Tonight I've felt much more content than I have in the past few weeks. Lately I've been restless and anxious, but tonight I felt calm and content.
I didn't really do anything tonight, I've been sitting on my back porch reading and thinking for the past few hours. I'm reading "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" and one of the main characters reminds me a lot of myself, which got me to thinking about a lot of things. This character talks about how she sat around waiting for her life to begin instead of enjoying the moment but then something sudden and kind of truamatic puts her life into high gear. But what about the years before that she spent waiting instead of enjoying them? I don't want to ever feel like that and as I stopped and thought about my life right now and the past few years, I've realized that I have been that way sometimes. I've felt like I was stuck and that this wasn't really my life and that someday I'd settle down and fall into a routine with work, friends, a significant other and that would be my real life beginning, that all this was just a phase. And it is a phase, but it's a phase of my life and it's a part of my life I should enjoy and not just let drift on by while I wait for something "better" or more stable.
Some major parts of my life are up in the air right now and I'm not sure how they'll pan out but I have some new and exciting possibilities in front of me. I have no job right now, but I have a job interview on Thursday for a job that could very well be a career, a "big girl" job. A job that I could comfortably support myself at. It's a little scary but it's exciting, too. A job like this means so many possibilities. Having my own car again, moving out on my own again, relieving some of the pressure on my current relationship because then we wouldn't both be living at home anymore and we could be a little freer and not feel like we're still in high school, lol. It's nice to think about moving into a new phase in my life and to be able to support myself again. I even catch myself thinking about how I'd want to decorate my apartment, the kinds of things I'd keep in the house so I can cook dinners whenever I want, maybe getting a dog, maybe taking yoga classes at night, having friends over, relaxing alone with a glass of wine and a book, without getting a text that I have to go pick up a sibling from work or a friend's house. It's a really great vision I have of just being on my own again and having my own space. Just day dreams for now, but the potential for them to truely take shape in the near future is so close I can taste it.
Really over the last couple days I've been thinking a lot about how my life has changed in the past 6 months or so as far as my relationships go. I've talked to a few friends about it and I'm gaining a lot of perspective on my past decisions and reflecting on where I am now and how I feel about that. I finally cut Dan(I'm using his real name because I could really give a shit if he were to ever stumble on this and not like what I have to say) out of my life back in January and, good lord, it was the best decision I've ever made, albeit maybe one of the most difficult. He was such a cancer in my life and toward the end I really felt it, but how much better I feel without him, proves even more how terrible it really was. He held me back, partially his fault and partially mine. I know, I let him, but he abused the power he had over me. He called all the shots in our on again, off again relationship and friendship. I lost alot of solid chances at something good with other people because I always thought he would come back into my life and that would be the end all, be all and someday, somehow that was the right thing for me and everntually it would work out for us. It won't. It wouldn't have and I was so naive to ever think it would have but it was the illusion that I lived under for years and I can't take those years back. I can't regret them either, I can only take from them and learn from them and focus on where I want to be going form here.
Where that is, I'm not positive yet, but I think I'm moving in a good direction. I thought that letting him go would be so much harder than it actually has been. Don't get me wrong, at first it was torture to give him that ultimatum and to hope against hope, that he'd come running back to me one more time and we'd work it out somehow and that it would be as hard and daunting for him to just walk away from me. Maybe it was. I don't know because the ultimatum said if he didn't want me as part of his life, to not even respond. And he didn't. Then I got the pleasure of finding out a few weeks that he's engaged, but he wasn't man enough to tell me himself. But what if he had, really? What could I have said to him? Would I have gone into a rage? Begged him to take me back? Sobbed over the phone while he sat comfortably in NC? Who knows and what would have been the point anyway just for me to embaress myself and make an ass of myself. Things are so much better this way in hindsight.
I thought it would take me a long time to get over him, too. And granted, I'm not completely over him yet, but it doesn't hurt like it did at first and like I thought it would for a long time. It's getting easier and I thought that even though he wasn't around anymore, it would still be hard for me to let myself care about someone new for a long time. But I was wrong, thankfully. I'm seeing someone new and he's great and he makes me happy. I'm shocked at how easily I fell into things with him. I don't want to use his name here to protect his privacy, but I have to come up with a way to refer to him here, lol. But I like things with the new man for all the opposite reasons I liked things with Dan. Things with Dan were always so intense and sporadic. Our conversations were intense and long and philosophical. We could sit for hours and hours talking and it was so comfortable, we were both on the same wavelength, intelligent, well educated and well read, talking about anything and everything. And our fights were just as intense. Saying horrible things to each other, and yelling but then silence that was just as intense and inpenetrable. Always such an emotional rollercoaster and not a love rollercoaster (baby, hoo hoo hoo).
Where things were intense and unpredictable with Dan, things are steady and habitual and comfortable with the new man. I know I'm going to hear from him everyday, at some point. And it's just a check in, how's your day or what are you up to? And our conversations usually stem from the very mundane. It's nice to just talk to someone about your day or nothing earthshattering or theorhetical or philosophical. Today I was trying to come up with something for dinner and the new man is a chef, so I asked him for ideas. Nothing crazy, nothing epic. But it's through the usual and the mundane that we learn about each other. Simple things, little things. He suggested a seafood dish and I'm allergic to seafood. Little things. It's nice. It's different. It's soothing and it's steady, but he's great and he makes me laugh, it's one of the first things that attracted me to him is that he has the same sense of humor as me.
As I was sitting on my porch thinking about these things, among other things that it's getting too late to get into, I just felt content. Content knowing that certain parts of my life are falling into place and knowing that other parts will hopefully soon follow, or at least start to. I'm sitting thinking and smoking and suddenly the wind picked up and it started to rain. It was one of those beautiful, fleeting summer storms but it felt so in tune with my mood and how I was feeling and it was awesome. I sat there and closed my eyes and felt that strong wind blowing around me and listened to the rain and just let myself relax. And in view of the things I'd been thinking about, I felt beautiful and powerful and very self-aware. It's kind of a hard feeling to describe. I just felt comfortable in my life, in how I know myself and in the person I am and how I'm in the process of reclaiming that for myself. I felt beautiful in my confidence and in the person I know I am. Maybe a little crazy, but with a good heart and a strong mind and knowing that I'll figure things out and get wherever I want to go, wherever that may be. The new man tells me I'm beautiful and that really is something special. Maybe he's sincere, I think he is, but even if he's not, it's one of the best things to have someone say to you. He's the first man I've ever dated to say that to me. I think he might be a keeper. But as nice as it is to hear from him, it was even nicer feel it in myself tonight because I felt beautiful as a whole person, not perfect, but comfortable and confident.
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