I had this notion, in the last 2 months of trudging, that I would be happy again. It probably wouldn’t come all at once, it might take time, but it would happen. Some of it was based on experience – I’ve been miserable before. Happy comes back.

Mostly because of this – I hate feeling miserable. I sometimes wish I could be the sort of person who could mope for long periods of time – but I’m not. I like being happy and I tend to get exasperated with myself when I’m unhappy. Eventually, I decide to be happy again. *

Last week was truly awful. There was a 21 hour trip, including 11 hours in taxi’s, on planes, in airports didn’t help. I am working on three projects right now and every last one of them is going badly.  A door slammed in my face (turns out the farm boy is dating someone already. No, that didn’t take long. Yes, she was probably around before he dumped me. No, I’m actually not going to spend a lot of time thinking about this because it’s not going to help.)

About Sunday I decided I’d had enough. Time to take charge.

I’ve deleted social media, other than Instagram, off my phone. I’ve been slow and terse to return texts to people who were draining me. I emailed the local girl guide group to see about volunteering in September. I made a list of things I want to do this summer and who I might be able to do them with (Also, if you were looking for a buddy to do something with and you are local, send me a note. Chances are I’m happy to come along). I shelled out some money and joined an internet dating site. I started going to the gym and tracking what I ate (which tends to mean I make better food choices because I feel stupid saying I had half a chocolate bar and some gummy bears for dinner).  I formally deferred my acceptance of my Master’s degree for a year. I’ll keep on with the meditation I’m already doing.

Is it going to fix everything overnight? No. It didn’t break in a day either. It was a long, slow break. So slow that I didn’t really notice things were breaking until they were really broken.

So, it’s better. Not because it’s fixed but because I can see the light on the horizon. I’m not paralyzed any more and I can figure out where to start. There’s still some trudging, but it’s not all uphill. That’s a good start.

*I’m cautious about saying this because it can lead to the implication that people who are unhappy chose to be so. Sometimes things like depression, grief and strife cause deep, profound and lasting unhappiness. No amount of deciding to be happy will fix this, anyone who says you can choose not to be clinically depressed or grief-stricken is an asshole.

Spring in  Alberta is a strange time. Every spring, I wait to see what plants have come back and which have died. The time where you can see the remnants of the plant from last year, but you can’t see any green. You aren’t sure if it’s dead, so you can’t pull it out of the ground. There’s nothing to do but wait. I did that for three weeks. This last weekend is where I declared things dead and moved forward with planting new things.

My boss asked, in a meeting, if I wanted to take on a project. I am spectacularly fortunate to be asked this. Most bosses don’t care. Most people have nowhere near as much control over their work tasks as I do. It’s important to be grateful for this.

But the truth is – I don’t care. The truth is the list of things I want to do involve – well, pretty much nothing. Maybe curling up in a ball and sleeping?

The list of things I look forward to? It’s empty. The list of things I want to do? Nil. Things that get me excited? Nothing.

Getting dumped by someone I knew, someone I trusted and someone I let in? Kick in the gut. The teeth. The head. The kidneys.

Before you panic, I’m not going to end my life. That’s the whole point of this post. It’s the part where I grit my teeth and declare my intention to trudge on.

So, trudge. Get up, go to work. Pull weeds. Clean the cat litter. Eat food. Go see friends.  Take the garbage out. Pet the dog.  Knit things that need to be knitted. Do it all again the next day. And the next. And the one after that.

I’m almost 40. This is just waiting. Eventually, I’ll move forward. I hope.

In my very first residency for my MBA, one of the instructors, talking about constructing an argument, told the story of where she looked at her friend and said “You know, I’m 45. If an argument doesn’t make sense to me, it probably just doesn’t make sense.”

There was this terrific sense in letting go when I heard that. The idea that maybe I was smart enough to know bullshit when I heard it, that my gut had something worthwhile to say.

This week, I have had 4 different people say things that were breathtakingly rude and or cruel. One person gets a by because they are 10. It may have been cruel but at 10, it wasn’t deliberate.

The other three.

Oh.

The other three.

On Monday someone who knows me well commented that Mother’s day must have just been another day for me, given that my mother and my son were dead. Uhh, no.  Not quite.

Last night, at a corporate dinner, I wound up alone at a table. A colleague turned up. She asked me if I could move seats, didn’t say thank you. She and another colleague sat down, completely ignored me and carried on a conversation. It was like I wasn’t even there.  I suppose you could say that our mother’s obviously taught us different things about how we act in public.

I’m not going to talk about the third thing. It involved me getting dumped and frankly, it still stings. Rather a lot. I’m short on perspective.

Usually, when I am treated rudely or cruelly, I wonder if it’s me. I wonder what I’ve done, thinking that normally people aren’t rude or cruel for no reason. The interesting thing is where I landed last night. The moment where I realized that these people had been rude or cruel and that it had nothing to do with me. It said more about them than it ever did about me. In fact, in some sense, it wasn’t even about me.

It’s them.

It’s a challenge, a double-edged sword. There’s an assumption, implicit, but there, that my personal time and my social life have less value because I don’t have children. There’s an assumption that I can work overtime, stay late, come into work early because I have no children at home.

And it’s true.

I want my colleagues to spend time with their children. I want them to take them to school, to read them stories, to eat dinner with them. In a great many senses, I’m happy to do the extra work. The years are short. Their children will only be little for a while. Memories take time to happen.

I know this because I don’t get to make those memories. I can tell you the value of those memories because I have mapped the boundaries of their absence.