Tag Archives: life

Empty Time

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

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A space for writing. A space for thinking. For feeling. For being.
I am old enough to remember life before the internet was in every household and in every hand. I am old enough to recall what it means to spend a day in your bedroom, without Facebook, YouTube or instragram to “entertain” you.

I remember listening to Ace of Base for hours (the entire album, not just that one song – because that’s how you listened to music back then), while doodling fashion design sketches on notepads. I dreamt I might become a fashion designer one day, creating clothes that were comfortable, functional, and cool.

I liked to wear my black Doc. Martens boots with floral babydoll dresses and a well-worn jean jacket. Nobody dressed like that in my town, but I didn’t care. I thought I was ahead of my time and, having watched “Reality Bites” more than once, believed I was a Winona Ryder-esque misfit.

This brief soirée into fashion design came from the most unusual place – Archie comics.

I loved Archie comics and I used to own them all. At one point, they started fashion design contests where people could submit outfits for Betty or Veronica. Having seen the winning submissions, I just knew that I could do better than what I was seeing – for Betty, of course. Who the hell cares about Veronica?

There was such an incredible amount of space and time to create back in those days. Time to dream. Time to breathe and just be.

Some of this has been swallowed by adulthood. Time is now used for cooking meals, doing dishes, cleaning the house, taking care of my child, paying bills and the many more responsibilities that age brings with it.

Loss is inevitable when the currency is time.

But, does it always have to be lost? Once we reach a certain age in life are we just doomed to continue losing time until the day we breathe our last?

I don’t think so. I certainly hope not.

I have begun seeking ways to gain time instead of always just losing it. I find I regain a few seconds when I take the time to just look out of a window for a few minutes or sit on the porch swing, empty handed, no music or distractions other than the birds flittering around the bird feeders or landing lightly on the evergreen branches. I gain a minute when I just sit and watch my son playing and allow myself to soak-in every movement and noise he makes. My time bank grows a little bit when I go for a drive and allow myself to breathe-in the landscape around me, letting my mind drift-back to the days of childhood when I used to look-out over the same landscape and dream.

I am on a journey to rediscover the pleasure of empty time. We grow-up and somewhere along the way we buy-in to the concept that empty time is a waste of time. This is simply not true.

Empty time is where life is found. It is where joy exists and time expands.

Empty time is where the magic happens.

I Am Enough

09 Friday Jun 2017

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I used to be afraid of seeing people I knew from growing-up in this town. When I visited my parents, I would dive behind displays in the supermarket, or turn my head when someone I knew was nearby.There is so much in my childhood/teenage years and early adulthood that was absolutely horrible. My relationship with peers was always very tumultuous. I felt weird, odd, strange and always felt like I never really belonged or fit-in.

I seemed to skip-over the teenage years, and didn’t understand what it meant to relax and have fun. I was always on-edge and lonely. I hated high school rallies, sports games, events, etc. I couldn’t understand why everyone seemed so happy while I was so miserable. Because I didn’t understand it, it all seemed fake to me. Everyone seemed fake and I didn’t know how to relate to that.

As I’ve grown-up I’ve started to have a better understanding for what happened in those years, why I was affected the way I was, and have had a better appreciation for the people who were around me at the time.

I have also grown in confidence. Being in the city has helped with this. There are far too many people in a large city for people there to be bothered judging them. Living in a place that, in comparison, is so free from judgement and harsh opinions, was liberating.

Thousands of people walked-by you every day dressed in all-manners of clothing, different levels of attractiveness, poor, rich, dirty, clean…and they were all the same; just another person you were passing on the street.

It is in the city where I began to feel confident wearing tank tops and shorts. I saw woman of all shapes and sizes just dressing to be cool and comfortable on hot summer days and didn’t hear one negative comment from any of the hundreds of people around, about how they looked and I realized – I could do that too.

