Welcome 2020

Here we are again....the end of the year, but this year it's the end of a decade!  My memory is fuzzy but this decade was jam packed for sure.  I started it with my oldest being 16 and ended it with my youngest being 16.  I got divorced, moved 3 times (once across the country), I discovered my connection to my angels and the spiritual realm, I went from being a stay at home mom to working for 2 different companies full time...those are just the basics.  I don't even recognize the woman I was 10 years ago...hell I don't recognize the woman I was 12 short months ago.  I began this year with so much hope and conviction of what would transpire during this year.  I am ending it with the knowledge that I don't know anything and that sometimes life is just what it is and you have to accept it.    In this decade there have been communions, confirmations, surgeries, engagements, graduations - high school and college, weddings, deaths and births, beginnings and endings, more than I can count.  My heart has been overflowing and it's been broken.  Has it been different than past decades?  I think so.  I think the events that transpired were harder than ever before.  I've become numb to things that would have destroyed me in the past.  I don't feel things as deeply as I have in the past---is that age?  Maybe.  But I think it is more about disappointment breaking down the ability to feel as deeply.  The fear of feeling utter joy and bliss because the pain of it being taken away is too devastating than never feeling that joy and bliss in the first place.  I am ending this decade in a place of acceptance.  Accepting life as it is and not expecting anything but what is.  If something good comes then I'm pleasantly surprised, if something bad happens I'm not shocked.  I know that it is all in God's hands at the end of the day and in His time.  That brings peace.  Joy is something I've traded for peace I suppose.  I'm not going to lie, I miss joy.  Even when I am at my happiest I am unable to feel joy.  I'm making that my mission in this next decade---to not let the fear of it being taken away to stop me from feeling joy.  Or maybe contentment is what you feel as you get older.  I look around and I see people just existing and I never wanted to be that person.  I never wanted to just allow life to pass by without truly embracing the wonderful moments.

Thanksgiving was a great day.  We enjoyed dinner and then went to Disney  World.  I had my kids all with me, everyone was getting along-  but I just didn't feel fully happy. I was standing in the kitchen looking at my family gathered around the table together, laughing and that woman who started the decade would have been bursting with joy.  My daughter turned 16 this month.  My sister flew in to surprise her and it was really a wonderful weekend.  I looked around the table when we were all laughing and truly enjoying being together, yet joy wouldn't come.  That's when I realized something was wrong.  That's when I realized that this decade really did kick my ass.  I vowed that I was going to change that.  I was going to find out how to get that joy back.  In fact, I decided I'm going to write a book about this very thing.  This can't be all there is---just existence. I don't want to believe it.  Yet that is where I'm at.

Well I took a break in writing this and this past weekend brought a situation back that has broken my heart in the past more than once.  I handled it like a robot.  I had absolutely no emotion.  I just went through the motions and stoically handled  it.  I called my sister to inform her of the situation and told her how I just didn't care anymore, that it didn't matter.  After a lengthy conversation she convinced me that I was blocking any feeling because I just could not allow it again.  I couldn't allow myself to feel the pain anymore. Shit.  As usual, she knows me pretty damn well and confirmed my earlier suspicions .  I went about my day and I slowly found myself remembering things that made me feel differently.  She was right.  I have blocked things that make me feel the pain and heartbreak of certain situations.  I have stopped hoping for better things on the horizon, I've stopped thinking that happy endings are guaranteed.  I am still a firm believer in "everything happens for a reason" and that God's plan is always unfolding, however I've given up thinking things will get better.  I do believe that whatever comes I will have the strength to deal with it.

I suppose what I need to decide as I enter this next decade is if being numb is better than feeling the good and the bad and all the emotions in between.  In this decade I have felt the happiest I had in my entire life and the most broken and sad as well.   I know I've written about this before and back then I decided that being numb was not the answer, because I would rather 5 minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special (Thank you Shelby/Steel Magnolias).  I think I'd like to change my answer.  I'll take numb for $500 Alex.  I guess what the last decade has taught me is how to deal with everything life throws at me without getting wrapped around the axle about it.  I just treat it all like it's just a day in the life, because, after all----that's what it is.

