At 25 years old, I thought my world was ending.  I thought I’d lost my last chance at happiness, because I had married someone who wasn’t loving me the way I thought I should be loved.  I felt rejected.  I felt hopeless.  I railed on myself for being so utterly foolish and for being too weak to step away earlier.   I felt powerless, weighed down with resentment and blame, unconscious of the fact that I needed to take the lead in being good to myself.  I cried.  I defended myself.  I accused him. To get lost in a novel or a movie was the best, but when it was over, I would reawaken to the dismal reality of my miserable life. I remember one day my Mom took me on an outing to get a massage, but I was so saturated with sadness that they may as well have been massaging a brick or a deflated balloon. I obsessed over every disparity between us, magnified every grating habit, discounted everything benign or pleasant or positive, made myself a complete and utter drag to be around and then wondered why he wasn’t falling all over himself to romance me.

But I give myself grace for that time because I didn’t know how to do otherwise. I didn’t know I had the power to flip my script and kick the life of my dreams into high gear, whether or not he chose to accompany me.  But it’s true.

Everything changed when...

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