Chapter 28 ~ How I Even Ended Up Here

It was January 2010 and a girlfriend had moved back to town after being gone for a few years. We had a rocky start years before which ended up leading us to an amazing friendship. It was kinda cold that night, and she showed up in flip flops while I was in sweat pants and we drank a bottle (or was it two...maybe 3?) of wine and had a total girls night. I was newly single and had just moved into my own house.  By the end of the night, we'd sworn we were sisters separated at birth. For privacy purposes, she remains as S., my Twisted Sister, or my BFF.


Somehow we got to discussing our age and learning from mistakes and I said something about "taking a page out of the book of S." to which she replied, "I think my chapters need reconstructing!" and I responded that perhaps my chapters needed to be constructed, period."  Thus, Chapters Under Construction was invented.


In truth, it started when I went to Mexico 4 months later with another girlfriend. I blogged about our trip on Facebook under Notes and then continued after my trip, because in Mexico, something happened to me... I had a life changing experience.


I had never been to a real beach before. Yes, sandy beaches on the Great Lakes and I have been to the Pacific Ocean by means of Vancouver Island... but anyone who has done that and then experienced a tropical beach knows there is a world of difference. The water was warm and the sand was soft and squished between my toes. I was enamored with the ocean, its size and its power and I felt very small next to it. One night, I was walking along the beach and I was feeling the powerful waves pulling me from the shore as the tide came in and I went to sit on a rock nearby. I got that "small" feeling again. It wasn't a bad feeling, like belittling; no, it was more the feeling like realizing the vastness of the universe and I'm but a mere grain of sand in all of time. Suddenly, all the importance I thought I had was gone, but again not in a bad way. All my problems were insignificant in the grand scheme of all of this. I had a proverbial wall around me my whole life and these waves were battering it, hard. I started to cry. I didn't know why. I felt foolish for a brief moment, but it was late; there was no one around. And so I cried harder. I still didn't even know why, but I was in an unhappy relationship that I had tried, for months, to end; which was how I found myself recently single and living on my own (on again off again queen, right here). I was unhappy at my job. I needed to change my living situation. Every wave that came in pulled more of my wall away and I was feeling vulnerable... I felt like I could feel the "poison"; bitterness, hatred, grudges, and useless issues I was holding on to, leaving my body. I cried harder. I was almost surreal. I remember being in that moment, only I hadn't realized by the time the tears had stopped that hours had passed. I felt so cleansed. And peaceful. And something I had never really felt before; happiness. Real, genuine happiness, that comes from inner peace. It is an amazing feeling and one I have tried very hard to keep, since I've found it.


My wall was gone. Not my wisdom, but the wall, that I had built up for many, many years to shut people out, to shut out emotion, to shut out hurt and close myself off from the world. I thought I was protecting myself. Instead, I was failing to live, to experience, to love.


That experience changed my life, and I embarked on a journey of happiness from there on. I returned home from Mexico as a new person. And within a couple of weeks, I was single, jobless and had re-signed a lease on my home where my rent went up 200$ a month. I was fucked, to be honest. I'm a single mom... did I mention that?


I'll blog about the rest of that in the next entry...