Do you still think I’m pretty? 

I asked my husband just before we decided to divorce, “Do you still think I’m pretty?” 

He paused for quite some time. Too long, if we are being honest. 

“Traditionally.” 

“That isn’t what I asked. I asked if you think I’m pretty. To you.”

“Yes, but you’ve changed.” 

He’s not wrong. Four years ago, I was 200 pounds bigger, living in a whole different place, just being somebody completely different in every single way. 

And I think that this is what happens to marriages. It isn’t about one of us not finding the other one attractive, really. You can always find something attractive in the person you truly love. It’s more about being willing to find that, even when it’s not traditionally what you’re used to looking for when things change. 

And sometimes you have to make the decision… is this change worth the time and effort to keep on looking for the spark or rekindling the flame or wtfever they books and blogs all say to do? 

Or, is this the time where you throw in the towel? I think one of the hardest things for me is, I’ve divorced before. I swore that I would never do this again. I wasn’t going to go through this pain. This anguish that it puts everyone and everything I love through, and in jeopardy. 

This wasn’t going to be me. 

I wasn’t going to be that girl. 

Except here it is, and here I am. And I don’t love it. I love the idea that we are finally breaking some really gross cycles and walking away from things, but the failure of it all is still a hard pill to swallow. 

That’s one of the things I’m having to work on when it comes to my worth, though— I don’t really care what I’m worth to him, I care what I’m worth to me. Right? See. There’s good ‘ol’ self doubt creeping in again. 

Which, is like this whole thing I’ve been focusing on and going through that is like— “worth” actually doesn’t matter at all when you just say, “what I’m worth to them,” because who cares what I’m worth to someone else? That really isn’t my issue. It’s theirs. 

I need to just be worth everything I need for my own self and let them worry about their own selves because what the actual heck am I doing worrying about anyone else’s chickens when my ducks are nowhere near in a row right now?

This is a little hard though, when you live your life out loud online like I’ve decided to do. And honestly, maybe that’s a part of the freedom. For the first time ever— I’m just me out here and I don’t have to protect someone’s super secret identity anymore. 

Wow. Now that I type it like that, it makes a lot of sense why I’ve been stuck and stagnant. You can’t move forward if you have a lot of weight dragging you down. Which— yeah that goes back to the whole I literally lost more weight than I currently weigh thing. That definitely changes things. Not always for the better of course. I mean, yeah I love the way I feel now, but I also loved the invisibility of who I was and who I used to be. 

Sometimes I think about how, as I get older, I will get that invisibility back, and I’m not totally against that. 

It’s a lot easier to write and to observe when your a fly on the wall— I mean, hello we all saw Bridgerton, right? 

That’s literally the point, is it not? 

Anyway, I digressed again— I know, I know, this would make way more sense, and just be so much more coherent if I wasn’t always doing that, but ima be honest, it’s just way more fun to do it that way than to have to focus myself on getting all my thoughts out at once per subject. That was one of the things keeping me from writing and appearing in your inbox all these days, so like— what the heck, I’m breaking all the rules, I created them and then enforced them like a tyrant for years, so why the heck not throw all caution to the wind and just see what happens. Isn’t it way more fun for you, Dear Gentle Reader? 

I mean I know that at least, for me, it is. And there’s no way I’m doing this without it ending up being the yolo I’ve always thought it would be. 

Because #goodvibesonly and all that. Right? 

Heh. Right?!?