Anything Could Happen
by Laura • January 10, 2013 • Uncategorized • 19 Comments
The past two years have felt as if the world is swirling around me in a mass of confusion and disarray. Many times, I have tried and failed to shed some light where it all was leading – for surely, there had to be some point to the agony I was enduring. But the cheating, the divorce, the depression, the anger – it all seemed to come at once in a dark and furious cloud, a wall of smoke blocking out any sense of rhyme or reason. The future seemed distant and uncertain, and most alarmingly of all, completely opaque.
Through it all, I have learned to embrace the ambiguity. I take life less seriously. I laugh more. I compete less. I take more risks, and l feel okay when some of them don’t work out.
But now, for the first time in two years, I am taking a new kind of risk. One that makes me feel the same kind of excitement I used to before I grew up too soon. One that somehow, I know isn’t a risk at all. Because though the world continues to swirl around me, I can finally see through the chaos. Every disappointment, every misstep – I understand now that it was all bringing me to this moment in time. To this opportunity for a life I never dreamed for myself. One that I know I am going to love even more than the life I had planned.
The past two years have come with a lot of rejection and pain, and they took me to a point where I wasn’t sure what I deserved out of life anymore. After you reach that bottom, it’s amazing how grateful you are when things start to fall into place.
Today, I am exceeding grateful to announce that I am moving to Manhattan on Wednesday. I’ll be leaving my current job and company for an incredible opportunity that I could not be more excited to take on. I feel alive. I feel excited. I feel that I am at the center of my own life, knowing that anything could happen, but also taking control of what comes next.
There’s a kind of magic in the air that I can’t quite put my finger on. I have a good feeling about this, you guys. Wish me luck.
xo
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So happy for you my love!! Can’t wait to visit!!!L
I’m SO excited for you!! You’ll be a tad closer to me now
I’m planning on heading up there in March, so we should meet up for coffee!! xoxo
Yes!! Absolutely, let me know when you come. I also have a college roommate I will be visiting in DC, so I’ll let you know when I head down there!
Congrats! That is very exciting news…. Welcome to NYC! If you ever need a friend/drinking partner, let me know…I have been navigating the NYC nightlife/single scene for quite some time and can provide an excellent sounding board
Thanks! I will! I am thinking about seeing if I have enough readers in the area to have a HH or something!
Congratulations!! I’m up in NJ a lot since my mom lives there, so hopefully if you do a NYC reader happy hour it will correspond with one of my trips! I’d totally take the train up to attend!
Lived in New York til I was 13 and 2 of those years in Manhattan…truly the best city in the world. Haven’t been back in almost 2 years and I miss it like crazy!!! So happy for your awesome opportunity! It will be a great amazing adventure!
That’s fantastic Laura! I’m headed to Seoul in a month myself, so here’s to the big city!!
Stumbled on to your blog from Foodgawker a few weeks back. Will have to catch up!! Congratulations on being HAPPY WITH YOU!!! Reminds me of myself about 20+ years ago, same scenario with ex. Go forth and conquer Manhattan.
Congrats girl! You are living the life I have always dreamed for myself. Someday…
My bff lives in the city. He is fabulous and amazing and if you need a new gay best friend (and who doesn’t?) to show you around I can hook you two up!
Best of luck Laura. No doubt in my mind you will do well. Chin up. Carry on. Have fun.
Congratulations! I know what it feels like to rebuild your life from a traumatic divorce. Ten years from now you will look back and not even recognize yourself (in a good way). Enjoy every minute!
All the best!
Sounds fantastic! Congratulations and blessings to you!
I hope that NYC turns out great for you – I think Manhattan is a fantastic, crazy & exhilarating city. Hopefully it will also act as a “reset” switch for the crappy parts of your last 2 years. Happy 2013!
Laura, I am so glad i came across your blog! It sounds like things are going great for you – so deserved after all you’ve gone through. You have always been such a sweetheart, and I am so happy for you! Good luck in NYC…it really is the best city in the world
Thank you, Kristin
Glad to see you exceedingly happy these days as well! Congrats to you and Jamie!!
sounds like it’s going to be a blast!!! wishing you the best of luck!
