Something Old, Something New

Nothing Borrowed, Nothing Blue

You start off single. You meet someone, and you lose touch with your single friends and become closer with your coupled friends. You marry, and in that you cross another threshold: you lose touch with your coupled friends and you become closer with your married friends. Having kids has the same effect: is it easier to be friends with those people who have kids.

When you divorce, all your friends are there for you and you lean on them. Time heals things; soon you are able to stand on your own. You try to relate to those folks again, but you realize you are a third wheel and you cannot expect them to remember that you are alone. You stop calling and find a place to start a new path.

You make new friends, you date, you move on. You stop trying to fill your own scarred foundations with the mortar of other peoples lives: you build your own.

Eventually, those old friends note they haven’t seen you in quite a while. You say, “Yep. I've been busy.”

It’s no lie. You have been busy with your own life, which is more intricate and rich than you ever expected. Your life exists in a space not tethered to anything but the most minimal of things…yourself. You are no moon, scarred and barren, orbiting someone else’s verdant world. You have become a comet, coming around once in a great while, traveling your own path and moving at your own speed.

That’s when you realize that you like your life. That’s when you smile and mean it.