Choosing Happy

Posted on | October 23, 2013 | 8 Comments

When I was married, I spent a lot of time wondering why things weren’t better. I did a lot of silent judging of my husband and a lot of not-so-silent judging. I was angry and lonely and bitter and probably not that fun to be around.

And I think, honestly, it’s because I just couldn’t get past what I didn’t have.

Yes, I had a home, and a car, and a job, and a child.  Yes, I had a dog and a fridge stocked with food, and enough money to splurge on pizza once a week, and a garage full of furniture I didn’t have rooms for. I had so much… but what I didn’t have, was the ability to process what I had.

I focused on how little time he spent with me, how much he annoyed me. I focused on what he didn’t do for J and I, what I didn’t have in the husband I had. Now don’t get me wrong, we had plenty of issues outside of my thoughts, but I honestly 100% believe that any marriage… any two people under the sun… can make it work so long as both people are 100% invested in each other.

I was not invested in my husband. Not in the person he was. I so wanted him to be someone else… someone more like the person he was when we met… that I didn’t appreciate the person he was in any way. Would it have mattered? Maybe not. The truth is, he wasn’t invested in me, any more than I was in him. I think, though, that if we’d both just sat down every day at the end of the day and said to each other “You. I choose you. Just as you are, no improvements, no corrections, no ‘I wish you would just…'” then we would have been a little less willing to give up.

Now, post-divorce, I look at the life I have and I am truly grateful. I see the little bits and pieces of discomfort, the things that are out of place, the people who aren’t EXACTLY who I think they should be… and I shrug. Because life, every day, is about focusing on the good. It’s about looking around and not saying “This is wrong” but saying “THIS is right.”

And there is so much right with the life I have right now. I have a son who, though trying, is so exceptional that he wows me daily. I have a home that, though in need of improvements, keeps us warm at night and dry in the rain. I have a car that, the stereo doesn’t work, but it gets me from point A to point B every single day. And guys? I have a fantastic boyfriend.  He’s not perfect and there are days when the negative thoughts creep in and I find myself wondering what I’m doing and if I’m making any right choices. But at the end of the day, I look at the big picture of who he is, and I choose him. Every day. And until I can’t do that, until I can’t say that everything he is makes me happier than the things he isn’t, I’m going to celebrate in the fact that we have each other.

Life is about choosing the good over the bad, the right over the wrong, happy over unhappy.  Today, I choose happy.

And I hope you do, too.

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