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You might have been wondering where I’ve been. My presence here comes in fits and spurts it seems. I’m trying to fix that. I’m getting a lot of help from Joe. I’m actually planning on launching another blog. I know, two blogs for me to post on in fits and spurts! The real reason for not posting this time? I just finished a ginormous writing contract. I traveled two and from the office for three weeks. It was nice. I’ve enjoyed sleeping in yesterday and today. And I’ll probably enjoy it again tomorrow. And then maybe I’ll worry about finding more work.

I’m also in a bit of a down period right now, but it’s kind of par for the course when you’re a girl. Bless Joe for not suffocating me with a pillow. A PMS migraine is lurking and so I’m having trouble sleeping. And me having trouble sleeping means I’m super cranky. Which means I probably shouldn’t blog unsupervised. But really with no supervisor there is no one stopping me.

I was planning on not ending my last posting spree with the downer that was my series “On being dumped”. I had planned on ending it with this post, but I never got around to it. This is kind of the end of that, but really it’s the beginning of something better.

It’s the beginning of having someone in my life who no matter how many bad dreams I have about him leaving, he kisses me and says I’m stuck with him forever. Or is he stuck with me forever? I can’t remember for sure.

And for those of you who like the rose (Joe’s rose, i) and don’t watch my Flickr stream like a hawk: Joe’s rose, ii.

Originally posted on August 12, 2009

The Globe and Mail asked me: Do you believe in ‘the one’? [Survey is now closed, comments are pretty great though.]

Regardless of the results of that survey, the gist of it is: yes.

I believe in the one…
…who I want to spend all of my time with.
…who I immediately want to tell all of my news to, good or bad.
…who I want to ensure is the happiest person on earth.
…who is in my thoughts as soon as I wake up, all day, and before I go to bed.

I believe that there is one person out there for you that will be your best friend till the bitter end and not give up on you when even you’ve given up on yourself. I don’t believe that this person is predestined to be with you or that you’ll even meet this person. I believe that some people have to try and fail a number of times before they find that person. I believe that some people are lucky enough to find that person right away. I believe that with love and patience and effort, anything is possible.

I just got off the phone with the one as I wanted to make sure that he was okay with me talking about this online. I told him that I thought he was the one, and he was okay with that. So he’s the one that I want to spend all of my time with and all that jazz. Even though I wasn’t very good at blogging regularly before him, it certainly has been more difficult after him. Not that I’m blaming him or anything. Ahem.

I asked my ex once if he believed in “the one”. We were sitting on the futon and it was facing the big windows in our apartment and he was sitting straight and looking out towards the windows and I was sitting facing him. His answer was a flat out no, which immediately made me feel bad for suggesting such a silly thing. This should have been red flag a bajillion and two. But at the time I loved him more than anything else believed he was the one, and I fought hard to keep him. And it turns out he was right, he didn’t believe in “the one” and dumped me rather unceremoniously. And if I’m honest with myself I knew that he wasn’t the one a long time before I found that note taped to my wall with duct tape.

It took me over two years to muster up the courage to give my heart to someone, over two years of thinking and creating standards for myself and listening to those around me and not just rushing in head first and making more mistakes than I had time to fix. I thought I was broken beyond repair and that I’d never find anyone, let alone ‘the one’. Luckily I had people (especially V) who didn’t let me think that way all the time.

But then one night I decided that I would peel myself out of bed, put on some nice clothes (blue jeans, cute blue shoes with flowers on them, brown t-shirt, black shawl, gold necklace from my grandmother, brown beaded earrings from E.), put on some makeup (the usual black mascara, black eyeliner, sparkly bronze eyeliner, shiny lip gloss), walk outside and buy a birthday card and attend the birthday celebration of a friend of mine. It was a supper at Café Paradiso followed by dancing at The Rainbow and I had convinced myself that I would go to the supper and not drink too much and go home early.

And then my world changed.

After an evening of gorgeous food (I had the vegetarian pasta, it was one of my first meals out as a flexitarian. He had the lamb. I was really jealous) and loud funk music, I knew that I was on to something good.

As part of my website rehab, I plan on republishing old posts with updates. Though this post hardly counts as one from ages ago (as it’s only two months old), it still at least half applies. I’m not feeling sick, but I’m still in a space where I’m milling about and trying to figuring things out. However, I’m much better than I was at the time of writing this post. Probably because Joe is the best and understands that my mood swings aren’t personal attacks on him and has just learned to ride the waves. I’ll need to take him surfing someday on some blue-ish green waves.

Originally posted February 2010.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks. The hardest part has been staying positive. As for the most part I know it’s going to be alright, but sometimes it’s hard to believe yourself when everything seems to be going completely as not planned. So not only have I been a bit depressed (blue), I’ve been feeling under the weather (green around the gills).

Financially things were stressful (I have a blog post all queued up on that in general), an expected check or four didn’t arrive at all. He and I got to spend Valentine’s Day weekend eating cake (which was awesome) because that’s what I had the ingredients in the house to make. When I ran out of icing sugar I tried making a frosting that used flour as a thickener, quite good and much less sweet. I’ll blog about that too.

These few weeks of freedom from work were supposed to be stress free and time to recharge. I had it all planned out, I had enough money saved to be able to make it for a while without having to stress out about finding work. Instead I stressed out about having to find money for groceries. Plus I was PMSing. And PMS for me brings hormones galore and headaches and insomnia and….

Bless Him.

I’m supposed to be done a scarf for my Dad and socks for my Mom (Christmas presents no less!), but I’ve not had the ability to concentrate. And then I start feeling guilty about all of the things I’m not doing and then…gosh.

So why am I telling the wild world of the Internet this? Because we all have down days. I want to be as open and honest here on my blog about mental health issues and it wouldn’t be fair to any of us if I always painted a rosy picture. Will I go into detail about the panic attacks? Probably not, but if you want to know about them you can ask and I’ll find a way to talk to you. Because everything isn’t always bright and sunny and full of sweetness and light.

Sometimes things things are blue-ish green.