Month: July 2025

I had another night of zero sleep, so I made my way to the basement and started going through some boxes from our old house that Mom lived in before I got married. Inside a box was a small photo album wrapped in a Wal-mart bag. I opened it and was taken right back to Middle school. I was back in the eighth grade.

There it was-

A picture of me standing in a strapless black dress, my hair all done in classic nineties style-teased and curled. Big. My make-up was done just right by my cousin who I thought was the prettiest girl in the world. But when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t really see myself.

Myself at that time had wild naturally curly hair that I would brush often to try and straighten. It would be wavy on the sides and wild in the back. It was uncontrollably curly in humid or rainy weather. I couldn’t ever do anything with it so I always looked a little like I was just electrocuted. I knew absolutely nothing about fashion. I had a couple of friends but I was not at all social outside of that group of girls. I didn’t really see anything exceptional or special about me. I was just kind of there. I was basic, at best.

The girls I went to school with, the “in” crowd were beautiful. I used to be so envious of them. They would have their nails done just right at the local salon, had perfect hair that never moved or got messed up, and they wore make-up that made them look like a model. They looked like real life Barbies. And I was always in the corner. Always quiet. Always…Basic.

But there I was, standing in a black dress, with my arm on my escort waiting to walk into the gym one Friday night in front of my peers. I don’t even remember what this event was called or why exactly I was a part of it. But I know I felt like I had something to prove. What that was, I have no idea.

Time is healing. My “basic” is back and I find that my messy bun suits me far more than a hairstyle that needed a bottle of hair spray a day to hold. My make-up is barely worn and truth be told it probably is never done right. I remember that night. I remember wanting to feel and be anyone else. It’s kind of a comfort to know now that that fourteen year old kid then, turned out to be a pretty cool adult. It’s odd how something that was so important to me then is such a teeny memory to me now. But when it does cross my mind, I can giggle and say “You silly girl,” under my breath. I think that’s called growth.

10 years ago when I was thirty-five, I was in a state of depression that I would like to deny. But denial isn’t honest and it isn’t a part of my story that would ever help anybody. This isn’t my proudest story, and I’m ashamed it was ever a part of my life.

In February of 2015, I wasn’t the person you would meet today. I was sullen and Melancholy. I remember, very clearly, leaving work and driving to a photographers house to pick up the newborn pictures of my youngest daughter. She was a month old. My oldest daughter was seven. And I was crying, hysterically, in my car.

I had two daughters, both out of wedlock, both by different men. My relationship was unstable and we were friends, at best. I had a decent education and was doing a job that I loved but wasn’t making any money at. My credit was crap and I was renting a house that came with a garbage landlord because I couldn’t buy a house. My mother who I had been a caretaker of was in a nursing home for physical health rehab. And I felt like the biggest failure in the world.

I had all the pieces there but couldn’t put the puzzle together. And for the very first time in my life, I felt like there was no purpose for me to be here. I felt like my youngest daughter’s dad would be a great parent to both of my kids, my Mom would be better with someone more qualified than me to care for her, my work could find a qualified replacement, and my consistent feeling of drowning would be over. I’d have peace.

The truth is I felt like I was doing everything half-assed. I had taken on the role of “superwoman” long enough that I was beat down. I was tired. I felt like I gave one thousand percent to everything I was doing, and to everyone in my circle, but in reality that was an impossibility.

I called my friend from work and cried to her for twenty minutes. I assume she probably couldn’t understand most of what I said, but I said enough for her to know I wasn’t in a good place. And as much as she loves me she would never tell me this, but I’m sure that call scared her.

Later, I learned it was postpartum depression, but back then I just felt crazy. Literally crazy. I never experienced anything like this before and I haven’t since. But it lit a fire under me to go back to school and my degree to do therapy. I had known for years that would be my career path, but I didn’t wait long to go back to school and get my degree. As a matter of fact I enrolled in classes not long after.

I am forever thankful that I didn’t let the bad feelings from that day get the best of me. A decade later I can tell you I have two of the happiest kids in the world. They are spoiled rotten and tremendously loved. They are crazy about their Momma who is just as crazy about them in return. My youngest daughter’s dad, Cory, is in fact a great dad to both the girls and we are wonderful friends. I went to school and graduated with my Master’s and work as a mental health therapist, and a good one at that. We moved out of that old house into our house now that we share with my husband. My mother passed two years later, in 2017, and surprisingly I am so happy knowing that she is living in the arms of my Lord and savior.

None of these things could have happened if I would have taken that “there is no reason to be here” thought and acted on it. It goes to show you that having a hard day is not the same as having a hard life. I am in love with living, learning and having experiences. I am thrilled to watch my kids hit milestones. I am excited to see where they are going to take their lives and more excited to see the different ways they are going to leave their mark on the world.