I remember as a child/teen always wanting to be as “cool” as the “town kids”. The “town kids” had all the “in” name brands: Club Monaco, The Gap, Adidas and even B.U.M. Equipment. I don’t think I owned anything that was name-brand until I finally begged my mother to the point she bought me a B.U.M. Equipment sweatshirt for Christmas. But, my wiener dog, Gus, chewed-up the ‘U’ and my mom decided to stuff the ‘U’ with cotton and patch it with floral material. I hated it, but felt so guilty and pressured to wear it after all her work, that I did. But, I’m sure my ability to ‘fit in’ took several hits for the cause.

The “town kids” also didn’t smell like a barn when they arrived at school. I lived on a farm and did my share of barn chores (mostly shovelling poop), which meant that I always had a bit of a “barn smell” on my skin and clothing. I don’t really know if other people smelled it, I never asked, or if I was just self-conscious about it. But, it is one reason I found it difficult to get out of my comfort zone to hang-out with peers.

I also was a tomboy who never cared for, or bothered, to learn about things like doing hair, makeup, nails, plucking eyebrows, etc. It just didn’t interest me. There were so many other things to do with my time, like climbing trees, going out on the 4-wheeler, milking the cows, raking the hay and playing music.

The ironic thing about this whole period of time is that I thought that I was the one being judged harshly, but have come to understand that I was doing the judging myself. I judged my peers as being fatuous and shallow and determined that I was above that.

There were, at times, reason to feel this way. We were teenagers, after all, but I’m sure now that if I could have been outside of myself and looking at myself on occasion, I would feel the exact same way about me.

Though, I also did a lot of my “teenage stuff” before I was an actual teenager: I skipped school, got in fights, had boyfriends, fooled-around, tried beer and cigarettes, all before grade 9. During Grade 9 I did a bit more of it, and was kind of in one of the ‘cool groups’ (I even participated in a Homecoming float). But, by the end of Grade 9 I guess I just felt ‘over it all’.

I became a bit of a loner. I was just ready to get on with life. I wanted to be an adult, to be a successful writer, musician or University professor. I wanted to be full of knowledge and experience, having traveled the world and lived-through adventure upon adventure.

And here I sit, 15+ years later, having gained knowledge, experience, traveled and lived-through adventure upon adventure, and I’ve returned to this place, where it all began, changed and yet, in many ways, the same.

I still have no interest in town gossip, or want to be friends with people who think it’s ok to be mean to others and I still love to be a tomboy, spending time outside getting dirty, or doing heavy work. But, I no longer think of myself as an “outsider” or feel the need to hide behind shelves at the store if I see someone from my past.

I know now that I am a person, just like everyone else. I have things that are really fantastic about me, things that are unique and totally loveable, and I have things that are annoying about me and things that are weaknesses. And it’s ok.

It’s me.

When I was younger, I never felt like I was enough. It is still something with which I struggle. It’s a common affect of being a child that has gone-through divorce.

But, now I know better. I know that I am me. I am myself.

And I am enough.

Seeking New Daydreams

08 Thursday Jun 2017

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When I was younger I spent the bulk of my time lost in daydreams. There was a steady stream of stories and scenarios swirling-around inside of me. These thoughts did not feel detached from me, as I lived through every one with full emotion and feeling.I would have numerous conversations and encounters with crushes as well as heated debates (which I always won) with adversaries on important topics such as LBTQ rights or the plight of small/family-run farms.

I have lost some of this, which I suppose is a good thing since I’m not sure how I would have been able to make it in the world as an adult if I continued to spend all my time lost in my imagination. But, I miss the feelings that these reveries brought with them. My life held so much magic to it back then.

I have been attempting to try and regain some of this magic while keeping a foot solidly in the land of adult responsibilities and duties.

I am trying to be intentional about stopping to soak-in some moments in time. Today, as my son was using the toilet, I stood at the bathroom window while the breeze caused the soft white curtains to dance around me, and stared at the backyard. I tried to memorize each tree, how they looked, how they responded to the wind and took a deep breath to try and memorize the smell of the moment.

