Cheese With Your Whine?
5.31.2006
Wow.That's really all I can say for all that's going on in my life right at the moment. I got THE JOB!!! We will be heading overseas for a year on the 13th or 15th.
I'm nervous, happy, sad and excited all at the same time. Do you have any idea how draining it is to feel all those emotions at one time?
So, yesterday was my birthday and it always gets me to thinking. I wonder how I got to 28 years old and still feel like such a kid sometimes. Remember when you were growing up and you could just imagine how cool it would feel to be all grown up? Well, I'm still waiting for that feeling. That I've-got-it-all-figure-out feeling that I was just *sure* I was going have by this point in my life. That I'm-mature-and-don't-do-stupid-things attitude that I thought I saw in my mom. I still laugh when Rylee toots and I think bathroom humor is funny. I get silly and sad and moody just like it I did at 12.
This was not the plan for my life. I was not supposed to be a single mom. No way. No how. Hell, I wasn't even supposed to be a mom at all. I was a career woman. I was going to have my own custom built house, a fat 401(k) and a sweet little car by this point in my life. I'm supposed to be flitting around the country giving presentations and blessing people with my wisdom. I should be a VP by now. THAT was the plan. Not to be a single mom, struggling to make it from pay check to pay check, scared at times, and haunted by a past that was chosen for me. I shouldn't have to be faced with never having another Christmas with my mom because she chose a sick man over me and my daughter. My daughter shouldn't have to live her life without grandparents.
Nope this certainly is NOT how it was supposed to go. I shouldn't know the joy that comes from watching a two year old make a discovery, or hearing "I yub you, Mommy", or getting to kiss owies. I was not supposed to be brought to my knees by this sweet/ornery/loving/stubborn little person that I created. I never imagined having the sort of friends in my life that I do - people who know everything about me and love me anyway. I didn't think that I could feel complete being single at 28. I ceratinly couldn't imagine landing a job like I just did and embarking on the adventure of a lifetime with the best little girl in the whole world.
It's just not the plan. Nothing about my life is how I pictured it. But I wouldn't trade it. If I traded my childhood I wouldn't have Rylee because I wouldn't have been at the point in my life I was at when I got pregnant. And the thought of not having her makes my heart nearly stop with pain. She IS the great redemption in everything that has happened to me and the decisions I have made - good, bad or otherwise.
Life sometimes is cruel. It's not fair and it's not easy. Not at all. But it's also surprisingly rewarding, rich, and wonderful. And that part is just as unexpected as the bad that life throws at us.