I would have missed out on so much if I would’ve taken the off ramp before it was my time. All the hang ups I had were doing nothing but setting me up for bigger blessings that I just couldn’t see then. This is why having faith in your future and believing that God has you in his hands is important. And all of it was in the works ten years ago, when I was thirty-five.

I am not foreign to them. I have been on the receiving end of many, and the cause of a few.

I was fifteen when my heart was first shattered. I was in Ohio babysitting one summer and was very happily smitten with a senior that I met mid way through my freshman year. It was mid-August and the eighteenth birthday of Jason Perry, the best guy I had known thus far in my young life. I wanted to call him, but was driven to my brother’s house where I found my Mother and her boyfriend at the time who had come up from Kentucky. I was given the news that he had been killed in a car accident three days prior. I cried hysterically for hours and then experienced something I had only read about in teen romance books at that time. I had no more tears. I couldn’t cry anymore but had never felt more empty. This was the first I had ever known of grief and I didn’t think I would ever recover from it.

I was a senior in high school before I dated again. I was convinced then I wouldn’t ever date anyone else when I met him. Jeffery Wayne was who I was certain he would be my forever guy. We were together for years. And for the most part, everything about that relationship was bliss, until it wasn’t. We got engaged. We loved hard. We would also fight hard. I hurt to this day knowing how much we hurt each other by the end. My heart was broken not just because I was hurt in some arguments, but because in the end I wasn’t a person who he could have loved anymore. I wasn’t even a person I liked then. Thankfully, time heals all wounds and I’m proud to hear his stories of his life now, his marriage, his kiddo. He’s my pal. I can be proud of that.

Then there was the one ridiculous, insane, blinding relationship in my twenties. The decade where so many important lessons are learned. We’ll call him Shane. The guy that took my heart and ran over it, repeatedly. He was almost twelve years older than me and I thought he was the best thing that ever happened to the planet, let alone me. I was the relationship he had after he divorced. He had been single for a long time, so I thought his heart was healed and could be filled again. I was wrong. To this day, I can hear his response of, “I know you do” to my first “I love you.” He took me to the ocean, for the first time, when I was twenty-three. I was sure he planned this trip to tell me he loved me too. He didn’t. He is a fantastic physical therapist now. He moved away to get his degree. I offered to move with him. He didn’t want that, he needed to focus on school, there wouldn’t be anyone else, and he’d come back every weekend to see me. And every weekend, I’d get dressed up and wait for a call that never came. Years later I saw his wedding announcement in the paper. I was so upset I left work early. To this day that relationship is the only one where I didn’t do anything wrong. I gave him more of myself than I thought I could give anyone. I didn’t know why it wasn’t enough. And I continued not to know why I wasn’t enough for him, until I met his son. The son he could’ve only had with her.

Paul was the guy I wanted to feel everything for and couldn’t. I had no doubts then, or even now, that he would have treated me like royalty. He was my favorite guy to watch sports with, to argue my love of the Reds against his love of the Cubs with, to travel with, to go to concerts with….he was my friend. And I would sit across from him and watch him look at me in the exact way every girl wants a guy to look at her, and I’d feel uncomfortable. He was the guy I wish I could have given everything to, but sadly I couldn’t give him anything but friendship. Sadder still, that friendship has gone by the wayside after his move back to his hometown.

And then we have relationships that happen to us to complete a family, but not necessarily each other. Cory came into my life when my oldest was three. He has been her dad since then. Together we had another daughter. It was the only relationship I have ever had where it wasn’t that I screwed him over and he didn’t do anything bad to me either. We just outgrew one another in that “romantic” regard. As weird as it sounds, without our kids, it would be hard to remember us being in a romantic relationship of any kind. He’s like my unbiological brother. He’s my good friend, he’s my husband’s pal, and he is a world class dad. He completed a family I wanted, in a way I didn’t realize I needed.

When I got married I reached out to people I dated and apologized. I said I was sorry for leading on some people that thought they had a future with me when I knew there wasn’t really anything there. I told others I was sorry for not being able to give them the real version of me when I was with them….because the truth was I had no clue who I was for a long time, even when I thought I did. There were other relationships that ended before they could start. Many unspoken feelings for those people we wish we could have had closure from.

The list of relationships I have found myself in, is longer than I’d ever expected or wanted it to be. But I guess life works itself out in the time frame God has for us, not the one we have made for ourselves. I don’t regret an ounce of this twisted journey I have been on. If I’d made one decision differently, I wouldn’t have finally figured out who I was. I wouldn’t have the three greatest loves of my life to share my home with. So for those people, each of them, I am forever grateful.