The things that are missing from these moments, however, are the questions of who I will be, what I will be doing, who I might be with, and what of my hopes and dreams might I have already fulfilled. Many of these questions have now been answered. The excitement of the unknown, mostly when it comes to the romantic things, has passed.

Truthfully, most of my daydreams were about romance. I liked to imagine a million scenarios that could happen between me and whichever person I had feelings for at the time. It was a fun world in which to live, but one that doesn’t really exist as a married person anymore.

The truth is, I love to imagine and I love to pretend. I do, sometimes, play-out imaginary scenarios of what life might be like if I were married to another person. I will picture us in a house, doing married-life things, just as my husband and I do now, and see how it plays itself out. But, these daydreams are difficult to maintain as I always have to, inevitably, face the question about what the imaginings mean for my husband and child. The old carefree dreams of this romantic are now hopelessly real and complicated.

I miss the nervous thrill of never knowing ‘if it will ever happen’.

It happened.

That’s done.

As a result, I have been starting to dig into my mind and try to find other unknowns, other questions and things that make me feel a similar kind of enjoyable anxiety towards. I want to make some more space for daydreaming again and living here gives me the perfect opportunity to do so.

Now, I just have to find some new daydreams.

Taking Time for Me

07 Wednesday Jun 2017

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I’m thrilled to be sitting at the dining room table, listening to the oven gently whirring as it cooks my chicken breasts mixed with the sound of birds softly chirping and an occasional car passing-by on the highway.It is peaceful.

I have been longing to write. Craving some solid, uninterrupted and quiet time to be able to sit down and reflect on some things.

Despite living in the (somewhat) country again, it has been a flurry of activity ever since our things arrived. We have finally (mostly) settled-in and my husband has started a full-time job. This also means that, for the first time since my son was 11.2 months old, I am a stay-at-home Mom.

I love my son dearly, and he is wonderful to play with and really well behaved, but I feel like my brain is shrivelling – I miss adult conversation and interaction every day, and having adult tasks/duties and responsibilities in my adult workplace.

I have never imagined that I was really the right ‘make’ to be a stay-at-home Mom and have always, truly, envied woman who seemed so full and fulfilled in the role. The ability to keep themselves challenged and stimulated as individuals while devoting so much of their energy and attention to little ones is truly impressive to me. I am, perhaps, too lazy for this. Or, maybe, too picky or difficult to please.

But, whatever it is that makes it a challenge for me to assume this role, here I am anyways.

I recall before I had given birth to my child that I had this dream of what my days of leave would look like: my baby would be sleeping sweetly, having been fed, changed, cuddled and cared for with perfection by yours truly and I would be serenely sipping a cup of tea while writing my novel.

I don’t think I even wrote one single word (other than facebook posts) for most of that time. And even then, the posts were largely pleading for help, or just posting a cute picture (or 100 cute pictures) of my perfect child.

I have felt challenged, on a personal level, recently to really carve-out time for what it is that is special and important to me and the one thing to which I consistently return is writing.

I know that woman are always talking about this and there seem to be endless articles about the importance of taking time for yourself. But, that is definitely more easily said than done when there is a constant list of things that need to be done.

However, I have really been working on the art of prioritizing and being “ok” with things that are not urgent, being left undone a little bit longer while I enjoy a moment. Yesterday I sat outside while my son had his nap, with a cup of tea and a little slice of carrot cake and I read and caught-up on my “5 Year Journal” entries.

It wasn’t that bad, actually. It didn’t really put me that much further behind in the tasks I was hoping to accomplish. Here I am, Day 2 of trying to be intentional about taking a small chunk of time out of my day to do something that is just for me and so far, so good.

I  Could Get Used to This

09 Tuesday May 2017

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It’s not “home” as I once knew it.

