Success!

Wow, I missed December and January! Lame! I thought I had written once since then… Man life has been crazy! Crazy good!

Anyway, Christmas turned out better than I thought it would. My guy got me a Braves t-shirt, a zebra adult onsie (as a joke, it was something I mentioned to him once WEEKS before… so thoughtful!), and a head massager. He already knew me even though we had only been dating for 2 months.

He met my family at a little Christmas get together and they all loved him! A week later, I got my first New Years kiss. Yes, I am aware of how sad that is that I have never gotten that and I am 26.

A couple weeks after that it was my guy’s birthday… I got him a box full of little things that make me think about him. Mostly just corny things, but he liked the blanket I made him so much I figured more thoughtful was the way to go. He thanked me after each thing he pulled out of the box and at the end when he looked through the photo album I gave him he just got up and gave me a huge hug! I love giving him gifts, he gets so excited about them and he is so freaking appreciative! I had asked him previously what his favorite food was and ventured into the world of grilling meat… other than hamburgers. I made him a steak which elicited an “Oh babe…” he said no one has ever done that for him, and that his old-fashioned side just thought it was so amazing. I don’t tell this to get recognition for myself, but because I have never felt so much like I going out of my way for someone to make them feel special.

I realized I love him so completely in the way that I wanted to be loved and it makes me so happy to do so.

Anyway what does all of this have to do with Success since that is what I named this post? What is your definition of success? I had a trainer/ life coach who gave me a challenge to define success. I realized I consider success a balance. When I feel like I have a sense that my life is balanced (work, school, dating, family, church, etc…) then I feel like I am successful.

For a moment I thought my life was completely out of whack, I was letting my anxiety get the best of me and I about pushed my guy out. He left for a cruise with his family for a week and it was right after a family member had died and I just started tripping out after he got home, but one thing or another was getting in the way of us picking up our relationship to keep it progressing. They were really just things that couldn’t be helped… I spazzed out and he just handled it like a pro. He was very understanding of my fear due to previous relationships and was super reassuring even while he was feeling like crap.

I even had an anxiety attack a week later and we went out later that night after I had calmed down and when I was kind of explaining it to him, I got done and I was just feeling really stupid… A few seconds after I stopped he reached across the table and put his hand on my folded arms. I looked at him and he was just looking at me so lovingly and just so… tenderly. It was so amazing! He did the perfect thing… he just listened and showed support. Just thinking about it gets me a little emotional. Haha

He is seriously so amazing, I sometimes just can’t believe he is real. I met his parents and went to dinner with them. This past weekend I went to lunch with his whole family… I LOVE them. They are the kindest welcoming people I have met! His mom always tells me how glad she is that I came or how good it is to see me. It means so much to me that she feels that way! His family is a family I’ve always wanted to be part of… they are so tight, but not like where they can’t breathe, but they do stuff together and they talk quite a bit. It’s awesome!

After lunch with his family we went to this huge sports store and goofed off, taking pics, kissing in tent displays, sword-fighting and throwing balls at each other. Laughing about things we saw and just laughing together. This is what I have always dreamed of in a relationship… It is weird to believe it is really right here in front of my face!

I am so grateful for him and he is really becoming a best friend to me… We’ve gotten really close as friends in the last 3 1/2 months. I couldn’t be more grateful that he doesn’t throw my life off balance, but rather compliments it and helps stabilize it when I am having a rough day.

I am so lucky! And so far… Success! 🙂

Is This Real?

Wow. For real. This cannot be happening… I am not ready for this nor do I know how to handle it. I’m on vacation in California with my family for the holiday and I have left my guy at home. I cannot believe how much I miss him and how many times I have thought about walking away from it. I HATE feeling vulnerable and I didn’t really want to talk about him, but my dad announced to everyone that I have a bf. Yes, it has been that long that this is HUGE news even though we haven’t made it official.

I woke up to the BEST surprise though on Thanksgiving morning. I was planning on sending him a text that morning with all the things that I am grateful for that he has done. I didn’t want to be overwhelming or seem weirdly desperate or whatever so I thought I would send it later in the day. Well before I got out of bed that morning he sent me a text. He is not a good morning texter by nature so I was especially excited when I saw his name. I opened it up to read the following: “good morning beautiful! Happy thanksgiving! I am so thankful you took a chance and went out with me. So now I have you in my life!!” Day= TOTALLY made! I almost started crying. (I am pretty tender hearted by nature) I have never ever in my life had a guy I was dating send me something like that. He tells me every day that he misses me too. Can I just say “I miss you” in Spanish is just soooo much more meaningful and attractive. Just melts me. I adore that guy. I cannot even begin to express how much I adore him.

