i've made my share of life plans, but so few of them have come to fruition. some of these paths i've chosen have lead to amazing, happy places, new people, great experiences. others have lead to heartbreak and failure, either of my own doing or situations i unknowingly (but willingly and/or eagerly) stepped into.
in some respects, i'd expected greater things of myself by this point in my life than i've achieved. i never expected that by this point i would have burnt out on a real career and resorted back to the service industry where there are fewer career up-steps, but also fewer people telling me i'm an idiot on a daily basis. someone recently told me i should do more, but i couldn't really reply. part of me is disappointed in myself for falling short, while the other half is sympathetic, realizing how hard it was, and knowing that right now, this is what i can do. (not to mention that where i am today is no indicator of where i may go someday.)
every day i see all sorts of business people scurrying off to their desk jobs and i remember being one of them. part of me misses the routine, of getting to buy/wear nice clothes (although i was perpetually under dressed) and bring home nice paychecks. but i also realize that my happiness quotient now is a bit higher, that somehow, impossibly, i'm actually a bit more content now with less than i was then with more.
but of course, with the good, comes a black cloud.
in my case, it's the absence of the someone who i look forward to seeing at the end of each day. as a friend told me, it's not like we're broken up, we're just geographically separated for a bit of time. i suppose so, but there's also the silence and the unknown of everything. then there are the lonely dinners, the waking up in the middle of the night, not because someone bumped into you in their sleep, but because they didn't. there's the lack of a hand-in-hand-walk-down-the-
because of this separation, my life feels on hold. i hesitate to make decisions because the wall i bounce everything off of is gone. i don't want to make any massive life changes because i just want everything i can possibly control to be sound. it's barely all that i can handle that he's away; please don't throw in other massive change or upheaval. i'm not sure if most people understand, but it's how i feel.
despite these negatives, there are a great many things in my life that have turned out so much better than i could have dreamed. i never realized how low my standards for a spouse were (and i thought they were pretty lofty...) until i met and married someone who blew all of them out of the water, and then some. i find it remarkable on a daily basis that (a) a person this awesome actually exists and (b) i not only got to meet him, but i got to marry him. we have a happy, blessed life together. we have a comfortable home, functional vehicles, food in the refrigerator, employment and even a cat. for some reason, i had never felt completely convinced that a life like this would ever exist. i always had a shadow of doubt hovering overhead that i was unlovable and would end up lonely into old age, i'd have to single-handedly provide every penny, every ounce of strength, every morsel of anything for myself. there's a clear a mental picture i had of myself as the crazy cat lady. but, somehow, that hasn't come to pass. frankly, things turned out better than i could have ever hoped to dream.
and so i dare to hope that maybe, just maybe, even through the hard times that will undoubtedly come to pass, life will be full and good.