It’s not where I grew up, where I spent years of learning, maturing, laughing, crying, working and resting.

It is not where I rolled on the ground with the dogs, flung hay around for the cows’ lunch, learned to drive, or spent endless hours in my bedroom dreaming and pining for the kind of romantic adventures I had read about. It’s not where I fought with my brother, or where we spent hours recording ourselves on cassette tapes as we played Mario Bros. or watched Degrassi. 

My brother thought the tapes would be worth money one day. 

It is not where I used to sing opera at the top of my lungs in the hay loft, or dance around the calf stalls singing “16 Going on 17” when I was supposed to be cleaning.

No, it is not the home I grew-up in; still, it is home.

It is where my parents live and now, so do we.

Myself, my husband and our 3 year old son. Five of us under one roof. I am glad that we have our own space upstairs and will be much more glad when our things arrive and we have our space filled with our things. We have always been 3. The trinity. A perfect triangle. The 3 Amigos. 

There has been an adjustment period as we have expanded our triangle into a pentagon. The 5 Amigos. Or, as my son likes to point-out, the perfect finger family.

I get impatient with adjustment periods. I want to be settled NOW. I am hard on myself when I feel like I should be doing better, I should be feeling better, I should be more settled, I should have everything set-up and all the details under control. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s only been 1 week. Well, 1 week and 3 days. 

Although it has been, in actuality, a short period of time, it has felt as though we have been suspended in this unusual state for many months. I have gone in and out and around various stages of mourning. In the past few days I have cried over the loss of what had been routine family times, back when it was just the 3 of us. 

I have missed coming-downstairs on Sunday morning, after my husband let me sleep-in, to find my boys, sweetly, playing together. I would turn-on classical 96.3 FM and sit at the table with my toast, eggs and tea and just soak-in the sweetness of our trinity.

These moments are gone. They have become memories that feel terribly distant and teasingly close all at the same time. 

But, new moments and new memories are already beginning to establish themselves like the first green buds that poke out of the ground after a forest fire. New life full of new stories and sweet memories are already springing-up. My husband and I have shared many of these while watching our son with his grandparents; when he goes to help Nana feed the birds or bursts out laughing and says “You’re funny, Grampa!” in response to almost anything Grampa says.

And this evening I had a moment of pure perfection while bathing my son. I sat on the little, white stool that he uses to climb up onto the toilet or stands on at the sink to brush his teeth and watched him playing in the tub. As I watched him, the sweet smell of lavender baby wash circled around me and the song “Don’t Grow Up So Fast” by Train played quietly behind me, I realized that life couldn’t get any better than that moment.

Perfection. 100% pure perfection.

I wanted to seize on it, to tie it down, to capture it forever. 

In an attempt to trap the moment as long as I possibly could, I hit repeat on my phone. I sat there soaking in the sweetness, trying desperately to ensure that it was securely planted deep within my mind, somewhere it would never be lost. 

I did this another 4 times.

And I thought the thought that I have had many times since arriving here:

I could get used to this. 

Trying to Feel

29 Saturday Apr 2017

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Sitting in the back seat of my Mom’s vehicle, on our way to what will be our new home. In the past couple of weeks I have been asked, what seems like, hundreds of times how I am feeling about moving. 

I’ve always said “exhausted”, but today my husband found a much better word to express how we are feeling: numb.

I have only just started to allow myself to consider how massive this move really is. We are leaving Canada’s largest city, our bustling, noisy, gritty, downtown home to live in a small town. In fact, we are not even in the town, we are outside of it.

And, although, I grew-up in the area, I’ve been away for 18 years. I’m looking forward to the slower pace and being able to do more outdoor activities with my boys. But, I have become a ‘city person’ in many ways, and I will miss the excitement, the diversity, the fact that there is always so much to do, and watching the sunset glistening on the high rises. I will miss the street meat and array of buskers. 

