When I was younger, I used to hold onto friendships for longer than I should have. (This also applies to romantic relationships but that’s a whole other blog post.) In my 20s, I felt like I should be grateful to even have people wanting to be my friend due to some serious self esteem issues.

I held onto a few relationships even when some of these friends turned into acquaintances and then ultimately into drags where I felt like I was being anchored down. I felt some weird sense of loyalty even though I felt like their therapist or mother figure, not their friend. What happened was I grew to resent them, but I didn’t have the emotional capacity to talk to them, plus an overwhelming fear of confrontation. I just stopped talking to them.

There are several people in my life who I am no longer friends with, and it has made my life absolute better and I do not regret it whatsoever. What I regret is hanging around for as long as I did when I realized that the person made me feel like I’m suffocating. I felt guilty at first. “Oh, so and so is going through a hard time. Be there for them.” But when something serious comes up for me, that person is trying to one-up my hardship or illness, like it’s some sick contest.

Nope – I’m out. Never ever will I be friends with anyone who wants to “compete” with me for who has it worse health wise. How sick and self centered do you have to be to hear someone’s cancer diagnosis, who you supposedly call your friend, and then try to turn the conversation around about your possible illness? Believe me, I don’t want to be someone who gets sick a lot and has lost count how many surgeries I have had. I’d love to not have [redacted] and not have to worry about a lifetime of illness and surgeries.

Friendships should be about quality, not quantity.

Hell, I have been on the other side of this and I know this. There are people who I was friends with who have suddenly or slowly stopped being part of my life. You know what I don’t do? I certainly don’t keep calling or texting people who have shown little to no interest in my life, and why should I? The people who I want to be in my life and who are in my life are fantastic.

The sudden friend breakup I had with my Twin (from another mother and father) broke my heart and still hurts to this day. What I won’t do is follow his or his wife’s blog or social media accounts and keep getting reminded of a friendship I no longer have. Friend breakups hurt but you have to move on, and accept it.

If I am not in your life, please know that it is deliberate. Please leave me alone and let it go. If I haven’t talked to you in years, there is a reason – I don’t want you in my life. I don’t owe anyone my friendship.

Yes, exactly this.

So once again, I have made the decision to stop dying my hair, even though my vanity is begging me to reconsider. I have several reasons why I decided to stop. First one being, my scalp stopped tolerating the dye. After each dye job, my scalp would feel itchy for days. My hair would also feel greasy.  I would just feel uncomfortable for days, weeks, like my scalp was being taken over by vindictive, invisible bugs.

Until I recently reconnected with favorite hair dresser in the world, I was going to a salon in the mall every 6 or 7 weeks and paying $120 for a cut and color. For a brief time after I reconnected with my hair dresser, I was paying half of that every 6 or 7 weeks. The cost added up, but before the bad side effects happened, the cost used to be worth it to me.

Now, it’s not worth it. Nothing is worth me itching my scalp and feeling physically uncomfortable for large stretches of time. If I could, I would still dye my hair for another solid 10 or so years. It breaks my heart (okay, pride) because I love how I look with dark hair, and felt super cute and confident.

Seeing these white/grey hairs slowly take over my scalp has been a mind fuck, and making me feel strangely emotional. On one hand, I understand that being able to grow old is not a luxury afforded to all. I have known so many amazing young women who have died from metastatic breast cancer in the previous year. They would have given anything to be able to grow older.

But I’m not working with this abundance of self esteem to be barreling toward 40 (a little over 2 years from now, ahhh) and seeing an “old” lady looking back at me in the mirror. I see my hair and I feel old, defeated. I don’t know how to reconcile with what’s going on the top of my head with how I really feel.

Why is getting older so hard to accept? I used to think I was going to be dead by the time I was 40, just like my mother. I was certain that breast cancer was going to kill me, too. Now, I’m only a couple of years away from the my mother was when she died, and frankly, y’all, I’m starting to look more like her. In my mind, I’m lookin’ like a woman who’s been dead for 30 years.

Also, why is it so hard for me to accept the fact that people are going to stop thinking I’m not in my 20s or heck, even in my early 30s? I simultaneously don’t believe people when they say I look 10 years younger than my actual age, but  I love it. Not going to lie. I know that’s going to stop when more of my white hair comes in.

I know it’s okay to accept that my pride and vanity are taking a beating. I’m not a bad person for seeing my white hair coming in and wish that this wasn’t happening for another 10 or 20 years. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good and taking pride in my appearance.