I love feeling like I matter to someone that matters to me. I love my family, but I am counting down the days til I can see this wonderful guy. He is the best thing that has happened to me! We just barely became Facebook friends and he really wanted to follow me on Instagram which once he did he liked all of the pics with him that I had posted. I am having a hard time believing this is real! Part of me wants to run before he can turn on me and make me want to cry or whatever. I just hate the risk and vulnerability… It is too scary for me! I guess you just have to find someone worth taking a risk for, but you can never truly know they are worth it until you take that leap and they help you fly.

Trust. Love. Gratitude.

Wow! What a week so far! I’ve had a lot on my mind and have realized how hindering looking back really is. My guy is so so sweet and I started freaking out, because I have no idea how to handle that. I am so used to being used, abused, lied to and cheated on that someone being genuinely nice is so foreign to me that I don’t know if it is serious. I am almost waiting for it to turn, crash and go up in flames. It has really caused me some anxiety because I really love him. Not in a romantic sense, but as a person and in a more caring and Christlike way than I have ever loved anyone. I genuinely want him to be happy even if it is not with me and to think of him being hurt brings such a real torturous pain to me that I would GLADLY take me getting hurt so as not to have to see him in pain. I thought that maybe God was trying to tell me that my guy wasn’t for me (even though he has done NOTHING wrong and seems to be practically perfect in every way!). The thought of ending it made me so depressed I couldn’t eat. I just cried. Then I called my bro who is just really logical and gets things and who is like the boy version of me. He not only calmed me down, but got me laughing while teaching me things. He showed me how I was being irrational and that my happiness depended on me and my choices. I had to choose to have good thoughts and ignore the bad.

The best thing he taught me was that everything I had gone through in past relationships was to teach me, what I don’t want more than anything else. Now, he said, God was trusting me to use what He had helped me learn, and move forward with confidence. He said it was like learning to ride and bike and now God was letting go. Of course I was anxious! It is scary to ride by yourself when you don’t think you know what you are doing, but He had taught me what I needed to know. That hit home. That was EXACTLY what I needed to hear. I realized in thinking about it later that God didn’t leave me alone on the bike. I have Christ and my family to run alongside me to give me the confidence to keep going or to get back on if I do fall. That is amazing! And sometimes trusting God really includes trusting His trust in us.

Oh the peace I felt! It was so beautiful! Nobody said my guy and I would be getting married, but I now felt this was worth the risk. My guy just confirmed it as we texted later on through the evening. He knows how much I love ducks and so when I told him I was going to the temple where I usually see them he sent me a text saying he hoped I would see some and had an emoji of a chicken because it was the closest thing he could find to a duck. What a sweet guy! He tells me he misses me without me having to prod for it, and even better, he tells me in Spanish which really gets to me! He is the kindest, sweetest, most considerate man I have ever had the chance to date! I just adore him!

I may not be in control, but I will do my best to make this the best I can between he and I and God. 🙂 Really Trust, love and gratitude are the ingredients for happiness and if we’re happy, even the hard things don’t seem so bad, as my bro pointed out yesterday. So here’s to looking forward and not back!

Falling…

Welp, here I am two weeks later… and falling. Not hard and fast, for ONCE in my life. It has been like a slow and steady building of a friendship. But like… WAY better! We get along so well and I have never been treated better by a guy. He is so nice, thoughtful and considerate. He asked for straws the last time we went out to eat which may not seem like a huge deal, but it was something thoughtful. I hate drinking out of restaurant cups and so I usually ask for a straw. Before the waiter could leave after bringing our drinks, my guy asked him for straws. It’s the little things! 🙂

It’s really interesting though, the thing about my guy is that so far he is EVERYTHING I have been wanting. He’s just a regular jeans wearing, t-shirt and baseball hat wearing guy. I love it! I have turned into a clumsy, weird, totally myself kinda girl… It’s amazing and frightening all at once! I love that he goes along with it too! Love it!

