Back in the summer of last year my ex-husband and I made a decision to both relocate to a new town. Both of us had a variety of reasons for wanting to leave the town we lived in and the fact that both of us were ready to leave at the same time is some kind of miracle in the wild world of post-marriage co-parenting. We both settled on a town and by August the move happened. I drove into town with all my belongings in a trailer and felt this optimism. I thought a fresh start in a new area was exactly what was needed. New job, new home, new options in the dating world. Everything seemed like it could finally come up roses for me for once.
After a few months of being here I learned that you can’t outrun the things that you haven’t dealt with. No matter where you go, things find you. So by November I found myself on the couch of a new therapist. Ready to start tackling a lot of different things head-on. I loved my sessions with her. She got me (she still gets me) and in a short amount of time I learned some things about myself that deep down I probably already knew but I had never been able to piece together. The number one thing was finally the recognition that I suffer from anxiety. The number two thing was that I struggle with “cognitive distortions” which is where I take a situation and instead of focusing on what good can happen, I instead distort it and think of what can go wrong and what might happen, or put my own thoughts about myself into other people’s heads when they likely haven’t even thought it. I assume the worst before anything has even happened. We are working on this regularly.
By February, after a short 2 months of seeing “The Pilot” which ended in some pretty heavy heartbreak for me, I finally realized I was exhausted of trying to deal with my anxiety on my own. I was tired of always being negative. I was tired of fighting a battle in my brain on my own. I called my doctor and asked to go on an anxiety medication. I started taking Citalopram the next day. Within 3 weeks I started to feel a shift in myself. Sure, I was still tired, but I felt my body calm. I felt happier. I felt like I was spending less time over-thinking everything. I felt like I was starting to get a version back of myself that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I even noticed that it helped me become more patient in my parenting my son.
These are the great things that happened because of my move to a new town.
But those things that I wrote about above. The ones I was thinking about as I drove through the town for the first time with all my stuff….the ones about more options for dating and finding my own home and having a great job. Those ones aren’t going as I had hoped. Those are the ones that just followed me from one town to another.
My job is good. I’m happy with it. But lately I have been struggling with motivation on it. For a variety of reasons. In January we were all sent to work from home because of Covid reasons. It’s now the end of May and I’m still working from home because we are waiting for our new office building to be completed. It seems as though this move to working from home has set me back a bit on my learning and expanding as I’m not always around people who can teach me. I’m finding myself going and watching TV at 2:00 in the afternoon instead of working or struggling to get out of bed and sit down in front of the computer for the day. This needs to change as my boss is starting to take notice somehow. And I will change it. But my enthusiasm that I had early on is wearing off. I miss that version of myself.
I’m still in the small apartment that I really don’t love. This place was supposed to be a temporary stop over until I found a place to buy. It was supposed to be so temporary that I kept all my home decorations in boxes in storage. Well….a few weeks ago I hung up a painting that I was gifted for Christmas. The housing market boom seemed to follow me from one town to another, and it turns out banks don’t love giving mortgages to single income moms. I was approved for a mortgage that is less than the rent I pay on my current apartment. The bank decided for me that I can’t even afford what I somehow manage to pay every month without issue. So it’s been back to square one of trying to figure out what I am going to do regarding housing. I can stay in this apartment as long as I want….but I don’t want to.
As for finding love and that one person who makes me feel happy? Well, let’s just say I have learned how to appreciate and enjoy being alone. They say that if you can enjoy being alone then the right person will one day enter your life and close that circle of happiness. I am doubtful that it is ever going to happen for me. I am content being alone. But there are times where I yearn to have someone who I can spend time with. Someone who I can get excited about when I see their name come up on my phone. Someone who cares for me and makes me feel important. I thought that maybe I had recently found that person, but today that illusion I was starting to create in my head got shattered in one polite, but upsetting phone call. So instead of going to his house where he was going to cook me dinner and I was going to bring over a nice red wine, I am now sitting in front of my computer, eating a frozen pizza I cooked up, and writing this. Frustrated beyond belief about how difficult it is to meet someone who wants to stick it out and create something with me. They all say that I’m amazing, that they really like me, that I’m a lot of fun…but then they all have their reason to not actually want to continue dating me to enjoy those things about me. So how much of that is actually true? I’m getting to the point where I think that even though I know I have a lot to give to a relationship, that I don’t think I’m destined to be in one.
Life has a funny way of bringing me up just a little bit and then sends things crashing down some more. Just as I start to find my happy footing, something happens and I’m reminded that life can take me down again. So I have to crawl my way back out of it, over and over again. I’m doing my best to focus on those little moments of happiness. But life has taken a lot out of me over these last few years and I’m tired. So incredibly tired of pushing forward and waiting for things to fall into place for me.
Where Is My Glow? 