LYMI: A dead raccoon and happily ever after

I've started and deleted this guest post 7x not knowing how to share what I have been resisting.

What has leaping been like for me in life? It's looked like travel, doing things I've never done, being committed to visiting a minimum of three places every year that I've never been, redecorating, renovating, having the best job ever at the Olympics in both Beijing and Vancouver. All of the things that qualify as the doingness of life.

Saying what needs to be said, by Rita Chand, blogger of The Adventures of Cinderita.

What I have discovered recently is that most of my adult life has been about proving that I don't need you. I can do it on my own. 

I can buy my house on my own, and I can travel on my own, and I can have really big adventures on my own.  I can take care of myself...on my own.

It was only recently that I discovered I'd bankrupted the "doing it on my own" bank of Independence.

I had leapt yet one more time into a job change that I wanted and didn't get, which sent me off the rails for a week. When I was done being disappointed, I realized that although getting the perfect job that fulfills me is important to me, what's more important is sharing my life with someone.

I am done doing my life on my own. I am done pretending like it's okay. That sometimes I don't cry myself to sleep at night because I'm lonely.

My life is awesome, amazing even, and I have experienced a thousand things that have left me touched, moved and inspired.  And now...I want to share all of those amazing things with someone I love. 

I don't know what that means or even what that looks like. I am creating "being in love," because I don't know that I ever have been.

I am finding that I am moved by everything these days.  I am moved to tears all the time.  I want to be moved all the time.  I've heard that you can only be open to more love in your heart when it breaks.  Well, it feels like it's breaking open.

I don't even know what to do or what to say.  All I know is that everything that worked before, all the independent stuff, isn't working anymore.

I am creating "being in love." And I don't have a clue how to start, or who to be...but I am clear about one thing. I know it's not about what I do.

And I'll be honest. I'm scared. Mostly of the unknown of it all. 

I don't even know the first thing about sharing my life with someone.  I've never really done it before.  Not completely.  I've never let anyone in long enough or far enough to really have that experience.

Enough with the pretending.

I came home today to find a dead raccoon in my front yard. It's been there for awhile and all I could think about was that I didn't want to have to put on rubber gloves and grab a snow shovel to put the thing into a garbage bag to throw in the trash. I would rather someone did it for me.

I've been crying ever since.

I don't know if I will experience "being in love." I don't know if it's too late for me. I don't even know if anyone could love me. Not that I'm not awesome enough to love. But mostly because I've pretended for so long that maybe the world has run out of men who would want to.

But you know what makes me cry as I type this?

My never-ending, always on the tip of my tongue, never-letting-go-of belief in my very own happily ever after.