I think this will take time to accept, and I will just adapt with however this turns out. I know what I look like with red hair, blonde hair, black hair, and dark brown hair. Now, I am just going to find out what I look like with a combination of white hair and dishwater blonde hair.

Well, at least my glasses and wardrobe is going to be fly AF.

Recently, Facebook reminded me that it has been a year since my relationship with He Who Shall Not be Named ended.  Between this and hearing about the death of my first boyfriend, I have been thinking about my past relationships in a Carrie Bradshaw sort of way.  Step in because we are about to go down memory lane.

My first boyfriend died a couple of weeks ago after suffering a heart attack in his sleep. When I heard about his death, I wasn’t surprised at all. He was an alcoholic, and he battled alcoholism for a very long time. When he died, I wasn’t surprised and that made me feel guilty.

Aren’t you supposed to feel shocked when someone dies unexpectedly? I mean, even when a friend of mine who has had stage four breast cancer has taken a turn and died from the disease, I have felt shocked. I guess hearing that a middle-aged man who has had a horrible disease for probably two decades dies of a heart attack isn’t a shocking end to that particular story.

He was the first man I ever had the relationship talk with, and he was my first breakup. Boy, I did not take that breakup well. I pretty much reacted like a textbook jilted ex girlfriend, and the things I said and did are not anything I am proud of. One of the many lessons I learned from my relationship with him and the subsequent breakup was pretty much a list of what not to do the next go around.

I don’t want to paint him as an alcoholic and nothing else, because he was more than his disease. He had a good heart, and he loved his friends and family fiercely.  He had a pitbull for a long time, and she was his constant companion. If funds were low on his end, and he had to choose between him eating and her eating, he’d feed his dog first. I credit him and his precious pittie for why I love that breed.

I hope his family and any of his loved ones find peace during this time of mourning. I also hope if there’s an afterlife, he is there and he’s reunited with his favorite creature – Harpooa.

Then a week or so ago, my Ex told me he bought a house in an affluent neighborhood for himself, his girlfriend and her daughter.  I have no doubt that the man is going to beat me down the aisle, and that’s a-okay. I’m not in a Moving On competition with him.

After telling me his good news, he asked me how I was doing, like this would affect me negatively. I might have said too bluntly, “Why would I care? Our relationship has been over for years.”

Keep in mind, our relationship officially ended a year go.

I meant every word of it, including the emphasis on the years part. Him telling me that he and his new lady love were starting their new life together had absolutely no affect on me.

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.

Elie Wiesel

It’s absolutely true that the opposite of love is truly indifference. When our relationship ended, feelings may have lingered for a couple of weeks, and looking back, I’m not even sure if that was because I missed him or change was just scary.

I did care for my Ex but well before our relationship ended, I stopped loving him the way you’re supposed to love someone you’re supposedly in a relationship with. When one or both parties aren’t committed to being in a relationship with each other, that type of love just fades away. Somewhere along the way, he stopped being my boyfriend and became a safety net, but I just didn’t want to admit that.

I learned the hard way that he wasn’t who I was looking for, and given his behavior, I certainly was not who he was looking for. He’s going to get the family he’s always wanted, and he just didn’t want that with me. I never came with a guarantee that I’d always be around.

When we were together, I thought I wanted a family, and I resented him terribly for never wanting that with me. I thought I wanted to have a family and be a mother, but months after he and I broke up, I realized that part of my desire to have a family with him was to have some sort of a connection with someone supposed to be in a relationship with me.

While I know I would have been a great mother, I honestly don’t feel like my life is missing anything like I did when I was with him. I realized that the empty feeling I felt with him was just… well, how I felt about him.

Don’t get me wrong – I wish him well, and I don’t hate him.  Once again, the opposite of love is indifference. Hell, he and I still share custody of Boomer and Mal. I want him to be happy, and he and I took way too long in realizing that involved finding other people. The ex and I have a history and not all of it was great or fantastic, but it certainly wasn’t all bad.

Right now, I am a 37 year old woman with a condition that affects my adrenal glands and one ovary. That pretty much cements the fact that I am not having kids, which is perfectly fine. I love what I do for a living and want to keep exploring different aspects of that and growing.

Again, nothing feels missing from my life. I get to be an aunt and go home to a quiet house. Wait, who am I kidding. With my two dogs, my house is never quiet, haha.

While painful, the mistakes and bad choices I have made allowed me to truly understand what it is I want in a significant other (a nerd for books or pop culture, a partner who wants to go out and be active with me, and someone who wants to go out and have adventures – big or small) and what I did not want in someone (i.e., smoker, drinker, or exhibited any obsessive qualities).

