Focus

It's been awhile since I posted, I know this. There has just been so much going on, and it's hard to know where to begin after a gap like this.

Today has been weird.  I went home for Christmas, but it was an incredibly brief trip.  With the new job only three weeks in, I didn't want to take off a bunch of time.  Didn't seem like the best way to start, so I left Friday evening and was back in the city by 10:30 this morning.  Told you it was brief! 

The holidays were good, but as holidays often are, full of nostalgia.  Special days like that are hard for me as a singleton, as I'm so used to being with someone for them.  Last year I brought the most recent ex home with me for the holiday, and so this year was full of memories of how things were just a year ago.  Just a year ago..in some ways it seems so recent, in other ways it feels like an eternity.

As time goes by I realize this is the longest I've been single since I was 18 years old, and at that point I'd never had a relationship.  In less than two months I will have been living back on my own for a year, which is crazy to think about.  So much has happened in this year, both good and bad.  Growing pains, personal revelations and exploration, internal struggles about who I am, what I want, what I deserve. 

The people in my romantic past never fully go away.  Sometimes I feel like I am being tested by their continued resurgence in my life.  Seeing them move on, even if I know we were not a proper match, is incredibly hard.  I see their new relationships progressing, and while I know they are deeply flawed, some part of me is jealous.  But I try to remind myself that having someone who things are good enough with is not better than being alone and being okay.  I don't want to settle anymore.  I don't want to make huge accommodations for the inherent broken qualities in people I've dated.  I don't want to make excuses for their bad behavior.  I want someone who I can embrace completely and with pride.  If I can't have that, then let me stay alone.

While my professional life is finally taking shape, and I feel like I am embarking on a career instead of muddling through a job, my personal life remains a muddled and murky place.  Honestly, it's been nice to have the job as a productive point of focus.  All of my life has been spent either waiting for a relationship or working with every fiber of my being to make an existing one work.  I've never put any real effort into anything else.  It's been a weird sense of relief to find the bulk of my focus and self-worth these days coming from my professional life instead. 

My job makes me feel like I have a purpose.  It reminds me how intelligent I am, how far I've come, and how much I'm capable of.  I have things to say, I have ideas, and I'm finally in a position where I'm able and willing to speak up about them, and where people who matter will listen.  Beyond that, and perhaps most importantly, it proves to me that I am more than just a person who can be in a relationship. 

I am more than someone who is too nice to exes who don't deserve it.  I am more than someone who gives into impulsive decisions that may burn me emotionally later.  I am more than someone who generally feels pretty lost personally in many ways.  I am more than the girl who occasionally crushes on people she shouldn't, and I'm more than a source of dating story fodder for my friends. 

These days, I take comfort in the security I've found professionally, even if it's still a pretty new feeling for me.  It's a place to retreat to when I've let my guard down a little in my personal life and either gotten burned, or realized that maybe this time, I'm the damaged one.  It is an escape from my overanalysis and dissection of every single thing around me. 

Oh, I have so many other posts in me, things to tell and do that very analysis mentioned above...hopefully I will get to it soon.  For now, bedtime.