy because in the months of unemployment and travel and newness I had realized a dream.  I wanted to work with food. 

My new job was a test of sorts.  It was an opportunity to work in an honest to God commercial kitchen to see if I liked it.  I loved it. 

There was a new worry with this job and a relationship.  What if it came to the point where I had to choose.  I was happy...I had found my own dream that I cared about and wanted.  In my experience relationships and highly unstable things like what I was doing with work were mutually exclusive. 

It seemed to good to be true.  I had developed a really cynical outlook on love.  I felt that I had to be truly alone and independant so that anything I accomplished would be mine and no one else could claim me or my accomplishment.  I had to make it on my own two feet or it wouldn't count.  FYI, sometimes I overthink, a lot.

I miraculously didn't share any of this, let's be honest, crap with him.  I was sure that I needed to sit down and tell him that we would never happen and I only wanted to be friends.  Yet, I could never quite do it.  I just attributed it to being busy and working hard and left it at that. 

Then my birthday rolled around.  It was fun, my friends overwhelmed me with thoughtful cards and presents and I got myself a few too many sheets to the wind.  In a way though it was good.  It turned my fear off long enough for me to realize something.  I was afraid that my friend would really see me if I allowed a romantic relationship and then he would see how worthless I really was and he would leave me.  I was sure that there was something wrong with me deep down that would only be seen if I fell in love. 

silliness.  Lots and lots of silliness.

Of course we started a relationship that night.  Against my "better" judgment of course.  He was so sure that I was just going to freak out and run away that he behaved like we do around skittish wild animals.  He spoke in quiet tones and didn't rush me.  I felt like I had lost my mind and was always about a half decision away from running away.  Little does he know but it was his own person that kept me from running. 

He was soft with me.  It is difficult to put in words what that means.  It was a feeling.  He felt safe and comfortable.  He taught me what it was to receive caring from a romantic relationship.  I realized I was good at giving it but receiving it was hard....but addictive.  He didn't smother or cling.  I really love that.  If I needed space or time he almost gave it before I asked for it.  He was really in tune with what I needed and gave it to me without strings.  It was like he wanted me to be happy and it didn't have to fit within his own perameters.

I regret how it came about but I wouldn't change it.  In essence I wouldn't trade him and I coming together for the world.  Life is easier with him....even when I try and make it harder. 

It's funny, I didn't know what a hole there was in my life until I finally let him in.  I don't mean the first few months of our relationship where the internal figuring it out was warring with the external pressures of how it all came about.  But the moment where I actually saw him and let him into my life and let him see all the dark and light that makes me tick.  The moment where he smiled and let me in on what had been a big secret to me.  There was no dark brokenness hiding that was going to make him leave.  He had seen me and most of the things that made me and it made him love me all the more.

We're funny.  We are both just sure that we aren't really anything that special so it was really quite the shock at our wedding.  Our closest friends and family showed up and showered us with the most amazing things...love.  We spent a really good chunk of time after the reception humbled by the truly lovely people that make up our lives.  Even the ones that couldn't make it that night, for a variety of reasons, really opened our eyes to the amount that we are cared about.  For me that was an amazing experience and even now makes me a little teary-eyed.

This isn't of course a ride off into the sunset happy ending....it isn't an ending.  It's been hard since we started but it's the best beginning I can think of.  So maybe it's a little sentimental and sweet but I don't care he makes me feel sentimental and sweet and occasionally I feel like yelling that from the mountaintops.  It's nice to be comfortable about being me...most of the time of course....no body is perfect.