Right now, I couldn’t be happier with the man in my life who I have told everything. I’m not kidding – I have told this man allll my deep, dark secrets. All of them. He even sent a cease and desist email to my stalker (a married man with a kid), who I have asked repeatedly to stop contacting me who felt like ruining my birthday by sending me a  message from a spoofed number. Yeah, asshole. I know it was you.

My boyfriend has my back and I have his. He and I have something really great going on, and I look forward to spending as much time as I possibly can with him whenever possible.

Yo, yo, Get Up Swinging readers. I am back, kind of. A lot has happened since I last updated and if you’re interested, keep on reading.

The primary reason why I went on an unintended blog hiatus is the fact I started a new job. In mid-October of last year, I resigned from the job that I had been at for more than 9 years. It was a long time coming, and I could not be more excited. I made a lot of wonderful friends at my old company, and I wouldn’t be at my new job if it was not for this nine-year stint.

Boy, though, I could not be more excited and relieved to be moving on. I had plateaued at that company years ago, and there was nowhere for me to go. I had been getting negative reviews for three years in a row, and I wasn’t given any type of raise. I felt like I was repeatedly running into a wall hard, getting up dazed and then running back into the wall again.

When the opportunity for this new job for more money, opportunities and the chance at a real career path, I jumped at it. Did I ever. I was so unhappy and miserable at my old job, and my life had to change. There was drama when I left and I got threatened with a non-compete. That’s why I remained pretty much silent for the last nine months because I was afraid of being accused of doing anything untoward. Now, my non compete period is over, and I feel free to share about my life, especially my professional life, without threat of litigation.

I am happy at this new job. Sometimes the hours make me want to curl up into a fetal position and whisper to myself “it’ll be okay.” I am at a job that pays so much better, offers career training and opportunities and has expanded my skill set in ways I never could before. I’m grateful. I’m being challenged and at the same time, appreciated.

I honestly feel like a completely different person since I switched jobs.  I don’t wake up feeling a suffocating sense of dread.

The other big change in my life occurred a couple of months ago. My boyfriend of 7.5 years and I broke up, and he moved out. Sigh… Things that cannot be undone were done and now we’re done.

Our relationship was not right for two years, probably three. I knew something was not right for at least two years, and I should have ended it back when the signs were there. The signs were neon, blinking and in all caps.

RELATIONSHIP IS OVER.

I was not ready then. I was scared. I was scared to live on my own and without him. I also wanted it to work out, and I tried so hard to make it work. He was with me during cancer. We had gone on so many adventures together. I went skydiving with him. My longest relationship before him was 10 months.

When things become bad for a long period of time and you find yourself in relationship purgatory, then both people need to want to leave it to ever go anywhere. He never wanted to leave the purgatory. We were stuck. We were not being completely honest with each other, him definitely more so than me. We avoided the truth staring at us in the face.

It’s done now. I could hate him, curse his name and tear up all his pictures. Frankly, I used up all that jilted ex girlfriend energy in those two years since I knew he was not on the level. Now that it’s over, there’s a sense of relief and sadness. I can and will forgive hi, because how else could I ever move on?

The sick irony of it all is now that we have laid all the ugly truths on the table, he and I are closer than we ever were in the last couple of years of our relationship. I don’t know if this honesty is the result of a sense of freedom now that the commitment ties have been cut. Like, why not just say it because it’s not like we can break up even more so than we are? Ah who knows, maybe I’m being cynical and this openness is the result of two people who learned the value of each other too late.

We are going to try to be co-dog owners unless it gets too fraught with emotions of the negative variety. I’m already dating, which some might say is too quick since my relationship has only been over for a month or so.  I don’t think so. I had been mourning the loss of this relationship for a long time, thinking about dating a lot toward the end. Now I’m here. It’s not that I’m not sad or am throwing parties that I’m single. It’s that I’m a social person who loves being around people.

I’m not going to let the end of this relationship make me a cynic, I won’t. I still believe in love and part of me will always love the Ex. He and I weren’t right for each other. I don’t see us ever getting back together but I can’t see a life without him in some manner. Maybe that’s early break up thoughts dancing in my head right now but that’s the mentality I have at the moment.

There you have it. I’m at a new job that pays me so much better and has an actual career path. I’m newly single too. Lots and lots of change here in Get Up Swinging land. Hopefully more positive changes will keep happening now that I’m no longer in relationship purgatory or at a job where I was going nowhere.

I’m going somewhere for once. It’s pretty awesome. I’m looking forward to who I meet along the way and who might want to go for the ride with me.