After an hour or so, I couldn’t help but stifle a yawn. This story, which I had already heard in its entirety, seemed to both be dragging and multiplying. Plus, every time me or the couple I was sitting next too – also listening with half-bored expressions on their faces – said, “Give her the boot!”, my friend nodded, said, “Yeah, I know I should” and then would go right back to his harrowing tale of drug-infused and self-worth-crushing “relationship” drama.

I woke up this morning feeling a bit bleech (and no, not from drinking too much last night). It was more of the world’s-caving-in variety. Eyebrows covered in sweat about finances, trying to determine exactly how I’m gonna pay some bills; the amount of work I need to get done in the next 10 days in order to pay a fraction of those bills; feeling the need to be out and social as a way of dealing with break-up, and yet that cuts into work-to-pay-bills time. Ugh. So I decided it was time to try and turn around that ugly, downtrodden point-of-view real darn quick by completing a very simple task: writing down a list of simple things I’m grateful for.

I’m not sure I’m the most qualified person in the world to write this, considering I’m not sure that I have any answers. But I have ideas. And they are different than the more accepted approaches out there. Yep, I’m currently going through a break-up. The details are really not worth going into, other than to say beauty showed up for the two of us on a late September evening, and the twist into summer held changes we knew would arrive sooner rather than later. But there is no you-did-me-wrong, no blame for a loss of feelings. It is rather circumstantial that we have come to this place, and yet those circumstances make our reality. It is time.