I Don't Make ANY Sense These Days...

I always wanted to be THAT woman that THOSE men fell in love with. You know the girl. Like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. The one with those quirky-awesome personality traits that she doesn't even realize she possesses. I wanted to be smart and witty and irrestitably mysterious and never realize how amazingly beautiful I was. The woman men like Billy Joel write about. The fact of the matter is, I am so not Audrey Hepburn or Christie Brinkley. I always thought I would have a man like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman.

Wait. Wait. WAIT. Backup. I am not comparing 2 hookers to the woman I wanted to be and that's just wrong. I didn't want to be a hooker. I just...I guess I always had this view of who I was going to be and who I was going to be with in my head. When I made the decision to divorce my husband and make a new, better life for myself I saw myself finally growing into the form of this woman I had been aspiring to be for so long. And then I saw myself with a man that saw and appreciated all that growth and struggle and journey I had been on to become her. I thought that I would meet a few men, hate their lack of things I knew I needed or wanted, become bored and move on.

I didn't think I would meet someone immediately that listened to what I said, admired me when I was doing simple things. Someone that saw me as all the things I wanted to be seen as and did it in such a way that you never once thought he was anything but genuine and sincere in his actions and thoughts.

The horrible part of it is that I met that man and I am too damaged and too lost in a horrible sea of self laothing that I can't be for him all the things I wanted to be. I need time to be independent. Time to take care of myself. Time to date and learn and be so sure of everything I want in a man that when I see it staring me in the fucking face I do everything I can to keep it and him in my life. I need to live alone (with my kids, obviously, but apart from a man). I need to see myself as all the things I always wanted to be (or at least appreciate the woman I am, regardless of who exactly that woman may be) and then I can maybe be enough for someone else.

What I defintely do not want is to be the woman that defines herself by the man she's with. I am not her. But I want to be the woman a man hopes to define himself through.