30 Days of Truth, Days Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four

Exciting news!  My best friend and I are going to NYC at the end of the month for five days!  I can't even tell you how excited I am about this - we've been wanting to take a vacation together for years and it's finally happening!  I'm not going to talk too much about it now, I'll save that for posts after the trip, but I just wanted to share some personal joy with all of you!

Day Twenty-Three: Something I Wish I Had Done in My Life

"Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did."~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

I had the opportunity to live in Rome, Italy during my last year of college and opted not to go.  There are several reasons I stayed, but the main one was money.  I'd finally realized just how much I owed in student loans and decided that the expense of living abroad wasn't feasible.  Now, at 28, I wish I'd just taken the additional loans and gone.  As much as I hate my loans, I'm absolutely sure the experience of living in Rome would have been worth every single penny.   I had many friends go and not a single one of them regrets the money they spent.  For now, traveling to Rome is on my "35 Before 35" list (yup, already did it - the list also includes "being conversational in Italian").  I'll get there somehow.

Day 24: Something Awful that Turned Out to be Awesome

Oy.  This is an emotional one for me...

20 months ago the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with left me.  With a note.  After taking all my money.  So he could be with another woman.  Yeah.  To say that I was devastated would be a colossal understatement.  I can't even tell ya'll how much I cried and how much it hurt - but I bet a few of my female (and probably male) readers can imagine.  I had literally made every decision about my life with this man as the center...and suddenly I had to start over.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." 

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I did mope for awhile, because I think its healthy to feel, but once I knew it was completely done I decided I needed to get back to living.  And I have.  I'm now 67 pounds lighter (I often joke that I lost 230 pounds of useless weight in one day, and the rest over 2 years), I'm fulfilling a dream of moving to the East and traveling more, and I'm hopefully going back to school.  None of these things would be happening if he and I were still together.  I've also learned that I'm incredibly resilient and stronger than I ever realized   But I've also learned to be grateful...

The Ex and I haven't spoken in over a year, but I now realize that him leaving was the most loving thing he ever did for me.  We were both miserable and had been for awhile, but are both loyal to a fault. I still don't like how he did it, but I now realize that he knew I would never leave...even if us being together was slowly killing me.  He figured out that he had to be the strong one and do what I couldn't, and I'm so grateful he did.  I still have my moments were I miss him as a friend (because we were friends) but instead of wallowing in it I send him light and love and go on...and I hope he does the same for me.