The Victory Dance

I always thought that when I finally met someone I would call (or text..most likely text) the ex (all the ex's actually) and be all "in your face!" about it. I thought it would finally be able to dance and tell them that I actually am a great catch. I've always known I am, I think I just needed to flaunt it to them. This had been my plan, for like a full year.

Then Mr. O happened, and that plan suddenly felt very shallow.

You know every break up is somehow secretly and subconsciously a competition. A competition to see who will recover first, who will move on first, who will move on to a "better" partner. The works. And I will admit, this was one competition that I honestly wanted to win. In the beginning. I felt that it was my right to win it. Why? Because, I was wronged. I'm the one who was done wrong, so I did not think that it would be in any way fair that he gets to move on first. Yet, it never really seemed to bother me. Like I would never (and have never) gone out of my way to find out whether he moved on, and if he had, who he had moved on with. I just kept waiting for when it would happen to me.

And happen it did. Yet when it did,  I felt nothing about flaunting it to him. At all. I even recall that there was a certain function I was to attend with Mr. O, and I knew he would be there so I opted out because I didn't want to come look like I was flaunting it. People didn't get it. But I am sooo happy in my little #TeamO world, that nothing else seemed to matter.

And so I realized that I did win. But not against him. And it wasn't a competition after all, but still I had won. I had won my own happiness.  I didn't want to prove to anyone that someone out there could decide to be with me and marry me. I realized that winning my happiness meant that I could decide to be with someone and marry them just as much as they wanted to be with me. That I could decide to be with someone who pushes me to be the best version of myself that I could possibly be, and they feel that I equally do the same for them. That I could be with someone who is not threatened by the woman that I am, by my achievements and ambition, but chooses to celebrate it and even to push that agenda and still love me unconditionally. It wasn't about sitting around and waiting for someone to chooses me, I too was an active participant in that process. Anyone could choose me and want to be with me, but I had to choose them too. I had to want to be with them too. No points to prove to anybody, just a decision between the two of us. And that's what winning my happiness means to me.

So today, I choose to celebrate and do my victory dance because I won my happiness. And that can not be taken from me by anyone for anything. I owe myself a victory dance, and dance I will :-)

Love & Light :-)

Release

"The hardest part isn't saying goodbye, its letting go of the expectations the one you loved couldn't live up to. its the wondering what if for the rest of your life, what if they could have just been who i thought they were. What if everything could have been the way i saw it in my dreams. The hardest part was never saying goodbye, the hardest part for me was always allowing my dreams to die"

~Unknown~

I have no idea who wrote that quote, but I read it and for me, it was the truth. For those who know me well, they know I got over my ex pretty fast. I generally get over people really fast. I think what took the longest for me to deal with was all the dreams I had that I had to get over alongside getting over him.

They say that God's plans are always better and more beautiful than any disappointments you have ever had. I guess I now know that to be true. I really do wish I would have been able to buy it from the very beginning.

It took a lot of time to let go of all the dreams and plans that I had for myself and to fully embrace that God had something better for me in store. I actually said that a lot. To a lot of people. But I am not sure if I 100% believed it.

But through my process I finally came to learn that it is only when you fully let go of the plans you had for yourself, that God's plan for you can eventually begin to fall in place.

I absolutely love something that Mr.O wrote me in a letter a couple of days back "I know you have experienced pain in your life and so have I. These challenges and hardships experienced have brought us to such a time when it is You and I. The pain, the hardship has built you and I for the better....if all I have been through was so that I can be with you, its all been well worth it. No regret, just relief that you are finally here..."

Crazy as it may be, it's true. I read this and remember thinking that the best thing that ever happened to me, was for him to leave. It didn't feel that way then, it didn't feel that way for a long time after that. But I get it now. I get that God had a plan that was bigger than anything I could have possibly ever imagined.

You will always be able to dream new dreams and rebuild what was broken. There's so many ways that life can play out, its probably best not to be too stringent with yourself. We plan, God laughs. I've seen that in action. But even when you feel lost, even when you feel like your dreams have been stolen from you- God sees you. The God we lean on, He sees every tear, He hears every question and He restores. He may not restore in the way that we think or hope He will, but He restores all the same. And it will be so much more than what you could imagine. Even the "smallest" of God's plans is bigger and more beautiful than any disappointment you have ever faced.

So whatever situation it is that you are in where you are struggling to say goodbye to your dreams, release them. Remember, you can't open your hands to receive a gift if they are still closed clinging on to something else.

Love & Light

:-)

#TeamO

"I fell in love with him like you fall asleep - slowly, then all at once"

The Fault in Our Stars

I have never been a big believer in fate or destiny. Or that two people had their stories written out for them in the stars. Or in the concept of the one. That's never been me. For me, love has always been about a series of decisions and choices.  Relationships are held together by choice, not by feeling. Believe it or not.

So for me it was always - You saw me, I saw you. You liked me, I liked you. We decided to be together. We made it work. Sounds pretty unromantic, ey? Hehehe.. But in summary, I just believed two people were together because they chose to be together.

But as stories unfold I realize, that maybe it is possible that two people's stories can be written out for them way before they ever knew it. And that it was so important for  them to be together, that even choices they made that would have led them away from each other still found a way to bring them together.