I’ve tried to picture, to imagine, what life may look like for us now, to try to already begin replacing some of these moments and memories with the great things to come, but it is not possible. You cannot reminisce on what has not happened.

And so, what is left to do but to allow myself just to embrace the grief that comes with such life-altering changes? It’s not always easy to embrace grief. We don’t like to feel pain. We avoid it if we can. But, pain is an important part of grief because it allows you to really reflect on how much something has meant to you.

We became a family in Toronto. 

Therefore, here I sit in the back of my mom’s car, embracing the grief. Trying to wrap my ahead around the enormity of what is happening and allow myself to push through the numbness and feel.

It’s My Story – And, I love it.

03 Monday Apr 2017

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It’s always exciting to me when a chapter of my life is drawing to an end. The older I get, the more I am able to look-back on each chapter with pride and contentment. Perhaps this is because so much of my early chapters were filled with struggle, heartache and pain and as I get further away from them, filling my book with more adventures and happy moments, there are simply more memories from which to choose than there once was.
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I am also more excited than I used to be at the start of a new chapter. When I was younger, so much of my life was a blank page and I didn’t understand or fully appreciate the wonder of that.
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I recall when I was in my early 20’s, reflecting on my life and waiting for it to begin. In my mid-20’s, thinking I had experienced so much and yet, still thinking that I was still just waiting for when life would really start for me. At that time, I had only lived a small handful of chapters.
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Even though I somehow, at least on an intellectual level, knew that this was life, that it had begun, I didn’t feel it and I was still waiting.
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I used to meditate on the idea and try to will my whole being to a great epiphany of in-the-moment realization that this was life and it was wondrous. Then, one day, without me even noticing, it just happened.
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I can look-back on so much of my life and see these clear chapters, separations, moments of endings and new beginnings, of loss, of gain, of growth of retreat.
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And it’s all glorious.
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Now, more than when I was young, I revel at those blank pages. I am excited to think what stories, adventures, sites, smells, sounds and memories are going to fill these pages. I have a deeper appreciation for what it means to really be able to “look-back” and reflect on things.
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Natasha Bedingfield sings a song called “Unwritten” that has just started playing in my head as I am writing this:
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Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten.
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One day, years from now, I will be looking-back on this new chapter after it has been finished and I have moved-on to a new one, maybe even several new ones, and I will see the flashes of happy Christmases, sorrows and loss, moments of silliness, mistakes made, feelings of pride as well as accomplishment and, what I’m most looking-forward to, memories that are, heavily, steeped in love.
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I will be changed then, as I am now from the 20 year old me that was so eager for life to start.
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But, one thing will always remain – this is my story.
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And, I love it.
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Confessions of a Facebook “Creeper”

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

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I admit it. I search for people all the time who aren’t my friends on Facebook. Usually, this happens during bouts of nostalgia when I find myself thinking about the people with whom I grew-up and wondering where they are, what they are doing, what they look like and how happy they appear.

I want to compare where I am, what I’m doing, what I look like and how happy I am with my childhood friends. I am always relieved and slightly joyous when I see that there has been weight gain, wrinkles, weariness…good. It’s not just me.

There are many people with whom I wish I had kept more regular contact. People with whom I am no longer “friends” – not even on Facebook. Sometimes I creep these people to see what life is like for them. I did this yesterday and spent a considerable amount of time looking at a few childhood friends and I was genuinely glad to see how happy they appeared. I was pleased that they had experienced adventures, travel, fun, love and beauty.

I considered sending a few friend requests, but got lost in thoughts of how it would be perceived by these people. I suffered from depression for most of my time in high school. This was before depression was really understood, talked about or treated. But, the biggest casualty of my depression was my social life. I withdrew from all of my friends and lost most of those relationships. One of the biggest hangers-on of this time period is embarrassment. I feel embarrassed all the time about how I was and I assume that people remember me in a negative light.

I was moody, judgmental, shy, confused, lonely and lost.

