Blogtember: Pivotal Life Moment

I'm linking up again with Jenni for another Blogtember post:

Tuesday, September 10: Describe a distinct moment when your life took a turn.

This one might be slightly surprising to you guys. You might think that it was the moment that I got engaged, and as important of a life moment as that was to me, my life didn't really CHANGE, it just got better.

The moment that I can pinpoint in my life where things took a turn was when my 2 year (almost) long distance relationship ended, quite suddenly. For those of you who don't remember or weren't around then, we'd been planning on me moving to St. Louis in 1-2 months time. I had already told my job that I was leaving, told my apartment complex that I was moving out, and I'd just gotten a job interview for the county that I was going to be moving to.

And then my world came crashing down in one unexpected phone call.
All of a sudden, I didn't have a relationship, a job for the next year, or a place to live. I was devastated.

In that moment,one thing that I realized was just how powerful my friendships were. My roommate at the time, and now best friend, was kind enough to stay home from work the next day with me to make sure that I was ok, which was incredibly sweet of her. The following day, I went back to work and a friend there let me spend the entire day with her class. We talked and it helped. It was a hard 2 days, but after LOTS of tears being shed, I reached a place where I felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. You're probably thinking "2 days?? Yeah right!"

But in reality, during that 2 year relationship, I had been worried constantly. I knew that he had cheated on me (still not sure if it was physical, but I know emotionally at least) at least once, and possibly more. I worried all the time about him being faithful and if I didn't hear from him, what was he doing, and with whom? It was a constant state of stress for me. And once it was gone, I realized that I didn't have to worry about it anymore. And that if I was worrying THAT MUCH, that it should have ended sooner. I just wanted my happy ending so badly, that I was willing to talk myself out of what I was truly feeling.

It was also the first time after a break up that I got the overwhelming feeling of "everything is going to be ok....this is what's supposed to happen." Now, sure, I had TOLD myself that with other breakups, but this was the first time that I FELT it to be true.

And then cut to a few months later, I had gotten back out into the dating world, signed up for Match, and I got a nice email from a cute guy who happened to live about 5 minutes from where I lived and we went out on a date...

....and now we live together and are getting married in April!

The pivotal point for me was realizing that I KNEW what I deserved and I KNEW that I wasn't going to settle for what I had been accepting up until that point. I wasn't going to make excuses for someone else anymore. And once I told myself that, and learned a couple more lessons along the way, the universe gave me the guy I've been waiting my whole life for. Someone who never gives me the slightest reason to worry, listens when I'm upset, and works to make our life better. As cheesy as this is (feel free to make gag noises, it's ok), he's the guy that made this quote....

{via}

...100% true. 

On top of everything else, if I had moved to St. Louis, I wouldn't have been close by when my dad had his heart attack that October, and I would have been tortured not being able to drive to see him.

In the end, it was a painful time, but one that I felt like I got control of my life back and learned that I was strong enough to stand up for myself and for what I deserved.