Life is About Balance… But It’s Okay to Be Excited

So… it’s been awhile. And I lied in my last post. This one will also be about dating. This one is good though!

Life is really good right now, it isn’t perfect, but I love it. My job has gotten even better and I even received a compliment from one of my bosses when we were running a report and it was better than he thought and he said “Are you really that good?!” Indirect as it was, I appreciated what was behind it! I realized I was starting to become quite the pessimist, but I sometimes feel like optimists are somewhat delusional. I’ve decided to just be grateful for everything that is good in my life and not worry so much about anything else. I get sick of the energy drain that comes from having any negative emotion, so I am doing all I can to get that out of my life as much as possible! I’m trying to just improve my life in all ways that I can, and so far so good! I just moved out of my apartment and into a house that my friend recently bought. Grad school is moving right along. I thought strongly about moving to GA because I just wanted a real change in my life. Not just a small one. Grad school was a change, moving was a change, but I was looking for something more. I was feeling really good about it.

I had also decided avoiding dating wasn’t benefiting me in any real way. I figured there was a balance that needed to be achieved between really giving it a shot, but also not losing it and jumping in right away. I wanted to be over all of my exes completely so I could go into dating without any biases and wounds to punish the new person for. I wanted to be whole and so happy being single that I could actually be stable in a relationship and not desperate or closed off. So I decided to go for the dating apps again. I downloaded Hot or Not out of curiosity, and I downloaded one called Meetinghouse that is an LDS dating app which is apparently only made for iPhones. (The things you find when searching LDS dating!) I figured Meetinghouse would make things easier in a way, since religion would already be understood. I actually did meet some cool guys, but they either wanted to meet right away (which sketches me out) or they gave up when they found out I was LDS (on Hot or Not). I met some guys on Meetinghouse too. Some that I was shocked were on there (holy inappropriate!) and some that were weird… I’m searching for a balance between taking religion seriously and still being real, not fanatic or trying to sound super spiritual.

Anyway I met one guy and we chatted and it was cool, pretty standard talking about work and interests. Then he actually asked for my number officially and didn’t just give me his or imply that he wanted it. I liked that. We would chat here and there. I confessed my weird love for ducks and he just laughed and then used it to start conversation later. We had some pretty funny and stupid conversations that would just make me laugh. He asked me out to a concert, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that for our first meeting and so I told him I was behind on my homework and needed to catch up. That was partially true… I really did think I was behind. Then he asked me out a little while later, but I was busy. You would think a guy would give up after that, because 2 rejections usually is where they quit. I wasn’t trying to get him to quit necessarily. I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to meet him, but I wasn’t totally against it either. Well then he asked me to a haunted house and we doubled with one of his friends and that guy’s gf. It was seriously so much fun! I was practically crying all night from laughing so hard! I really wanted to hold his hand, which is odd because I am usually against physical contact with a guy on a first date. It’s usually a subconscious thing too! My subconscious seemed to really liked him though!

We went on another date a week later. We went to a snowmobile expo where I met a few of his high school friends. They were nice. I could tell they were wondering if we were dating and for how long. They asked how I got mixed up with him and I just replied with a safe answer… “I don’t know” which got them laughing. 🙂 Then we hung out with the same couple from the week before and watched a movie and had pizza. Again there was a lot of laughing! My guy got into tickling me and thinking it was so funny and we ended up just cuddling. We talked to his buddy for awhile after we left the gf’s house and my guy just stood there talking hugging me from behind. One of my most FAVORITE things! Then we went back to my apartment and were joking about stuff and then BAM! He kissed me. It was AMAZING!

We still talk all the time and tomorrow will be date #3! I’m so excited and I realized that for once I’m okay with it. Usually I keep my expectations low so I am not disappointed. Now, I feel like I should just let it happen and enjoy it as it comes! He’s not throwing me out of balance like every other guy has. I try to give him space and he doesn’t take it. He doesn’t always demand my time. His texting isn’t incessant it’s nicely spaced. 🙂

So here I am excited and twitterpated! Yay!

Coming back….

Wow! It has been awhile! So just a heads up this one is mainly about dating. I am trying to be more diverse and I promise my next post will not be about dudes.