You are so beautiful....to me

I've never been a dater.  I was always a relationship person.  I haven't had many relationships either.  That's just who I am.  When I fall in love it's serious to me.  I don't take it lightly.  I've also been lucky, I suppose, to always fall for men who were also relationship people.  I never had someone play with my heart purposely.  I guess that's saying a lot at almost 55 years old.  I have heard some truly horrible stories.

Being single is new to me.  I have always gone from one relationship to another.  Codependency was my middle name.  That's what this period of being single has been about---breaking that history of  codependent behavior.  Well, I've succeeded.  I've succeeded to the point where the thought of dating is so far from my radar it's not visible. I've been encouraged to put myself out there---not appealing.  Today, I was approached in, of all places, the grocery store.  He was a very sweet man.  We exchanged pleasantries and he expressed an interest in taking me to dinner and getting to know me better.  Very kind, cute and not creepy, which was a plus.  He asked for my number and when I hesitated he gave me his and told me to call him if I wanted that date.  Then he told me how beautiful I was.   It was very sincere too, in fact I don't think he meant to say it out loud honestly.   It was very flattering, I'm not going to lie.  I realized I have had a wall up and have been extremely unapproachable over the last nearly 30 years.  Like I said, when I'm in a relationship I am all in.

I replayed the conversation over in my mind and I realized that no one I've been involved with (except 1 person) used the term beautiful (wait... 2 but the 2nd one never used it the first time we dated and that's really when it counted) to describe me.  My looks were never what the men I was involved with seemed to care about.  I used to think it was because I was, in fact, not really beautiful and that I was lucky they "settled" for me and that my personality was enough.   I am now a much more secure woman and I realize that I was lucky, not that they "settled" for me but that they cared more about me as a person and my looks were just a bonus.  There was a time when I would have killed for my ex husband to say "You look beautiful!"  or "You are so pretty" but that didn't happen, ever.  It was after my divorce that I dated someone who could not get over how "beautiful" I was. Even when I was 13...and 15 and dated him for the first time.  Looking back?  That was the only thing he loved really.  He loved being with me because it made him feel worthy.  Yuck.  I didn't like that feeling at all.  However, being with him made me feel beautiful for the first time in my life.  So, I thank him for that.  After ending that relationship I had a new found love for myself, a worthiness that I didn't have before.  And one that can't be taken from me and that isn't dependent on anyone else's approval.

I was talking to one of my confidants today after this experience and I told her what I just wrote.  She has had no less than 5 men reach out to her over social media this past month telling her that she was beautiful and wanting to get to know her (she is newly single for the first time as well).  We laughed saying there must be something in the air.  We also admitted that it can't be easy for a man to put himself out there like that (especially in person!) and we admired their bravery.  However, we both agreed that that is not how we want people to see us---just by what's on the outside.  We are both women who don't have "a type".  I have always been attracted to a man based on his personality, his sense of humor especially and his smile.  I would like to be appreciated for the same things.  My eyes have always been something that men have commented on---I get that.  I look at eyes too.  But, as I'm getting older, so are my eyes and they aren't what they used to be 👀😉so I'm hoping that isn't my only redeeming quality.

As a child my dad always commented on our beauty.  He used to sing a song to my sister about a beautiful girl.  When my daughter was little I would tell her all the time she was the most beautiful girl in the world.  That's because that's what *I* needed to hear, that's what I craved to hear.  Well, luckily, it worked because she doesn't give a rat's ass if someone tells her she's beautiful--she damn well knows she is.  She's heard it her whole life.  She is confident in a way I never was.  I will be curious to see what she wants her significant other to appreciate in her.

I guess the morale of this story is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder....and this beholder finally sees hers  inside and out....because today was truly a day in the life.