Another Year Almost Over

It's December 22 and the year is almost over.  Where does the time go?  If you're not careful, it's gone before you know it and you wake up one morning to realize you spent the last 10 years of your life in some kind of perpetual sleep-walk just moving in and out of each day simply trying to make it to the next.  And for what?  Ah, that's the burning question, isn't it?  To be happy?  To provide for your children?  Your spouse?  Yourself?  So many people forget somewhere along the way what it is that even makes them happy.

Life is hard.  If it were easy, everyone would enjoy it.  I've been married twice.  Both were not the fairy-tale endings I've read about in books and watched in endless movies.  You could say they were movies, alright, but not the kind I had hoped I'd star in.  More like a mix of horror, suspense, and drama with a little bit of comedy sprinkled in.  I joke that the 2nd husband left me because it was karma's way of biting me in the ass for leaving the 1st husband.  It could very well have been but if that's the case I'm way ahead now because she took a chunk out of my ass that was so big, it surely didn't equal the crime at hand.  In any case...I wouldn't change a thing.  Not one.  Not any one bad thing that happened to me along the way.  Each rotten thing made me a little bit stronger and a little more resilient.  A little more sure of who I am and what I want.  And this is a good thing......that I sometimes need to remind myself of.  I am proud that I don't feel I need someone to "complete" me.  I'm already complete.  I'm happy.  I do for myself, I support myself, I take care of myself.  

I wonder, though, about that fairy-tale ending. I scoff at it, really - at love and romance and anything even resembling such.  I let people believe I'm sarcastic and cynical and tough and hard.  Hell, even I thought I was broken for so long I didn't even think about it anymore - I just believe it to be so.  I figured I was so broken, I'd be alone forever.  And I may be alone forever.  And that's okay.  

My mom asked me a question when I was trying to make the most difficult decision of my life - to leave my first marriage.  She asked me what if I never again found anyone.  When I answered her that I'd rather be happy by myself, than live a lie and be miserable with my then-husband, I knew I had made the decision to go.  I've never regretted that decision to this day and it still stands true.  I would much rather be alone and happy, than be with the wrong person.  But I do wonder about that happy ending.  And I have discovered that I am not broken.  And that, is at least good enough for me right now.