So the pre-date… So this guy I met on the cruise I went on for graduation. Different from the one who cheated on me. This guy actually lives somewhat close to me in a neighboring city. Well he asked me out a few weeks back right after I ended things with Idaho this guy who wanted to marry me 3 weeks after we met.Okay a little back story needed here. Yes, I know I have no real room to judge as I have done basically the same thing, BUT unluckily for him I had made a goal the day before I met him (aka my bday) that I would not fall in love between the ages of 26 and 27. I want just one year of my life to be free from heartache due to this dating shananigans. I am still dating, but not jumping in. I am really just trying to be healthy about it and make friends. So Idaho was very disappointed when I caught onto his scheme of just wanting a babysitter for his 2 kids and someone to have sex with. When all is said and done that was his goal and everyone could tell. I am not getting married unless I have dated the dude for quite some time and we are friends and I’m crazy crazy crazy in love.

ANYWAY back to the pre-date, so new guy asks me out to a concert that is/was (at the time) a month away. Well then we realized that was forever away so we set up another date, the “pre-date” as he calls it. This happened a couple of weeks ago and it was great! We went and road the Alpine slide and rollercoaster, laughed a lot, and took lots of pics. Then we went to dinner and I taught him to use Instagram and a photo collage app. Then the night continued to going to see a movie. Seriously it was great I loved it! Well then through some scheduling conflicts and then working them out we ended up with a third date planned before the 2nd had even happened. That one is tonight. We are just friends though and he made it clear last week when he told me about his woes of not being able to find a girl to take to a concert last weekend. Normally I would have been jealous but **PROGRESS MOMENT** I really didn’t care. I have been trying to find balance in my life and I finally have gotten a pretty good grip. It’s not perfect, but I feel more balanced than I have in a long time. Plus I ran the Tough Mudder last Saturday, so I was not in the mood to stand at a concert with my body all beat up the way it was. I’m not quite sure we are clicking on any other level anyway. So anyway there’s that guy…

Now to the point of this post… Well Sunday night as I was hanging out at my parent’s house I get a text and I don’t know who it is, since it is not a number I have saved in my phone. I ended up having to admit that I must have deleted the person since it is not bringing up a name. Do y’all remember AZ from about when I started this blog? He never seemed to be in it emotionally, it was all about the physical for him? I broke it off with him around Valentine’s Day. Welp, it was him. We have had a couple one time texts in the last 7 months, but it had really been awhile. Anyway he came back. He apologized for being a jerk, told me it was smart of me to leave because he didn’t value me, but he was wanting back into my life (although unsure to what capacity) he apologized like 4 times while we were talking and told me he would do all he could not to betray my trust. He missed me,he didn’t say it outright but he was remembering things from when we dated like they were fond memories. He also apologized for a few specific things.

Gotta be honest. I didn’t see that coming.

I didn’t tell him it was okay and that it happens. I agreed that he was a jerk, but that I forgive him. He told me to take my time deciding if I want him back in my life, he is in no rush. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about him on and off over these past months wishing he had been different and that he had cared. I would sometimes wish something like this would happen, but now that it was, I couldn’t help but be apprehensive. I’ve told him I am and that I want to know this is a legit thing and not just something to take care of loneliness or something. He told me he understands that and can’t blame me for wondering. He is trying to keep it from seeming like it is like that. Part of me wants to just accept him with open arms (stupid feelings are still there), but self-preservation is saying thank him for the apology and run. Then my curiosity is saying stay, but with a guard up and see if it is real….

Curiosity is winning.

So yeah AZ came back…. and I have no idea how to feel.

Emotionally Crippled

Look another post so soon! I am getting good at this! 🙂

The theme for today though has come through a series of dramatic events that happened a few days back which caused me to ponder on things… which is what I always seem to do. I’ll spare you the details but it was basically mixed family issues coming out later in life with my step sister. All I wanted was the facts, the bare boned skeleton of information, without details on feelings and all the extra fluff. I have a hard time showing compassion or having any sort of tolerance for an excess of emotion. I usually find it super unnecessary and yeah… I need to be more compassionate. I am working on that. It made me think of other times in my life, like on my mission when my companion and I decided we were the business side of the 2 sister companionship/duos in our district. I have since been called a “hard ass” at work because I just want to get stuff done.

