For as long as I can remember I've been imagining how grand life could be if only I had the balls to move outside central Ohio, away from the only home I've known for all of my 26 years.
I'd be a carefree little Midwestern bird with cute boots and an even cuter attitude. I'd spend years as a student sipping lattes and contemplating the secret of life. I'd drink too much beer, sleep with too many men and study too hard for my exams. All the while racking up student loans I wouldn't be able to pay off until I was years and years into my glam career.
I'd be consciously building what would turn out to be my life long favorite photo album containing a montage of my care free days. Photos of me wearing outfits that would make the me-in-my-30's cringe. Photos of me with my arms around friends who's names I wouldn't be able to remember and possibly never knew in the first place. Photos where there was never a lack of cigarette smoke lingering in the air. Photos of me playing air guitar and singing into the bristle end of a hairbrush at house parties and attending sporting games of a college I was only barely accepted to attend.
Oh how I would have cherished that photo album.
I'm sure that you can see where this is going. In fact you probably would have seen where this was going years ago and I could have used you then.
Folks, I could have used you then.
I stayed, people.
I stayed right here in Ohio and that's not all. I stayed in a relationship with a man that should have only been the first on my list of the too many men I'd slept with. I stayed away from the classes I should have been attending. I stayed in a job I should have left. I stayed, in general, away from myself, away from the me I wanted to become but knew I wasn't.
And then I got pregnant, got married, had the baby (it's a boy) and got divorced.
Which landed me in an apartment in a trendy downtown neighborhood with a baby, a Chihuahua, a job that I loved and more dates than I could handle. I hadn't moved away to a new city but I had, I thought, figured out the aforementioned secret of life. And I had done so without racking up any student loans or sipping any lattes with my classmates.
The secret, of course, was staying forever single.
Oh, how I vowed to stay single. And single I stayed. For almost a year.
That almost-year was a great year, too. I lived alone (without other adults anyhow) for the first time in my life. I controlled my check book, the grocery list, the remote control, the stereo, the how and when of all the household chores. And most importantly my datebook. I did what I wanted, when I wanted, with who I wanted and it was the most liberating feeling ever.
If this single life wasn't the secret to life, well then, I just couldn't imagine what was.
Except on the Saturday nights when the kid is with his Dad and you have no plans and no desire to sit at home and read whatever you've just picked up from the library. Except when your kid is teething and all you can think is where the hell is someone else to help me with the parenting??? Except when you realize that while cohabitation at times really blows, it is kind of nice having someone around to do the laundry once in a while, not to mention to be there when you're sick or injured. Because not being felt sorry for is just depressing.
Not that I realized these things and set out to find a mate. I was nowhere near that level of awareness. Nor was I willingly going to let go of my recently declared forever single status. I just walked into my favorite bar and was introduced to my now fiance and the rest as they say --and I sincerely hope--is all history.
It's funny now how all of the seemingly short-sighted decisions I've managed to make--in a fairly brief bout of adulthood--seem to fade out of the Mistake category and into the Live And Learn category. How instead of discussing the secret of life over lattes I've accidentally discovered it through simply living--and please don't confuse that with living simply.
I know now that family is the key.
Your partner, your kids, your life long friends, your brothers and sisters, your parents - whatever form your family comes in - they are the secret to a happy life. I know now that single is nothing short of knock-down-drag-out fun but that I'm much better suited to being part of a family.
The best part of not being single anymore is that my new fiance, through a series of not so unfortunate events, had to move to Colorado recently.
So.
After years of daydreaming of a new city, I, with a toddler and a Chihuahua in tow am packing my nail polish collection, my favorite pillows, the snow skis that haven't been touched since 1999 and moving to Colorado.
I'm finally getting my wish and, despite my inability to live life without a care in the world, I do have quite an adorable pair of boots and for the second time in my young life, the possibilities seem endless...
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