from plate glass to building a mosaic...

Sometimes we get stuck into a false routine. I’m not talking about the day-to-day routine. I’m talking about the routine that comes with waking up and facing your life’s “timeline”. My timeline once consisted of finishing high school, completing an undergrad degree, getting engaged, getting into teacher’s college, getting married fresh out of teachers college, buying a small home, building up equity in the home and seniority at work, having children, refinancing home to buy a larger home, and there we’d live happily ever after until retirement, where my Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan would be there to support me until I passed away…the ‘life routine’ has worked for many. Not me. It’s taken a LONG time to get to this point: the point where I’m OK with that.

My timeline got to finishing teachers’ college in 2005, and then I veered it WAY off track when I gave a man I loved back his engagement ring. My career stayed on track and I even found real love again a few years later. Both teachers, we married in 2009, and all was peachy and my so-called timeline seemed to be back on track. I wanted it to be back on track, but sometimes, wanting something isn’t always enough. I was balancing everything and trying to make life work. It was like carrying bricks on top of a fragile sheet of plate glass. The plate glass represented a beautiful life, and the bricks everything I loved or cared for.

You can deny it all you want, but when change is needed, you know. You just know. You try to make relationships work, but when they aren’t supposed to, or at least aren’t supposed to right now, they won’t. I was at a point earlier on this year, where my only option left was to let go of that fragile piece of plate glass. The weight of everything just got too much, and I knew I had to restart. The bricks…were fine. They are bricks after all! People who matter won’t just go away even if you’re afraid they will! Everyone I cared about may have hit the floor in shock, but they’re okay! The glass, however, shattered. BUT not to worry…

My life, it seems, wasn’t supposed to be that beautiful piece of plate glass, free of scratches or dents. When I let go, yes, the glass shattered…but there is something that’s more beautiful than the sheer of glass, at least to me anyways. Picking up the pieces, things started to take shape and rearrange themselves…they continue to do this every day. The pieces aren’t even clear anymore…they take the colour of where I’ve picked them up. Things aren’t going back to where they were; they aren’t supposed to. What is beginning to develop is a collection of beautiful colours and textures of a mosaic. All pieces shine, none are the same.

Looking back, there isn’t a single decision I regret making. Now separated, I am proud of myself and my husband, as we are living life while moving forward, although apart. Looking back again, I have my husband (yes I know we’re separated, but referring to him as my “ex” just isn’t the right word for him), to thank for being the rock he is. His support for my move to go into the beginnings of financial services and to Abu Dhabi is unprecedented, and I know I would do the same for him.

So, I have a few days left. I cannot believe that I’ll be saying goodbye to my family, friends, and country. If you find yourself reading this, please know that you too are part of this mosaic. Don’t worry about your piece…I’m going to find the perfect place for it to shine with the rest.

xo

Thanks be to God

“May God bless you” is what she said. Words not out of the ordinary for a Catholic Sunday mass. This time, however, it was said with watery eyes, and with more conviction than I have ever heard. My mother wanted to come with me for at least one last church service before I made my trek across the world to Abu Dhabi. Delay after delay I am still here, but being able to go to mass this morning with my mother made the wait so far worth it, I just hope that I don’t have to wait much longer.

Everyone has pain in their life. Some is left in the past; some is carried with you and comes out at unexpected moments. Whenever I see young children, twinges of regret can seep to the surface. I’ve made the choice not to have children. It has not been an easy one to make. And it wasn’t always a choice. That is for another chapter of my story. Today when I saw young children in mass, the regret seeped to the surface and then stopped…and seemed to transform. When I looked at this one young girl in particular, what used to be twangs of envy that she wasn’t my own, I saw myself. I realized my mother was looking at her as well. I might have been completely off, but I’m usually very good in realizing what people are thinking. My mother was standing beside her little girl who was about to leave her for the unknown. I could see her longing for time past when I was really her little girl, at about the age of the angel in front of us. Times might not have been happy for our family in my younger years, but I felt her yearning for them. Perhaps I do too, but I’m glad to have had those memories and I’m excited to move into the next chapter…

For this opportunity...Thanks be to God.