My quest for never-ending love had now taken on an entirely new meaning. I was no longer looking for that from someone else, but from myself. I needed to replenish my soul. I needed to fill my mind with positivity. I needed to start actually taking care of myself. Something I had put on the back burner for possibly the last twenty years if not longer. I knew all the sayings about how you can’t take care of anyone else until you take care of yourself first, but I never believed them. Until now. I knew I was totally depleted. Void of much feeling and definitely of anything to give. I felt weak and run down and it was in a stream of consciousness that I finally said enough.
Enough of the giving endlessly to those who either don’t want it or can’t handle it. Enough of waiting and wanting and longing for something from someone who is incapable of giving it. Enough of searching and looking and wondering if he is out there waiting for me somewhere. I needed nothing more than to find myself, not him. He’s out there, don’t get me wrong. I just didn’t need him to find me just yet. I wouldn’t be who he needs, I wouldn’t be who he deserved. I needed to get myself together, I needed to regroup, I needed to nest and put things back in its place. My house, my feelings, my life, myself. Everything has a place and right now, I wasn’t anywhere near where I wanted to be.
Yes I wasn’t where I used to be, but I wasn’t over Jolly guy and all he put us through. I wasn’t past the accident and my daughter’s health. I wasn’t past Serendipity and his inability to love me the way I wanted. I wasn’t past anything because I never gave myself time to breathe. This would be my chance to breathe. This would be my chance to wake up when I felt like it, sleep naked if I wanted, read a book or write a book for that matter. It would give me time to put new memories in the places where bad ones once lived. It would give me time to reconnect with what it was I loved most; my friends, my family, my children and myself.
I was putting the work in week after week at therapy, but I still wasn’t feeling what I thought I should. I wasn’t loving myself. I wasn’t honoring my own feelings. I was trying so hard to prove to everyone else that I was changing that I actually forgot to change. I didn’t want to be the person so desperate for love that she would be with anyone. I wanted the next time I said yes to a date it be for the right reasons. Not because I was lonely, not because I was looking for my next husband, not because I was proving that I too could be in a good relationship. I would say yes because I was ready. I was ready to be the person I knew I could be. That I could love and honor and cherish another human being and give them all of me. No filter, no excuses, just me. Take it or leave it style.
Not to say I wouldn’t be open to compromise and sacrifice, but I would no longer have to be someone I’m not. He would love me the way I loved me. He would see before him a confident, strong, beautiful woman, full of hope and faith, full of love, full of fears and tears and everything in between. But he would have me the way in which I would be able to give myself to him. As a whole person. So for now, I would graciously decline any suitors. I would focus myself on making memories. I would not talk about men or dating men or sleeping with men. I would talk about the sky and the sand and the sun and my family and my kids and all the things that make me tick.
I would finally live a life for me. My hopes, my dreams, my memories. All being created by this time of solitary. It would not be a lonely time, but the most fun I could possibly make it. And so….it began.