I would never want this to destroy a relationship or something. I want to be more loving, but seriously I sometimes just want the jist of something so I can move things along… but I can’t figure out why I am in such a hurry to move through things in life. Also as I have been thinking of goals for my year between 26 and 27 (which started yesterday) I realized I tend to attach quickly, get hurt just as fast and then get ticked off almost immediately after that in relationships. So I made a goal not to fall in love for this year, so that I can slow it down. Maybe THAT is emotionally crippled, or maybe its all just emotionally unavailable? Either way, I’m going to d what I can to get control of these suckers and use them in the appropriate times, places and manners.

Let’s see how this works…

Jumping

Lately I have thought a lot about this action… this word really. There are so many ways it is used. Jumping for joy, jumping into things or to conclusions, jumping off a cliff (figuratively and literally), and then just plain jumping like on a trampoline or something. Sometimes these jumps are calculated, sometimes they are hasty or spontaneous. I’ve realized there is a lot to learn from this little word.

My whole life I have been a jumper. Usually into things or to conclusions and landing into those situations pretty deep due to the force of the figurative jump. My opinion is firm and my mind has been known to be hard to change when I’ve jumped to a conclusion. I have had some odd experiences and made life a little harder by jumping into things like moving or getting a different job; these not always being pleasant experiences at first. I have almost jumped into marriage a total of three times now. One about 4 years ago, one about 2 years ago and one more recently this year. I’ve decided my life will never hit a seven year itch (as they say happens in marriage) rather about every 18 months to 2 years I start to feel really super restless with life and crave a major change. Usually I move, sometimes I just get more adventurous or I just take on something huge. At this point in my life I am in the midst of doing/feeling all three. I am starting my MBA program this week, I am making plans to move as soon as my lease is up in October and I’ve been doing all sorts of crazy things all in the name of LIVING my life.

Last weekend I went with some friends to this beautiful lake in Utah that is motorless so no speedboats; just canoes, paddle boards, kayaks, swimmers and people on floaties and the cliff jumpers. I had cliff jumping on my bucket list even though I have a very serious fear of heights, but I try to do something that scares me every once in a while to get outside my comfort zone. So we started out on a 12ft cliff. That was a little scary, but not really what I pictured when writing it on my bucket list. Then we swam over to a 40ft cliff. I was terrified. I didn’t think I would actually do it, but then I knew if I didn’t I would kick myself the whole way home. So it finally opens up and I just sit on the edge not sure how to get myself to just make the jump. I almost had myself talked into it and then I would back out. Eventually this girl Spice (I’m not sure what her real name is anyway), who had been saying she wouldn’t do it, was kinda thinking about it too. So there we were, the 2 of us on the edge of this cliff and neither being able to get ourselves to jump. Eventually I just turned to her and said “Spice what if you jump off a little that way and I jump off a little this way, and we just jump together?” Granted I had only just met this girl a couple hours before and she quickly replied “Okay!” Well then Spice decides to do a count which went “1… 2 (My thoughts I can’t do this yet!)… 3 [no jump from either of us] 4…” Then we burst out laughing because neither of us jumped. We got harassed by almost everyone there and then the counting started again and we both jumped. I closed my eyes and at one point had time to think Shouldn’t I have hit already? I let out a scream and then hit the water. It was hard, but I was so proud of myself and relieved to be down. Spice then turns to me and says “I’m glad you suggested doing it together, I don’t think I could have done it on my own.” My thoughts exactly.

I pride myself on being very independent and tough. So while I was relieved, I was annoyed because I hadn’t done it on my own. I’ve thought a lot about that since then and that is the real inspiration for this post…

Sometimes in life you really just need someone to go through something with you to give you the courage and faith you need to do it. Sometimes you know them and sometimes you don’t. At times someone just being there before you jump is enough, but other times they actually need to do it with you. This caused me some other pondering about how sometimes that is what you need in marriage someone who is just as frightened/uncertain as you, but that trusts you enough to know you’ll jump with them and not make them do it alone with lies that it will be together. There’s no rush, they take their time with you and when you’re both ready you jump. It builds a bond when you take on something uncertain together (what can be more uncertain than marriage? You can’t make choices for that person. That is a lot of faith and trust) and I think in the marriage sense overcoming that fear together with a mutual understanding and care would create a pretty strong bond.

