Personal epiphany

The other night, the kids insisted on sleeping with me.Nothing out of the ordinary there, let's be totally honest. As I was laying there, thinking about all manner of things, I started to think about Ryli's last words before closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep. She'd been talking about family members and how X and I were lucky because we had so many parents. Needless to say, I will eventually have to explain divorce and remarriage. Although on the parental situation, I have my dad, step-mom, step-dad and mom, and X is the same, but lost his dad in 2011. 

I told her that someday, she could end up with just as many parents, it just depended on whether or not her father and I ever got married to other people. She doesn't know that we were never married to one another. Being the sweet girl that she is, she said she loved me and didn't need another mommy. My heat melted a little.

It was that conversation that caused my thoughts to drift towards the big old scary world of dating and relationships. For the first time in history, I'm not feeling like I have to be with someone. I'm okay with being a single mom. I prefer it to repeating some of my past mistakes. I'd rather just keep going the way we have been going. X was a control freak who had nothing under control. I spent so much time putting out his fires.

I'd rather it be just the kids and me. Maybe someday, someone will change my mind, but I'm acting as if no one will come along. I am fine on my own. With the kids and I, we may not have a lot, but we have enough. I have a male friend or two, but I have permanently banished them to the friend-zone. The only one that could potentially ever be more than a friend is way back home in Iowa, making the possibility of anything ever really starting a geographical impossibility. 

I no longer freak out at the thought of spending the rest of my life single, and it feels good, to be honest. I lived far to long being told that practically everything I did was somehow "wrong". I like the fact that now, the only thing that I do wrong is when I won't buy every last Littlest Pet Shop or dinosaur toy on the planet. I can live with being wrong on that account.

I can now declare myself :"single and loving it", It feels good.