During these years my FB posts would have be the kind that you just get tired of seeing so you block the person so you don’t get the constant drone of negative status updates in your feed.

When I think about these years I am always overwhelmed with sadness for the many memories I have about stupid things I did as a result of my state of mind. I’ve been working on forgiving myself, and giving that girl a chance to heal and find acceptance; strangely, creeping on Facebook kind of helps with this. I’ve managed to ‘rekindle’ a few of these lost relationships and they have been extremely meaningful to me. Every time I send a request to a long, lost, friend and then we message back and forth a bit, and eventually just start to share life through the regular news feed, it helps normalize what feels like an extremely polarizing time for me.

I wish I could sit down with all of my old friends and have an open discussion about those years, explain what was going on in my world, express my regret for how I may have treated them, share my sorrow for all the lost time and then make-up for some of that time and move-forward as friends again.

My mind is full of many happy memories with them. I remember hours and hours of time spent together, laughing, talking about boys, playing stupid games, sleepovers, doing makeup, playing sports, passing notes in school…I see snapshots in my mind of us together on hammocks, acting cool at school dances, playing flag football, flirting and silly things like stuffing our shirts with balloons. The memories are full and rich.

But, then there are years where the memories are filled with pictures of school dances, football games, pep rallies and lunches filled with all these faces growing and enjoying life—but mine is not with them. These memories haunt me like shadows. Life was happening all around me, but I wasn’t in it.

So, I creep on facebook. I try to fill-in some of the gaps. I reach-out. I rekindle. I make progress.

I am so thankful for those friends with whom I’ve managed to reconnect because, the truth is, the folks with whom I grew-up really do mean a lot to me. They were the people that helped shape me into who I am today. They were my original cheerleaders, challengers and role-models. They were my squad, my family, my community. They exist in my memory as a deep and vast resource of life, joy, sorrow, lessons-learned, new experiences, comfort and friendship and I am so thankful for the ability to creep into their lives now and get a little piece of what once was.

250.4 My Life in Lbs

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

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I am getting excitingly close to leaving the 50’s and entering the 40’s.

I decided to take a look at my weight loss to date and figured-out that I am getting close to a 50 lb landmark.

It depends on which number I choose to look at, which is complicated a bit by the pregnancy/birth of my son.

Here’s my chart from Lose It:

Chart

 

My son was born October 17, 2013 and while still pregnant I had last weighed-in at 315 lbs.

After he was born, I got down to 283.5 on November 14th, 2013, but as you can see it went up from there for a while.

There’s a weird spike to 295 on March 25, 2014, but since there’s a previous mark that is 292.6 on January 2, 2014, I choose to pick an average there of 293 and just say that on January 1, 2014 I was 293 lbs.

With that little explanation, here’s a quick synopsis:

Jan. 1, 2014  (293 lbs) to Jan. 1, 2015 (280 lbs) = 13 lbs lost

Jan. 1, 2015 (280 lbs) to Jan. 1, 2016 (276 lbs) = 4 lbs lost

Jan. 1, 2016 (276 lbs) to Aug. 10, 2016 (250.4 lbs) = 25.6 lbs lost

Total lbs lost = 42.6

Getting so close to 50 lbs down.

I love this graph because it reflects a journey that hasn’t been easy, but I look it and see that I have never given-up. I look at it and I see hard work, perseverance, lessons learned, changes made, struggles, victories, tears of joy, tears of shame and, most beautifully, the creation and birth of my son.

To look at this chart is to see my life-the spikes represent times when life was difficult, dark times when I struggled to get out of bed in the morning and to eat anything other than toast, chips, chocolate and cookies. You can see times when the clouds seem to have parted and I go ‘great guns’ and drop a bit, only to rebound and hit another spike.

But, the general trend has been downwards and recently, the trend is pretty impressive. I have, clearly, learned a lot through my journey.