Even more so I feel like there are times in life when the only person you have to take that jump with you is your Savior, Jesus Christ. I recently had a blessing (for those that don’t know a blessing in the LDS faith is done by the laying on of hands by men who have been given the authority from God to say a special prayer and be the mouthpiece for His blessing specifically for you. They can be for guidance, healing, comfort and things like that). This blessing I had was for guidance and it said that my Savior was walking with me. When I am struggling sometimes that is what I have to hold on to. My Savior would not hesitate to make that jump with me, He has been there through many already. He doesn’t just catch you, but rather He actually jumps WITH you!He experiences all the exhilaration, utter fear, uncertainty and pain associated with the jumps we make through our lives. Seriously, that is a HUGE blessing and it isn’t just for me or for a select few, it is available to every single person. He loves each person that much that he doesn’t want to leave them alone. I just think about trying to take that 40 ft jump alone and I really don’t think I would have done it, but having someone there made all the difference. I think we need to remember that even though we cannot SEE Christ, He is there and when we need an actual person that we can see and touch, he sends them. They may be friends, family or complete strangers. Sometimes strangers who become your friend after the experience. I just have to say I am personally very grateful for that gift.

My testimony/belief of Christ is still in the hoping/belief stage, but I am working toward getting to know him so I have a sure knowledge that He is who I’ve been taught He is. I know not everyone accepts Him for the Savior, but not seeing him as that just feels off. So here’s to the journey of getting to know Christ more and to many more jumps in my life!

Too many titles….

For realsies though I thought of so many titles for this one as I kept thinking “Girl you freaking need another post. It has been waaay too long!” So I came up with “Just call me George Bailey,” “I’m a single lady,” “No Rush”, “Balance” and a few others. Most of em sucked.

I have been doing a ton of thinking lately. Which may sound scary, but I have really learned to be okay with thinking and being by myself. I am going to learn to meditate. Yep that is my new goal… Weird as it may sound to some. But I read in one of the books that “primary reality is within, secondary reality without.” I have been reading a few books lately. One about living in the NOW and then Eat.Pray.Love. both are AMAZING and I realized that to live a good, healthy life I need to achieve balance. Balance and being centered within. So that’s it! My goal, among other things…

Oh yeah, I got into the MBA program I was hoping to get into! I start August 1st… which means I need to finish my personal training certification soon!!! I also became an account manager at work and manage the 3 biggest accounts! It’s amazing! Some may say I have too much on my plate, but I really love having things to do/manage! It makes me feel like I have a purpose in life!

It has been interesting since the breakup and moving on… The baseball game started it, but then I just realized that so what if I don’t get married? Part of me has this internal battle of even wanting the whole husband and kids. I just want a life in the south with a beautiful house and a hound dog and some property. It would be beautiful! That is a dream I can control and perhaps that makes it more appealing. Plus I am getting the whole “are you dating anyone?” WAY TOO OFTEN, annoyingly often and right after I tell them I am about to start my MBA. My aunt is trying to “marry me off”. I am really getting over the whole implication that my worth/ level of success as a woman is based upon my relationship/marital status. I know this is partly because of my religious culture where marriage is very important, but luckily not EVERYONE feels that way. It’s just common. Sadly I wish my educational and career related accomplishments meant a little more. No matter though I have decided not to worry about it! I am putting the marriage thing in God’s more than capable hands and I am just going to live my life and do what I can!

So here we go… an appropriate title, “Moving on With Confidence!” That is what I am doing!!!

Baseball… the newest cure for a broken heart.

Oh yeah, that for real happened. I went on my trip and got back just over a week ago. I don’t know if I mentioned that right before I went the guy who I was going to visit in the first place and that so harshly ended things a little over a week before I went then let me know a few days before I went that he had cheated on me. To which I told him he is a jerk and he replied that I was judging him harshly. Puh-lease.

The first day was hard due to the drastic change in plans, the second day I had a hardcore breakdown. Cried for a good portion of the morning. later that night I was going to accomplish one thing I have had on my bucket list since I was about 15: to go see an MLB game. I bought a ticket to see the Braves and I was a little worried to go by myself, but you know? It was amazing! I understand the sport without the help of a guy! I left that game feeling better than I had in weeks! I left with the realization that I absolutely LOVE baseball and that I do not need a guy in my life to be happy. (I’m not opposed to get married, just to be clear) I felt so good and so now whether the Braves play beautifully or horribly they are my team. We are emotionally connected and as corny and ridiculous as it sounds, the irony of their name still makes me smile to myself. I had learned to be brave and take my life back, with their game and doing that all on my own as the first step! Yay for independence! 🙂