What an amazing adventure! Can’t wait to see where this new road takes you — I’m sure it’s going to be great.
This blog is incredible. I spent most of my 8 hours at work reading through it…yes, that’s your tax dollars at work folks. Well, since it doesn’t seem many guys seem to comment, allow me to be a 38yr old married father of a guy for a moment and tell you a tale of when I walked to school in the snow uphill both ways.
Two years into being in the military and I changed my childhood dreams to marry the love of my life at 20 yrs old. Eight months later, I went on a six month deployment. On the return trip home to San Diego, I was met on the pier in Hawaii by a couple of friends holding a bottle of Jack. They then proceeded to get me shitfaced and tell me about how my wife had cheated on me with a guy on their ship. To her credit, the ex didn’t deny this guy…..she just didn’t tell me about all the others. A month after I got home, I found out about 12 more guys. Three months later, she had a miscarriage. The doctor told me she was 5-6 months pregnant, I had only gotten home 4 months before. My initial reaction was to make my marriage work at all costs. I fought and fought, I made it work in my head and then I went on another deployment. I thought things were going to be different this time around, I thought we had worked past the trust issues. Easter morning 1998, I received a “Dear John” email and I only thought the pain I felt after the first deployment hurt. This was the ultimate, worse than the cheating, because I thought we were ok. I truly believed that we were going to be ok. She didn’t even have the decency to leave me for another man, she just left me.
I quickly went off the deep end. After all, I was young, traveling through third world countries full of European tourists and young Asians eager to meet stupid sailors. I spent the next three years fucking any woman with a pulse, treating them like shit and tossing them away like refuse. By my reasoning, if women didn’t have the ability to see their worth, why shouldn’t I treat them as they treated themselves. I remember one of my friends wives asking me if I would arrange a meeting between my ex and her. When I asked why, she said she just wanted to meet the woman who could screw someone up as bad as she had me. And then all of that came crashing down as well. Call it remorse, maturity….boredom…I don’t know. But I stopped it all, no drinking, no partying, no sex, no friends, no nothing for two years.
By this time I had been stationed overseas for two years and was now being stationed back home for three years. I met my now wife about a year into that home tour. It wasn’t always easy while we were dating but she didn’t allow me to play bullshit games with her. She made demands of me that were within her rights. She made me cut the crap and own up to my past while looking forward to a future. I took it to the wire, but I finally decided to marry her right as that tour was winding down. I never told her this, but secretly I was just to afraid of going back to a ship and doing another deployment. Here was the ex managing to rear her ugly head again, only this time it was all on me, not the ex. I had the trust issue, not my now wife, not the ex I hadn’t seen in seven years but me. Time to man up as they say.
It hasn’t been easy. The first time I was out to sea and this “Facebook” thing was becoming all the rage. Some ex-boyfriend of my wife’s messages her and starts in on the “Wow you look great” ego boost and I freaked. I know how this game is played, I played it on many a woman and now here was my wife back home with me at sea being tuned by some guys words of wonder. I told her how I felt, I told her I trusted her and I didn’t think that she would ever cheat on me but I also told her exactly how I’d said those same words before. How I’d used phrases just like that take advantage of emotionally vulnerable women, women who…well, lets just say I’m an asshole. She cut him off like a bad habit and understood my feelings. She made sure that any other ex’s or past males knew exactly where her loyalties stood. Passing compliments were fine, but she was quick to cut off any overly nice guys.
Now it’s almost eight years of marriage, a toddler and a newborn. I’m set to retire after 20 years of service, buy our white picket fence, get a dog and another .5 of a child. My first marriage cost me almost 12 years of heart ache and pain. You’re doing a much better job of this than I ever did. We all make stupid mistakes and we all learn from them, sometimes it’s just a matter of how long it takes us to learn those lessons.
Keep your head up, keep your sense of humor and someday the right person will come along. And if not, there’s always a vibrator, a bottle of scotch, and tub of ice cream. Don’t hate or be angry at your ex though, he’s taught you some important lessons. Plus, everyone at some point chose to be with their ex. Remember those reasons and then build on them for the next person. Hope this helps, if not…Eh…won’t be the first time I rambled for no reason! ::laughs::