My Happy

I used to get worried when things were going well in my life, they can’t stay that way for long. When will it all blow up in my face? I knew I needed to learn to enjoy those moments, hang onto them and cherish them so that they don’t feel as fleeting. You can live in that happiness it’s ok- it’s allowed. Today I thought about how happy I was – just thinking about my life, the wonderful man in my life and his son, and I let myself be happy in the moment. Without self-doubt or worry about what will happen-I just felt happy. The surprising part was that I actually thought- What if this feeling lasts? The conversation we have with ourselves – that go to thought process for what we expect from our lives – We do have the personal power to change that over time. 

I am a worrier. I inherited it from my mom’s side of the family. My grandma always answered the phone with a sense of impending doom that on the other line someone would tell her who just died in our town. Sometimes unfortunately, that was the case and I think over the years she just assumed that every time the phone rang at an odd time the news would be negative. I could always hear it in her voice from the other room as she apprehensively said hello. Sometimes the thoughts in my head over the years have felt that same way- like an impending doom ready to destroy the happy moment I was having. We live in a pretty great place where day to day we have shelter, for the most part no threat of getting blown up, we have food to eat and jobs that provide us income. We get to make our own choices on where to go after work or on the weekends. We get to have fun. It feels good to be happy. I wasn’t always happy. I was worried. 

Does meeting a good partner who you can trust and wake up each day feeling lucky to have in your life help calm the worry – of course it does. However, if you aren’t ready to receive those things in your life then I don’t think they come to you. I had to put myself in a place of complete openness in order to receive my peace. 

One of my former work mentors (who could be my father based on his age) told me one day when we were on a long car ride across the state of Missouri that once I truly believed that I didn’t need to get married, and meant it …that is when I would meet the right person and that it would all work out for me. I thought he was crazy. After listening to me go on and on about the relationship I was in and how it was so much work because I couldn’t get him to settle with me, commit to me or make me feel safe- my mentor knew he didn’t have to flat our tell me that he wasn’t the guy for me, instead he told me that once I let go of my expectations of what I thought my life had to look like (at the time it was marriage, commitment and someone to want me back in the same way I wanted them and a true partner, not a project that was a challenge) When the time did come to let that relationship go I think my mentor’s words were still in my head because I let him go very easily. After three years of doing whatever it took to get him in my life – and trying to make him into the person that I needed-  I let him walk out my front door with a hug and a smile. I never looked back at him, and we didn’t talk for two and half years after that.  I have absolutely no hard feelings and zero regrets.  I was ready to not work so hard for things I knew I deserved. This didn’t happen overnight of course, it took about two or three months when I saw him on a dating app and realized that he had moved on and all those lines he pulled on me about not wanting a relationship, and needing to just ‘do him’ for awhile were all bullshit. That night I mourned a loss of many things including everything I thought I had been doing right in my relationships that led me here, alone. It was the kind of cry that scared my dad into thinking I was going to commit self-harm when he talked to me on the phone, but when it was over I was completely over men. Not in a weird anti-men movement way- just over the idea of making things happen. I deleted the dating app, and I stopped trying so damn hard. What I did not do is stop taking care of myself. I told my dad that I didn’t know how many more mani/pedis and massages I could get (I already enjoy that kind of self-care year-round) so I focused more on what I wanted emotionally. I opened my home to a friend who was just starting a divorce and I became the strong woman who focuses on others in a way that didn’t take away all my confidence and self-worth but actually built me up. If I could help her move on from a bad marriage while remembering what living my own life just for me was like – then everything would It would be ok. Two months later her and I were out to dinner on a Friday night. Only because of her was I out to dinner on a Friday after a long work week, so tired that I actually tried to open the wrong door to the restaurant we were going to. The door was locked and yet I must have pulled on it two or three times- just to make sure. After finding our way inside the guy who was sitting by that door who had seen me try to break in the place approached my friend and I. I had noticed two guys sitting by us but glanced over their heads to look out the window a bit before this happened. I wasn’t trying to get a good-looking guy to see me. I was aware he was there, but I wasn’t playing games- just not thinking that way. Even as he approached us a from a table away, I wasn’t making assumptions about our conversation. When he and his coworker moved over to sit with us and bought us drinks even made us laugh, I still didn’t go out of my way to make him like me. It didn’t hit me until an hour into this interaction that I found him attractive, really attractive and suddenly had the overwhelming feeling that I wanted him to like me. The thing was he already did. He wasn’t giving me mixed signals and hitting on my friend, he was there for me. He still is. To say we hit it off was an understatement. A bit older than me, divorced with a pre-teen child. I was more intrigued and more open than ever before. I wasn’t silently judging or checking off a list of relationship requirements in my head.  I was trying to find out who he was and all I wanted to know was more. I’m not here to talk about every detail of my relationship, I think when you get in the right one you don’t have the same desire to share every detail of your life with your friends, or even your family anymore. You don’t talk about every fight, every little sweet thing he does for you, but appreciate the good days, moments and cherish them.  More importantly, you just get to be you, but you in a partnership with this person who you can actually count on. You don’t have to worry anymore about what happens next because you know you will figure it out together.

My anxiety has gotten better. I never realized that I had so much anxiety surrounding my relationships, but I literally felt sick at dinner when on most dates prior to my current relationship. It was that impending doom of worry with what they might say to me, or would they break up with me, maybe tell me they can’t do this anymore- even tell me something more shocking like they’ve been cheating or lying.  Now, I’m just me. I can eat my steak in peace. I can enjoy the happy. My happy.