Beginnings

Recall a time in your life when you made a fresh start. How did your life change?

Well, there was the time that I moved out of my dad’s house when I was 16, to go to theater school, and my life changed because suddenly at that age I was even more responsible for myself than I had been. No, that’s not true – I was more VISIBLY responsible for myself. I had been doing my own laundry, getting breakfast (and most days, also dinner) ready for myself, telling myself to do homework, and cleaning my own room since I was… eight? Ten? So doing at 16 was kind of old hat by that point. But my friends from the high school I left would ask me whenever I saw them, how I did it. How I made myself do those things. I would just shrug. I already had been doing those things, so this wasn’t much of a change.

Neither was it much of a change when I walked away from theater school a few years later, leaving all dreams of stage acting behind. My life changed because while it still revolved around working and taking care of myself, there weren’t pages and pages of memorization, dramatic egos to tiptoe around, late night rehearsals and even later nights drinking with fellow cast members.

Then there was the time I made a fresh start by moving to Reston, Virginia… and when I came back… there was that fresh start when I got divorced… and now that I’m a widow, I’d guess you could say I’m making yet ANOTHER fresh start.

Oh, forgot the “how did my life change” part! Well, when I went to theater school, my life changed because I no longer lived under my Stepmonster’s thumb. When I came back from theater school, my life changed because soon after that, I graduated from community college, made life-long friends that I still have today, and started my feet on the Retail Life. When I moved to Virginia I thought my life was going to change in that I’d become a big city girl. HAHAHAHA. When I came back from Virginia, it changed because I realized, and became comfortable with, the fact that I am in fact a Small Town Girl. My life changed when I got divorced because suddenly there was the stigma of “DIVORCE”. I was unique, a unicorn among my friends. A good portion of them had not even gotten married yet, let alone GOTTEN DIVORCED. (Spoiler: It wasn’t as tragic as some of them made it out to be.)

And now how is my life changing with widowhood? Well. That’s pretty much all this blog is about, these days!