Goodbye and thank you

I have two favorite musicals - Chess and Evita.

Chess, because I went to see the musical in my teenage years and there is a song titled "Nobody's Side" which is heartbreaking and full of all the self-protecting angst that any teenager with my background is likely to embrace.  It's like "I Am A Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel on steroids.  Or more aptly, hormones.

Evita, because one of my best friends in college loved the musical and dragged me to it.  I know every word by heart thanks to the limited amount of CDs that I could have in my car on cross-country trips.

There's a song in Evita titled "Goodnight and Thank You" and the song is about how Evita basically used men in her life to get her to where she wanted to be.

Uplifting, no?

This past year, I've done a lot of saying goodbye AND thank you.

I quit my job in Denver where I worked for a great company and had a great management position. I picked up my tiny family (consisting of my daughter and myself) and moved to northern Colorado working for a small company with little chance of upward mobility.  I've said goodbye to the career path I thought I'd always wanted and to a busier lifestyle that suited me for a while.  I've unfriended all but one of the guys that I wish I would've married if I just wouldn't have been so stupid (and one guy that I met after he was married).  They're all married and I got tired of seeing status updates and wondering what my life would've been like as their wife and as the mother of their kids, The last guy I should still unfriend is someone from my first semester in college I never even dated but definitely should have.  We have many shared friends so the unfriending wouldn't exactly remove him from my newsfeed.

I've said goodbye to unhealthy patterns and friendships that were too time-intensive and drama filled to maintain.  I've stood up to people who have tried to push me around for years and have found my voice to tell my family that I don't want to raise my daughter like how I was raised.  Some of these were easy to walk away from and some, like one of my very best friends from college where we realized we just had grown apart, were harder.  In each friend or pattern I let go, I felt better.

I've swapped my fast-paced and on-the-go mentality to be one that is a bit simpler. It takes 15 minutes to get to any location in the town I live in now.

I've given up cable and watch the occasional show on Hulu or Netflix. I don't even have an antenna for local channels.

I spend time with those few people that truly feed my soul and I spend quality moments with those that understand me at my core.

I spend quality time with my daughter and the very best sound in the world is her laughing at something I'm doing to make her laugh. She is smart and has a keen sense of humor already.  Well, that, and she finds farts as funny as I do.

Instead of blogging, every once in a while, I email her pictures, videos, snippets of our day, or cherished memories that I know neither of us will remember by the time I give her a password to the email account. Because let's be honest, I was never going to keep up with updating a baby book.

My evenings consist of me picking her up from day care, cooking our dinner while we sing (and she pulls out every piece of Tupperware I own), giving her a bath, reading books together, and then putting her to bed by 7:30.  I'm usually asleep by 9:30.

I'm cooking more, eating healthier, and taking care of myself much better than I ever have before.

I still hope to marry.  I hope that all of my chances at a great relationship weren't wasted because I was too scared to be with someone who treated me the way I'd always dreamed of being treated.

I truly do love my life and I'm so thankful for the choices I made that led me to this place.  I'm grateful for the people and interactions that I've had.  I'm glad that I had the courage to let go of what I knew wasn't for me anymore and get to this place that feels right.

My life finally feels balanced...or at least more balanced than it ever has been before.

And of that, I am deeply thankful.