Different Lives

I was at a party last night with about 15 other women.  Everyone one there, except me, was married with kids.  Now, granted, I met the hostess in her single days, before she met her husband.  It got me thinking about what my life could have been like.  What would have happened if I had married one of the guys I dated in my 20's?  Likely, I'd be a single mother with however many kids by now.  Putting being gay aside for a minute, I'll come back to that...

I am not the person I was then.  In many ways I am very different.  I guess it takes some of us longer to figure ourselves out.  Or in my  case, it took crashing for me to really take the time to do so.  And, I suspect the depression has been around since I was a teenager with a lot of downs and a few ups in that time.  This also would have made it hard for me to know myself.

Learning to pay attention to my needs is probably the biggest change for me.  Knowing what I need to be healthy, to remain in a place where depression and anxiety are not the driving factors in my everyday life.  I feel so much more able to relate to people in a way that works for me.  I can see if I had married earlier in life at some point I would have likely ended things for this reason alone.  I didn't know what I needed and often ended up in relationships that really didn't work for me on many levels.

Well, and the fact that I am gay.  I guess in a lot of ways this was likely a factor in my subconscious.  I wasn't aware of it exactly, but something always seemed a little off for me.  At least now I know what this is and can focus on the other aspects of a relationship and finding what I need.  In a lot of ways it's ok with me that I am single still.  It certainly makes coming out less complicated if nothing else.

It's interesting to think about what might have been.  Mostly it's good to think about more to appreciate where my life is today.  I am single and most of the time this is ok with me.  It's lonely some days for sure.  It's my journey and it is the way it is.  What the future holds, who knows?