Suddenly Single | Suddenly *Not So* Single Journey

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Let the journey begin.

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

How did I get here…

That was a great question posed by Meg Ryan’s character in Sleepless in Seattle. It was a question that worked on so many levels, literal and figurative.

“You told a lie and hopped on a plane,” Rosie O’Donnell’s character responded.

I ask myself that same question. It’s not as simple as telling a lie or hopping on a plane. For me, I realized I was tired of living the lie. I was tired of being both lonely and alone. After seventeen years together, fifteen of them married, I was just tired.

J had worked two jobs our entire marriage, becoming the main bread winner the last seven years and leaving me to raise the kids, take care of the house, and all that entailed. It was usually a comfortable existence, peppered with almost monthly weekend getaways to the beach or the mountains, constant activity, and time with couple friends. I was content, for the most part, but not complete.

So, I decided to ‘fix’ things. Always one for self-improvement, I read The Secret. Just about the time I made it through the relationship portion of the book, with me sending out into the universe the kind of relationship I wanted, our marriage fell apart. Oh, and not just our marriage, but our couple friendship, which was also linked to my job, and suddenly…I was single…or wanted to be.

That was the end of March, 2008. On my worst day ever, after being seen sobbing uncontrollably by Ed while he was mowing Kelly’s yard, (Who knew a big city could be so incestuous?) I decided to do damage control and nip any rumors that might spring up from ignorance and concern by hanging out after dinner at Ed’s house.

As the honorary mayor of The Bubble, our pet name for our subdivision, Ed’s was where people unwound after a long day. Yeah, it’s that kind of neighborhood. Or…it was. And that was where I met him, the man I believed to be my soul mate. It wasn’t an ‘aha’ moment. All I knew was that we could talk about everything and nothing and did for three solid hours. It was, apparently, a mile stone for him for so many reasons. He tended to be shy, particularly when he was tired, and that night he was. Yet we connected. And over the next few months as we came to know each other better, I couldn’t deny the attraction.

Not one to be duplicitous, I knew that if I had feelings for someone else, my marriage truly was over. I just didn’t know how to make it so. I mean, I had been formulating a plan, but now it was being force fed steroids, instead of developing on its own as I originally intended.

By Memorial Day, I was Suddenly Single. And it was time for my journey of self-discovery and self-improvement to begin.