Sometimes I feel really far behind in life. I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, mostly because I didn’t think I’d make it to thirty. Not for any particular reason, I just thought I’d stop existing by that point. So when I got older and people would ask, “What did you want to be when you were a kid?” I just started telling them, “a tree”. They’d laugh and I would too because it was less uncomfortable than the truth.

“I didn’t think that far ahead because I thought I’d be dead already.”

Maybe it’s a combination of one catastrophic event after another and indoctrination from a church that tells you, “We are living in the Last Days” every Sunday.

Maybe it’s being told how to live your life for everyone else but yourself.

“When you become a mother…”

“When you have children…”

“No one is going to take care of you when you’re sick as a mother, get up.”

“You need to learn to do this right so you can do it for your husband.”

“You need to learn to be nice or no man will want you.”

Last weekend I sat on the cement under a sycamore tree with my oldest friend at 130 am while he smoked a cigarette and he asked me, “like, I get why, but what happened?” and when I was finished talking we both sat there staring into the dark…desert dust, desert stars, desert wind. me, worried that he would judge me because almost everyone else did and unless you’ve lived it or something similar, it just sounds like I’m complaining (it’s not—that’s just what I was always told), but he said, “I had no idea it was so messy”. And I was like, “yeah.”

It’s been two years since I left a “perfectly good man” and “destroyed” my family. People act like it’s the coward’s way out when it’s actually one of the hardest things we’ll ever do.

Since then I’ve written, edited, designed, and self-published two poetry books, works a couple of part-time jobs that I’ve been able to do at home so my kids still had a “sahm” (and if I could sell just 12 books a day I could quit both), I have a better relationship with my sons, went back to school and graduated with a BS in holistic health/alternative medicine, made stronger friendships, tried dating and decided I’m truly better off alone. I have never been happier.

Every villain has an origin story and maybe that’s mine.

I guess I’m telling you this because I want to say thank you to everyone who shares, orders, and cheers me on in the background. Because it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. I fought like hell to be where I am now and some days it feels like I’m barely getting by. But this time I feel like I’m living for me.