This isn't everyone's story though. We may at times wish we all had the fairy tale story, or the one in the amazing movie we watched. Some of our stories are pretty normal, almost boring even. Some sound like they were scripted for a movie, maybe even a series. Whatever your story, embrace it. Because the most beautiful thing about relationships is that each relationship is as unique as the two people in it. And that's the one thing no one can take away from you.

As it turns out, there was a story being written for me. And it's been in the works for over two years. I was just never aware of it. Neither was he. And then I became aware of it, but he still wasn't aware. And then he became aware.

And life changed. DRASTICALLY.

It's a lot of change, but it's beautiful change. It's a lot of adjustment, but it's beautiful adjustment. And I am extremely grateful for it. There are a million and one things all going on at the same time, but it is exciting to watch it all unfold. And even more exciting to finally be able to talk about it :-)


We are #TeamO :-)

PS: If you haven't watched the Fault in Our Stars and you're a sucker for mushy movies, please do.. It's soooo worth it. (not that it has anything to do with #TeamO's story!)

Hopeful Romantics Association

"And you can tell who's never been loved before, because no matter how it ended, a person that's really been loved, still believes in it."

Rob Hill, Sr

I used to be a hopeless romantic. Used to be.

This doesn't mean that I am not a romantic anymore, I just think of myself more as a hopeful romantic these days.

Because there's hope. My dreams are valid :-)


I switched from being a hopeless romantic because it sort of felt as though that meant there was really no hope for the things I believe in. However, I have been privileged to meet a few people who have shown me that there is hope.

I am such a romantic. Trust me, I don not demand anything that I am unable or unwilling to give. I know relationships go through phases and the excitement settles down, which is inevitable, but I REFUSE to believe that means that the romance should die.


Love, I have come to learn, is a series of PRE-PLANNED, PREMEDITATED, PRE-THOUGHT actions. Love is patient, Love is Kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. People, those characteristics are not feelings, they are choices. They are not nouns (that is, naming words), they are verbs (doing words). Actions that you have to consciously decide to do. Daily.

Love is not magical, Love is intentional.

I believe in being intentional about my love. I have come to learn that there is so much that can get in the way, and so many things that can take over and most often than not, the person who bears the brunt of most of it is the person who shouldn't. Your partner.

The problem with a person like me is that when you pursue me, I encourage you to set realistic goals for yourself. Because you will be EXPECTED to maintain the standards you've set. However, the most important thing to me is time. Love =  Time. Time is the language you speak to me if you love me. You will never be able to convince me you care about me if you have no time for me. And that’s the major thing I ask for, and that’s the reason why I call myself a high maintenance girl. I'm high maintenance because I want your most valuable asset – your time.

Sure in the beginning it may be magical. It’s easy. Very easy. Because you are excited. You’re happy and being with this person comes oh so naturally to you. It’s kind of like when you have a new job. It’s exciting. You get up early in the morning and you’re just rearing to go.

But soon, the excitement begins to fade. And that manifests in many ways. You still love/care about the person, but you suddenly begin to think that it’s ok if I only talk to them once a day, its ok if I only see them once every other week. And that’s the point at which you need to take control and become intentional about your love.

Here’s the thing – a relationship is a job. Yes, it is full time work. Most people don’t like to think of it that way, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I honestly believe that if we put as much intentional efforts into their love as they did into their jobs or other things that they are passionate about, a whole lot of these things would work out a lot better.

I believe in love. A whole lot. I believe in relationships, I believe in romance, I believe in finding my somebody and building a life of memories together. I believe in all these things because just like I have made a choice to believe in them, I have made a choice to live them. I am incurably a Hopeful Romantic. Will it be easy? No. Will it be worth it? Absolutely!

Try it, I dare you.

".... yet if i could do it all over again 

id do it in the same skin I'm in 

to lay down and let love die 

just stay down and let love lie? 

no, no..not i 

id stay around and let love fly 

even though i have seen its darkest form 

deceit 

nothing else could taste this warm 

or feel this sweet..."

Stuck!!

Writers block is real.

I am in this place where I feel like I have a lot of things to say, I just don't know how to say them. I have started and stopped about 5 different posts over the last 3-4 days.. I have figured, better quit while I am ahead.

On the bright side, what that means is soon I will just unleash like 5 different posts like that hehehe :-)

I  guess there's just been A LOT  going on, most of which I am still trying to wrap my mind around. And I have very suddenly found myself in a place where some very important decisions need to be made, and they need to be made fast. Life can take a 360 degree turn on you in just one day. But I like the changes coming my way, and I'm sure I shall be able to share them soon. I think the problem is that my life is a buzz  with amazing news, to the extent that nothing else feels as important as that right now. And I don't feel like talking about anything else other than that right now. But it's also not yet 100% the time for me to talk about it just yet. Sigh.

I figure sometimes people can get onto here expecting something super deep... eeeh.. not today. I know sometimes I can be soooo deep, but sometimes I just like to rumble.. Small talk.. And luckily for me, not many people read this my little collection of thoughts tooo often ;-)

Basically, I'm just here to say that I am still alive. I have not drowned.

My deep self shall be back soon :-)

In the meantime - this is my jam for the past two weeks, enjoy :-)

Love & Light,

Awii