Here We Go

It's the eve of my 28th birthday and I have no one to celebrate with except my cat...who is currently preoccupied with her dinner and couldn't care less about celebrating the day I arrived on this earth. Such is life.

27 has been strange. More ups and downs in the past six months than I could ever recall in years prior. I keep telling myself you need the bad to appreciate the good, but the bad hurts sometimes. And lately, it hurts a lot. It's a dull, lonely pain that stings most when I am alone. Which these days, is a lot.

I shouldn't be so mopey. I'm incredibly lucky to have a home, a car, a family, some money in my savings account, a job, travel plans booked and ready for take-off. And while all of that is great and wonderful - none of it matters when you don't matter to anyone. Or a particular someone.

I think about him every day. I dream about him every night. It's not on purpose and I feel like a but of a psycho but it's not that kind of thought or yearning or obsession. There's no particular thought or feelings that accompanies his presence on my mind - he's just there. And I'm not sure why.

I'm a little nervous for 28. It's the first year in a loooooong time I am entering alone -  I'm not sure I'm ready for the trek but here we go...such is life.

Summer Pains

It had to happen this way. The seven year itch stung me hard and I threw my inhibitions to the wind on a gamble I knew wouldn't end well. Now I'm stuck in a torturous replay of the past 60 days, recounting every mistake I made and realizing how my own shortcomings made me end up alone.

I'll back up a bit so you can catch up.

I've always been in a relationship. I'm just that kind of girl. I meet a boy, I like a boy and boom - my life is devoted to that boy. Not solely devoted mind you - I'm still a very independent person with my own job and finances and family life...but I've always found myself in a relationship. A security I didn't realize I held so dear until my boyfriend of seven years and I split. My choice, my mistake.

There had been waves of unhappiness throughout the years. Me wondering if there was someone out there I would have more passion with. A deeper connection with. My relationship was fine. But fine wasn't good enough for me. I bought into the idea of true love and couldn't settle for "fine". I wanted more. And then I met a coworker.

I wasn't particularly attracted to him at first but somewhere during week two on the road I was smitten. He was so debonair I had to have him. We started texting and flirting and he called me his "set girlfriend". A joke that had truth to it as we both liked one another and wound up in each others hotel rooms getting acquainted. He knew I had a boyfriend and we both knew it was wrong to carry on the way we were but we let temptation get the best of us.

It was amazing to like someone like this again. The fresh excitement of a new relationship was a drug I couldn't get enough of. I was ready to run off and marry this man and we'd work out the nitty gritty details of life along the way. Mistake number one.

I got ahead of myself. And I'm fairly certain it scared him away.