Tonight I have to do something that's proving to be more difficult than I had initially guessed. I have to see my ex. The ex who ended things with no good reason, when I thought our relationship was sailing along smoothly. The ex who I still look for in every crowd I come across. The ex who, while I'm curling my hair and applying my makeup, I silently hope to see out that night. Tonight I'm going into a situation where I know I have the possibility of seeing him. And my emotions are running rampant. 

Part of me couldn't be more excited to see him. Part of me wants to go home and hide under the covers. 

I just feel like if he and I had gotten into a huge blowout break-up fight, I would have a little more closure. But he ended things so abruptly, over the phone on a chilly Monday night (a year ago yesterday, actually...) while I sat on my bedroom floor. Racking my brain trying to figure out what I could have possibly done.

As I'm typing this, Pandora is playing "She's Leaving Home" by the Beatles, which I realize has nothing to do with the situation that I'm going through, but some of the words are resonating with me a little more than they have before.

You can listen here too.

"Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly? How could she do this to me?"

"What did we do that was wrong? We didn't know it was wrong."

With him I had the strongest relationship I'd ever known. I was able to use some of the traits that I'd learned from my mother about being a good partner, a strong woman, a stand-by-your-man type of woman. I did more for him than I'd ever done for anyone I'd ever been with, and what's more... I wanted to. I wanted to help him through the hard times he was going through. I wanted him to be happy more than I wanted me to be happy. His happiness made my happiness. Something I had never known before.

"We never thought of ourselves, never a thought of ourselves."

And then just like that, it was over. And I haven't seen or heard from him since.

"Bye, bye."

So I've been chewing the ears off of friends and family, asking how to handle it, how to approach the situation, and I've gotten some really solid advice. Be breezy, be aloof, be happy, it's his loss, etc. The best advice though, came from my mother. The same mother who taught me how to be a great partner. She recited a quote to make me stronger in this instance as well.

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Hopefully tonight all I'll have to do is hold my head high and be as polite as possible. God will walk me through the rest.

OR... maybe a giant anvil will fall on his head on his way to the event and I won't have to deal with it at all!

Stay tuned.........

Jack is my cousin. He's the same age as me (born 24 days apart) and we have the same sense of humor so we may as well be twins for all intents and purposes.

Today on gchat, he informed me that he and his best friend like to speak in abbreviations. So he and I chatted the rest of the afternoon that way.

Instead of spelling things out like normal adults we just wrote the first letter of every word. The scary thing, though, is that we instantly knew what the other meant. 

He took "iass?" and knew I was asking if Alexander Steen (a Blues player) was single.

He typed back "d" and I knew that meant he was divorced.

I'll spare you the whole convo, but it left made me laugh a lot and made me think that our grandparents would be oddly proud of the odd people we turned out to be.

lyj, mtstl.

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Starting Fresh

I haven't updated this here thing since October. No reason really, I just didn't have much to blog about! This winter was long, hard, and polar vortex-y. A lot of good things happened though. I met new people, I took huge chances, and I can safely say today that I'm in the best place in my life that I've ever been!

And so it seems,

"In the midst of

winter, I found

there was, within

me, an invincible

summer."

Thanks for the quote, Hoff. 

Us summer girls need to stick together!!

I'll do a better job at keeping this updated - for the 3 of you that check it regularly (hi mom).