And Amongst the Ashes, I Found Myself

To say it's been a while since I've done this blog thing is a rather decent understatement. Comparable to me thinking the single working mom thing would be a bit tough.

Life. It's busy. It's stressful. It's difficult doing all of this on my own. I'm tired, I'm sick, I'm broke as hell. I bust my ass from the time my alarm goes off at 6:10am till I fall into bed each night sometime after 10pm (and even then, rarely is there a night when my children aren't up in the middle of the night for one reason or another). I can't remember the last time I did something even resembling my former hobbies... though I aspire to. I long to find the time and maybe, just maybe, once I'm organized and my house is clean and I'm caught up on paperwork... and my children are in college... I will.

But here's the funny thing. I've never been happier. Never felt stronger. Never been more sure of myself than I am at this moment. Because I'm doing this. I'm handling it and surviving it despite it all and, in that, I'm becoming my own person. A much stronger person. And that's a really, really good thing. And though this whole thing is hard as hell (even that may be an understatement), I'm incredibly optimistic about my future.

I keep saying I'm doing this all on my own. I suppose that is not totally true. Yes, I'm a single mom and yes, each day I take care of my kids and my house and my job and my life all on my own physically. But emotionally I am anything but alone. That's one thing I've found in all of this. In the life I lived preceding this one, I was very private and rarely let anyone in. Not really, truly in. I didn't talk about my problems, my unhappiness, my anything that wasn't happy-go-lucky. It wasn't until shortly before my marriage ended that I really started to talk with my girlfriends and my family. And after the split, when I found that I couldn't do it all on my own and keep sane, I discovered how much people really wanted to be there for me. And slowly I learned how to humble myself to ask for and accept help. Slowly I started to open up the truth of my world to others. Select others. And in those darkest of days following the split, when sometimes I wasn't sure I had the strength to make it through, that I'd been tested too heavily and was failing, I realized I could turn to my girls and my family and they were there to listen. And each and every time, they lifted me back up and set me on my feet and reminded me that I could handle all of this. That I was handling all of this. And that all I really had to do was put one foot in front of the other and take things one day at a time. And so I did. And with each step, each moment, each day that I survived it, I grew. And so too did those relationships.

Through our trials we find our true self. I've learned so much from all of this. Come so much further than I ever thought I could in this first year and a half since the split. I'm growing into the sort of woman I always wanted to be- the woman I portrayed on the outside. Except now it's inside too. And it's real. It's me.