April, Come She Will

April, come she will

When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;

May, she will stay,

Resting in my arms again.

June, she'll change her tune
In restless walks she'll prowl the night;

July, she will fly,

And give no warning to her flight.


August, die she must

The autumn winds blow chilly and cold;

September I'll remember.

A love once new has now grown old.

~Simon and Garfunkel

I still owe a WPBT review.  It is forthcoming.  

In the meantime, I've had these thoughts about life swimming around in my head pretty much ever since Vegas.  I want to record them so I can remind myself of this step on my journey, and when times in the future may not seem quite so rosy. 

[Warning: brutal honesty ahead...]

The past few years have been pretty bad for me.  Supposedly, divorce is one of the most traumatic life events one can go through, and mine was not even that bad.  However, there was a lot of stuff leading up to it, and a lot of stuff after it that was a lot worse than negotiating the actual divorce.  

But what is a bad year, really?  A bad day might be you waking up on the wrong side of bed, being cranky, getting some bad news and dwelling on it.  But a bad year?  At that point, it's time to take some responsibility and admit that at least part of it might be your own fault, or at least your own attitude and choices.  That maybe you should stop seeking short-term fixes to long-term problems.

I have always thought of myself as a supremely independent person.  I like to do things my way.  I like to do things without help...even at times when it would really benefit me to swallow some pride and ask for some.  The past few years I've come to realize that I never really knew what independence was.  I went from pretty much being my parents' child to being my ex-husband's wife.  I never learned how to cope with some of the stresses of life by myself.  I always had someone there to help me.  The past year especially has been a bit rocky as I have learned to live more independently...how to find happiness from within myself, instead of happiness in others.  After six months of really and truly living alone without another person as my crutch, I think I've finally started to find some of that independence.  Happiness within myself.  Acceptance of being alone instead of always running from it. 

The low point in the past year was most definitely New Year's Eve 2008/2009.  I spent most of that night crying, and I was so seriously depressed that I literally had to be pulled out of bed.  I bailed on a New Year's Party that I paid $200 to attend because I couldn't get myself in the shower, let alone into formal wear.  From that night and over the course of the year I (re)learned the lesson that some people who you think might be your friends might not actually be there for you when the chips are down.  I'm definitely ending 2009 with a different group of people I consider to be my closest friends, but you know what?  They were the people who were there for me over some difficult times.  They were the people who stepped up when I had the courage to say "I need help" instead of the people who ran away or outright said no.  Most importantly, I've learned to ask for help when I need it and not fear getting "no" as an answer.  So many things have gone wrong in my life over the past two years and I've gotten through every single one of them.  The sun still rises the next day, and I am still here in one piece.  I have new-found confidence that I *can* get through whatever life throws at me.  Confidence that, even alone, I'm going to be OK, because I learned how to be there for myself.  I can pick up my own pieces and put them back together for myself.  And, more importantly, I've really come to understand that some of these problems have been my own fault (or at least exacerbated by my own actions).  As someone said to me: "when your hand gets sucked out on, yeah it sucks, but if you played it terribly, you have yourself to blame too."  AMEN.

So, the past week, I've been reflecting on all of this, and I'm feeling really good about my future, and really positive about my life, even though I don't have a job, and don't have a lot of direction right now.  I'm feeling so much better about myself as a person, and I think most of that has to do with the fact that I've found new confidence in my own abilities.  I know I can face and survive pretty much anything life can throw at me, so an unknown future is a lot less unnerving.

How's that for some brutal honesty?

Happy almost 2010, peeps.  I hope it's a good one for all of us.  But if it's not, know that I am prepared to be there for those of you who got me through 2009.  And I'm prepared to be there for myself too.  :)