We bought a house last night.  Hard to believe how much life has changed in the past five years.  I moved into this condo five years next month.  I was scared, terrified that I wouldn't be able to manage.  I found a full-time job that I love.  I have a new love who accepts me as I am.  I have new friends, a new granddaughter.  Life is full and I am so thankful.

I am tired at the end of the work day.  Very tired some days and I've been trying to figure out why.  Part of it is my age.  But part of it is me.  I never do things half way.  When I was home full-time I was exhausted at the end of the day too.  It's just the way I roll.  I'll try to quit worrying about being a different kind of person. 

The new home backs onto a green space.  There is a huge park and a pond behind our house.  There will be geese and ducks within walking distance.  Our granddaughter will be a short walk away.  I will have a yard to putter in, my hands will be in the soil again. 

I lay awake last night when I went to bed, thinking about all of things that need to be done in the next two months and I remember that I've done this before.  I can do this.  My brain likes to mess with me at times but I'm getting wiser.  I argue with my brain, with my thoughts now.  I don't accept the awful things my mind tells me as gospel.  I look at my thoughts, ask myself if what I'm thinking is based in reality or in the past, or in my imagination.  The mind is a powerful weapon.

I'm starting to slowly understand that everything passes, everything changes, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.  And it's okay.  I've weathered the worse before, I've embraced the joy before, I can do both and I will again.  I'm so thankful.

I'm trying to write for myself.  Been writing on this thing for so long I wonder if I can.  I always have an audience but I suppose even myself is an audience.  Does it matter if we have an audience when we write?  Do things become more or less true depending on who reads this?  Do I change what or how I say things?  Probably. 

Sometimes it feels like all my life has been played out in front of an audience.  Parents, friends, strangers, family, children, even dogs.

I'm getting married in six months.  I'm a little nervous, mostly because last time was so disastrous.  I think I'm older and wiser now.  I hope I am.  Most importantly the big guy takes me as I am.  He makes observations about me and my behavior but not judgements.  I told him tonight that I hope I am never a disappointment to him and then I started crying.

Even now as I write this I cry.  I've always felt like a disappointment to my family, my parents, my siblings and most especially to my ex-husband.  That was the main reason I left him, not the drinking, not the coldness, not the lack of generosity, not the horrible things he said to me but the fact that I was a disappointment to him.

Why couldn't I be like the other wives?  Why couldn't I take more of an interest in his career?  Why couldn't I let other people take care of Katie more?  I cried too much, laughed too loud, got too mad, put too many nuts in my baking and didn't drink enough. 

He was actually angry with me because I didn't drink more.  I didn't like drinking with him because he slipped into mean, angry drunk very quickly and I learned to keep my wits about me.  I cleaned him up after he vomited all over my friends bed in the middle of the night because he was too drunk to move.  I pulled over to the side of the road while driving home with the kids and him drunk so that he could vomit beside the road.  My daughter rolled over on his side one night when she heard him vomiting after he had passed out on the floor of the family room and I got to clean up the vomit.  I needed to stay sober.

And now I live with a man who loves me and hugs me and is happy with me just as I am.  He's okay with the fact that I cry.  He enjoys my laughter.  Loves my baking.  He holds me when I need someone to hold me.  He has my back. 

He's not perfect but neither am I.  I love him.  I trust him.  I want him to be happy, not just me.  I see him as he is, deep down inside.  Not the huge man that the rest of the world sees, but the small boy who is still a little afraid of the world.  The tender, gentle man who despite his bluster and bravado would never hurt a fly.