Love only grows when you water it.
I’ve certainly been with people who never put effort into any relationships. There was no chance for me to grow, to thrive, to feel any sunshine on my face. It’s unfair when you treat someone with love and respect only to never get that love and respect back, but that’s how I was raised. Even if I didn’t like the person, you treat everyone with kindness and respect. But at the end of the day, if you still don’t receive any of that back, it’s time to grow somewhere else.
I’ve grown so much in a year. I look back and almost don’t even recognize that girl. She was lonely, broken, trying to figure out what direction to go. Divorce was on the horizon, worries constantly on her mind, afraid of what this would do for her kids. She was weak and never thought she would love again. Who wants a single mom of two kids with and all the baggage that comes with that? Love was not even a pipe dream. I realized in that time I pushed away a lot of close friends and some family. I stopped watering all those relationships because I was out of love to give. I was depressed because someone never let me grow.
My story obviously changed. I’m thriving again. I put effort into the friendships I want to keep, I’ve grown as a mother, I constantly work to improve myself and I work at my relationship every day. It’s hard to balance a full time job, motherhood, a long-distance relationship and friendships while keeping my sanity. Throw in a custody battle and time consuming baseball and I’m a bit frazzled by Thursday night. I take time out of my busy schedule to try to decompress. I need that to keep up with my life. I worked on myself a lot this past weekend. I spent my Friday night alone. I cleaned out my closet, I listened to loud music and pampered myself. It was exactly what I needed after my awful week. The next day I made the drive up to Chicago to be with the person who calms my storms and that’s always nothing short of magical.
That relationship can be tough. He’s 3 hours away every day. I can’t just come home to someone, and when I can see him our time is cut short because I have 6 hours in travel time that I have to pay attention to. It would be ideal to just drive even 20 minutes to see someone, or have them at home. But that’s not possible right now and it can be hard. We make it work. Lately it’s been every two weeks and again, it’s not ideal. But I accept it because I love him. Why else would I drive up for a total of 18 hours with him? Only a crazy person would do that. Right? I don’t care. It’s worth it. It’s also about to get easier because I’ve decided to let him meet my kids in 3 weeks. Big step in my life. New one. I can’t wait to see what it brings. But I bring this back to me growing. I care about cultivating and strengthening my relationship with him and I feel like this is the right step to take.
In short, I’m happy to have grown so much in just a year. I like the person I am today. I’m proud of the friendships I’ve maintained, some going back as far as 22 years. I’m happy that I’m becoming a stronger person, a healthier person, a better mother and a loving girlfriend. I’m also apparently becoming a better gardener because I haven’t killed that cute little ficus tree (that I’ve named Sunny) in over a week. You know, because I give it water and sunshine, like everything needs to grow.