Pierced

It’s official. I now have pierced ears. I know, I know. You just felt the earth move beneath your feet. Or maybe you saw chunks of sky fall and land dangerously close to your newly painted toenails. Or whatever. To answer the question I can sense on the tips of your respective tongues: no, I have never pierced them before. My ears, that is — in case you were unsure to which body parts I was referring. And neither had my 67 year old mother, whose idea it was to get her own ears pierced and drag me along for the fun. Her birthday was last Saturday and mine is today so she thought it would be a fabulous birthday bonding moment if we both ventured to Claire’s and did the deed together. It has been a lot of fun, actually. Unless I accidentally bump the studs and have sharp stabbing pains coursing through my body. It is freakish how tender your  ears can be. And although I never thought I would enjoy earrings, I really like my new accessories. And so does my mom. Just shows it’s never too late to try new things. 

But that was just the beginning of my week! It’s been interesting. Let me give some background: before last Sunday I was having a serious case of The Sads and really wondering if I’d made the right decision to end my relationship with Bret. Even though I broke up with him 6 months ago, he has continued to text me and our text conversations generally end with him telling me how much he misses me — which never allowis total closure to our relationship. He had started texting me regularly again at the beginning of May and like I said, I was starting to really miss having someone in my life. I’d been on some really bad dates which made me remember more of the good things about my relationship with Bret and allowed me to minimize the things that convinced me we weren’t right for each other. I hit a low point last week and ended up laying in my hallway having a big ugly sob fest for no apparent reason (I’m blaming it on hormones). 

My mood stayed low and I was struggling to get myself back together emotionally. I think I finally figured out why it was so difficult! So after my emotional break, I wanted to talk it out and try to regain control of my situation. So I called up my peeps to chat it out and told them all about my sob fest and how unstable I’d been feeling BUT I didn’t mention what happened AFTERWARDS! While on the floor as Sasha sniffed worriedly at my head, I started praying. And praying and praying. For peace, for understanding, for reassurance that I wasn’t a crazy person. And it came! The peace came and the suffocating fear left. I knew everything would be okay and that although I had no idea what the crap was happening in my life, the Lord did and it was under control. Why I didn’t share this crucial bit of information with my friends . . .  I don’t know. All I dwelt on was the negative feelings to led to me losing hope and that left the window open for those feelings to linger. 

So this past Sunday during church is when I had this epiphany and the peace and clarity returned. Not a moment too soon since Bret texted me that night wanting to go biking Saturday (yesterday). I was apprehensive about the whole thing and really didn’t want to see him. With my renewed perspective came a reminder of all the reasons why we weren’t a good

 match and I had no desire to see him. But then I became curious to see what it would be like. So I went and we biked up Mueller Canyon (seriously LAME ride! That trail is so freaking crowded on the weekends that it wasn’t much fun. I almost hit 3 people coming down the trail...) It ended up being a good thing for me, I think. Being 

with him reminded me of some things that really 

REALLY bugged when we were together. And I didn’t have to care! I could tease him mercilessly and not be worried about hurting his feelings. But we can never truly be friends! He thinks we can be but I’d never feel comfortable talking about truly personal things with him. And even though I don’t want to be with him I don’t want to hear about who he’s dating! But I survived it all! And I’m still a faster biker than he is which makes me happy.

All in all a great week. I managed to pass my advanced CV presentation — which I had to whip out in less than 12 hours since I’d written the date down wrong and had to give it a day earlier than I had planned. And I got in some really good mountain bike rides, hung with my girl Bea, and my other girls Meredith and Dave. (Just kidding Davey!) 

Life is good!