This morning I am feeling encouraged. I feel strengthened and validated in my pursuit of health.
I am not perfect. But, when I look at my life in lbs, I see a warrior who refuses to be defeated and is constantly honing her skills as she levels up and prepares to, once and for all, take down the big boss.

I Dreamed a Dream

05 Tuesday Jul 2016

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I had a dream last night that I had decided to leave my husband and run-off with an old flame of mine. This isn’t a unique dream for me, I have some variation of this dream every 3-4 months. 

The “object of my affection” is a guy who was my biggest crush in life, though in the dream he’s actually an almagamation of different people I’ve met into one super-human.

This dream always starts off so beautifully. My ‘dream guy’ has just professed his love for me and expressed the ultimate desire for us to be together. I’m swept-away. Swept-up in a daydream of violins, rose petals, strong arms and perfect love.
This is what I’ve been missing.

What I’ve always wanted.
My new/old beau and I spend some intimate and romantic time together. We embrace, we cry, we kiss we talk about the time we’ve missed and the dreams to come.

(At this point, I wake up because I have to pee. I go to the bathroom, pee, return to bed and fall back asleep, and am instantly brought back into the romantic reverie. My new/old beau and I have a few friends around us who are so happy that we’ve finally connected and that we have accepted the fact that we were meant to be together and I am feeling peaceful, happy and so in love).

Eventually, however, reality hits. This is the part of the dream where I start to think about how I would break the news to my husband. I begin to process how this will hurt him, and the realization starts to set-in that hurting him will hurt me as well, because his well-being was part of me. I don’t want to hurt him or see him sad.

More importantly, I don’t want to break what we’ve built together.

It hasn’t been perfect and it most definitely did not start-off in any romantic, loving, head-over-heels kind of way, but it is what it is because we’ve worked at it together. 

I never “fell in love” with my husband. We were good friends and I loved him as a friend. But, I never had romantic feelings towards him or felt attracted to him. Our romantic relationship hopped-skipped-and-jumped from friendship to ‘couple on the verge of divorce’. That is where our relationship started.

I never had the butterflies, the nervous stomach, the excitement and anticipation of being picked up for a date, or that feeling of being swept-up or falling in love. 

I have always wondered what I missed-out on. I try to tell myself that I don’t want, or need, the romance – that they are not required to be in a happy relationship, that it is unrealistic, that this idea of being “in love” with the person you marry is a fairytale, or something that only a few special (privileged) people get to experience.

I used to wake up after one of these dreams feeling resentful towards the man that was snoring beside me. Why couldn’t he be more like the man of my dreams? Why do I feel trapped and that it is impossible to leave to pursue a relationship like that of my dreams? I loved getting swept-away in this dream, a fairy tale, a plot for a Sandra Bullock or Meg Ryan movie. I used to try to live in the dream as long as possible once awake. To pretend that it was real.

But, this morning when I woke-up, I was surprised at how I was feeling. I didn’t feel resentful or sad at my lot in life, I wasn’t desperately clinging to the romance I had experienced in my dream, I wasn’t depressed by feelings of being trapped or stuck, I was relieved. I was grateful that the man snoring beside me was my husband and nobody else.

I usually wake-up during the part of the dream where I’m just starting to feel sad about the looming idea that I might not be able to go through with it. But, this morning, I dreamt for much longer than that. In my dream I went through a lot of processing and woke up after I had realized that I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to be with this other person. I wanted to be with my husband.

It was the first time that this dream didn’t leave lingering feelings of regret or sadness.

And there was no sadness there.

Only joy.

Joy and gratitude.

There are is still improvement needed and I clearly desire more excitement, romance, intimacy and adventure in our relationship, but I know that I want it in OUR relationship and not with anyone else.

I want to continue to build on what we have created. To explore and discover romance and beauty together. To continue to challenge ourselves and each other to make our lives the things of which dreams are truly made.

I love you, sweet cheeks.