The past decade has been a roller coaster ride of epic proportions for me. I have changed and grown so much as a person. In the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my life in the decade to come, which is a daunting task. Breaking it down into more manageable goals is a lot easier.
Shaunta Grimes recently wrote about considering your perfect day. She recommends looking into the future about five years when you complete this exercise, and that makes perfect sense. It gives you plenty of time to achieve the things you must, to make this perfect day possible, while also giving you a look into a not-so-distant future.
I’m working on this exercise today and in doing so, I’ve been reflecting on where I was five years ago, ten years ago even, and where I am today.
Am I living my perfect day now, the way I imagined it in my mind ten years ago? Not even close. But if I go only five years back, I am a lot closer.
Ten years ago, it was the end of 2009. I was married to my second husband, considering diving further into the world of polyamory to get the attention and affection I so desperately desired. It would be a few short months later I would meet a man who ended up being the second boyfriend I had during my marriage. The first man I dated while I was married and I ended things in 2008 after he was deployed overseas.
You would think I had learned my lesson about dating men in the military, but I didn’t.
The second boyfriend was also a Marine. The third and final boyfriend of my marriage would be a Marine too, and eventually become my third husband.
If you’d asked me 20 years ago if I thought I would be on my fourth marriage at 42, I would have been shocked.
Twenty years ago, I was married to my first husband and had been for just over a year. I was just beginning to see what life with this man would be like, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. I gave birth to my youngest biological child that month; he turned 20 on the 6th of December this year.
I still would not have been able to see my life unfold the way it did.
Saying they raised me to tough it out is not accurate, but it’s close. People didn’t just give up on marriage in my family. Divorce wasn’t unheard of, but it wasn’t prevalent. I believed I needed to change something about myself to make my husband be kinder to me.
Thankfully, over the years, I’ve learned what happened in the ten years we were together wasn’t all my fault. I played a role, by continuing to allow the behavior, but I didn’t force him to abuse me. That’s on him.
Fast forward ten years and I was in an unorthodox relationship 22-year-old me would never have imagined. Ten years isn’t a long time in the grand scheme of things. But the difference in my life from 1999 to 2009 and from 2009 to 2019 are huge.
Some changes I’ve experienced in these last ten years, I wish I hadn’t. But they all brought me to the life I live now, so I can’t change them, even in my mind.
Looking back just five years, I realize I am finally heading in the right direction.
Five years ago today, I started wondering what life would look like if I were no longer married to my third husband. Things had been degrading for a few months and by December 2014, we were headed toward the end. In less than a month, he would do the unthinkable and cause me to make a final decision to end our marriage.
This is when I truly started living.
I stopped worrying so much about what others wanted my life to look like and concentrated on what I wanted. In less than six months, I would find myself meeting my current husband and changing my life for the better.
It hasn’t been easy, but it’s more than worth it.
Over the next five years and through the end of another decade, I have big plans for myself and my family. I’m concentrating on my career and where it can take my family in the long run.
I began this past decade a broken and jaded woman. I’ll enter this coming decade with my head held high and plans to make not only my life, but the lives of others, a better place to be.
This is my time, and I intend to shine.
