If you don’t find your identity, someone else will define it for you.

Dear me, I am sorry. I’m sorry that you tried so desperately to fix others, when your own hands were shaking. I’m sorry that I didn’t give you enough time to heal, that I let you seal the wounds of everyone else whilst your own were bleeding. I’m sorry that there were days when smiling hurt, but you forced yourself to laugh so that no one had to worry about you. I’m sorry that you gave all of your time and effort to people that didn’t give the same amount back. I’m sorry that there were nights when you cried yourself to sleep and no one bothered to understand why. And I am so sorry that I did not love you like you deserved to be loved.

Those are two quotes that I included within a journal entry to myself in January 2019, and if you’re looking for anything ‘juicier’, then you are going to be disappointed. The rest of what I wrote that day falls under the privacy aspect I talked about last time we chatted.

I could share a lot more – there are the Pinterest quotes that I’ve saved over time. To look at one of my boards, you can see all of the ups and downs and the patterns over the last few years. But the point of writing this out isn’t to blast anyone or to rationalize to anyone why I did what I did. My point is that we are not alone.

Life can be a super big frustration sometimes, and it can be a real mess occasionally. And we never talk about how that’s okay, how that’s normal.

I have friends and then I have buddies… my buddies are so named because it is understood that females cannot be friends with males according to the general population. So whatever. I’ll deem them buddies instead. Take that Stuck-Up Susan.

Anyway, I was talking with one of my buddies the other day about how both of our lives changed when we began to realize that we as individuals weren’t alone in life. We have different paths from then to now, but that’s okay. What matters is that we were able to be a help to each other because we were able to knock off some of the isolation that we assume has to exist.

We get so focused as people on the concept that since Betty doesn’t complain about anything, Betty’s life is great, and we should be like Betty because, clearly, we’re just being too pessimistic and need to grow up like Betty has. But really…

THAT IS SO FALSE!!!

Life is can be stupid, hard, stupidly hard, hardly stupid, or some odd combination of the four. And that has to be okay because that is life. What matters is how we handle it and if we attempt to move forward.

Like I said, I am not here to encourage everyone to follow the same path as I did, but I am here to encourage you to seek out the RIGHT path not the normal one.

Normal is an annoying concept that screws up perception. Don’t ask people about your normal. Talk to somebody who will give a crap about what you have to say and figure out what direction your healthy ‘forward’ actually is.

Let me tell you something, I am still working on figuring out what my forward is, but I know that part of it was deciding that only I get to decide who is healthy to have in my life and in my circle. And when a few people figure that out, it might be a little bit awkward… but I’ll deal with it.

Side note: don’t force your opinions onto your children regarding who to accept – they know things we don’t. If they’re uncomfortable around someone, LET IT BE! Period. Sure, they may be kids, but on the other hand, you may actually have NO CLUE that something happened to create their discomfort. Treat your kids like they have value enough to decide.

End rant. (for now perhaps)

So what is the point about of today’s conversation? Well, I kind of don’t know because I had a lot of thoughts and my fingers have simply been trying to keep up with my brain.

What I know, though, is that we have now walked from the middle of 2016 to the beginning of 2019 and covered my journey from realizing things were terribly wrong in my marriage to the moment I decided to file for divorce. Hear me, please, that is not everyone’s answer. It simply needed to be mine.

I have to tell you something though, blinders don’t usually fall off. I think they can, but that wasn’t my story. The pre-journey began in the middle of 2015, and that is coming up next. I was not equipped to accept the fact that I might have been wearing blinders… let alone to consider that maybe I was helping to hold them in place based on how I operated at my core.

My chapters are not separated by cardstock. I think sometimes they aren’t even separated by the start of a new page. We have talked through this seemingly fluid transition, and now we need to talk about the moments that, regardless of my marriage, were guaranteed to alter the trajectory of my life. No part of my today exists without those moments… including how I parent my babies.

Stick around… oh, and Happy Turkey Day.

I hope you’re moving forward.