When I was a child, I lived on the Atlantic Ocean.\u00a0 I loved walking on the wet sand and seeing the footsteps I left behind.\u00a0 I loved to see the rippling waves moving ever towards me, criss-crossing themselves to reach the shore, and then swirling around my ankles before pulling whatever they could back out to sea.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I remember digging my toes down in to the sand, and feeling the waves erode the\u00a0foundation right out from under my feet. I suppose that\u2019s how I could have felt yesterday when I got my ex-boyfriend\u2019s text.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen would be a good time to talk?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a0I stared at the phone for a minute.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cUmm.\u00a0 Are you ok?\u201d<\/i> I typed back.<\/p>\n
I thought\u00a0 to what could be wrong:\u00a0 something medical, the passing of a family member or friend, a bill collector trying to track down my ex-husband.<\/p>\n
Rather than be distracted all day at work, I stepped outside and gave him a call.<\/p>\n
He apologized for bothering me at work \u2013 he hadn\u2019t meant to upset me.\u00a0 He asked how I was doing and I was able to say confidently, \u201cGreat \u2013 and you<\/i>?\u201d<\/p>\n
Really good, he said.\u00a0 And then he told me he and the woman he had left me for were getting engaged. They would marry in December.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it\u2019s right, it\u2019s right<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wished him all the best and we got off the phone.\u00a0 I would be lying if I didn\u2019t say I was surprised.\u00a0 One of the major reasons why our relationship ended was because he had stated that he didn\u2019t see himself ever wanting to live with someone else, let alone get married. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s funny how things change.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Had I gotten this news even a few weeks ago, I might have been angry and bitter and devastated.\u00a0 I would have felt the tide pull away my foundation.\u00a0 But the same waves that took him away, brought something better back to me.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve picked it out of the tides and\u00a0have taken\u00a0it home with me.<\/p>\n
As I told a friend when discussing it, it just doesn’t make sense to hold on to what has ended – it just delays me from grasping hold of what can be.<\/p>\n
Whether it be the\u00a0waves below, or the\u00a0ocean of stars above, I cannot regret losing what was never mine to have.\u00a0\u00a0I will enjoy the things the waves brought in and out of my life, and my voyages on this life’s sea.<\/p>\n
So, in the words of Jean-Luc Picard, Engage Number One!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a child, I lived on the Atlantic Ocean.\u00a0 I loved walking on the wet sand and seeing the footsteps I left behind.\u00a0 I loved to see the rippling waves moving ever towards me, criss-crossing themselves to reach the shore, and then swirling around my ankles before pulling whatever they could back out…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,51,50,48,49,52],"class_list":["post-265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dating","tag-dating-2","tag-engage","tag-engagement","tag-ex-boyfriend","tag-marriage","tag-waves"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2UnPK-4h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeywrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}