Too Old for This, Yet, Somehow, Also Too Young

There’s this weird feeling, being so far down the road of life that I feel like I should have figured this out already while also finding myself finally knowing what I want. What a blessing to be standing in the doorway, the old me wishing me well as I walk away, and the woman I was meant to be pulling me gleefully into what comes next.

Six years divorced in March. Six years ago, my little heart was so broken and in need of validation and protection from holes punched in walls, doors slammed, voices raised, names being called, furniture being destroyed in drunken stupors (his, not mine). My divorce finalized a week before the pandemic. In the months after, I was consumed by the old-fashioned idea that since I was married once, I needed to immediately find the right one and settle down. Your son needs a male in the house, or so my stepdad told me. You need someone to help you, or so my mom told me. You’re amazing and deserve the most amazing man, or so my friends told me. But in a long-term relationship, you get used to having someone there to do life with. Even though the life we were doing was dysfunctional. Even though that life shrunk me down, ripped away my dreams while I sunk deeper into chaos and the family disease of addiction.

So I found myself almost immediately in another relationship. With someone I absolutely should not have spent any time on at all for many reasons much too personal to share today. But when you leave something that was lonely in its chaos, and an intelligent, successful, driven man shows intense interest, your body responds before your head does and you barrel into things you definitely shouldn’t. Because the firsts are exciting, and I hadn’t had any of those in 16 years.

That relationship ended two weekends after my dad died of brain cancer. It hurt worse than the divorce. My phone was so silent it crushed me. I lost the two men I leaned on hardest after my divorce, the one who raised me and the one who brought me back to life, both in less than a month. Devastated doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’ve spent the subsequent three years stumbling through what that pain did to me. I never asked anyone for help, and I haven’t really told anyone how hard it really was because I was ashamed at my own weakness.

So I did what singe, grieving women in Hallmark movies do and I sold my house in the city and bought a bigger house in my hometown and got on the dating apps and have since had several first dates and one on-again-off-again. I thought things would be different. I thought I would meet a lot of good men also reeling from their divorces and ready for a woman like me. I thought I would be remarried maybe and already building a life with someone amazing. Instead, I have met a lot of unhealed, avoidant men who have said:

– I think I am intimidated by you. (Too successful and independent)
– (After seeing my house) – How much money do you make? (Do you make more than me?)
– You don’t need me; she does. (Having a woman depend on me feeds my ego)
– I’m just not ready for a committed relationship right now. (I never deleted my dating profile and I’ve been talking to other women while giving you hope for our future)
– You’re amazing, I just can’t do this. (I’m scared)

I realized something after several therapy sessions. The most recent epiphany: I was running to these men and didn’t look to see if they were ready to catch me. I looked for the first green flag, ignored the red, and thought that I could trust again, only to be let down. And I’ve spent my entire life worrying about everyone else, meeting everyone else’s needs, whether they want or need me to or not, and completely abandoning myself. None of them are bad men, in fact most of the have them ability to be quite amazing. Each was doing the best he could with what he had based on his own experiences and social conditioning.

Broken men like needy women. There are a lot of both in this world. May the universe keep both types far away from me.

I am too old to only now realize that truth. And yet, I am the freest I have ever been, I am the most hopeful and grounded I have ever been. I broke my back building a career that could support my son and me. I ask for no one’s permission or input. There is absolutely nothing holding me back or standing in my way. That is a level of freedom to be authentic that most women never allow themselves and most men are not conditioned to understand.

So I asked myself, “Brindi, who do you want to be? When you die, what will you regret most if you don’t do it?”

“You need to write,” I said. Because writing is the one thing I know without question that I am really, really good at. I can say that with my whole chest and be completely confident, no doubt whatsoever. To bring an authentic voice that can combat what is contrived. To be verbose when so much of our content is distilled into a 3 minute or less sound clip with perfectly angled images. To be messy, unpolished, and real.

If Mr. Right meets me now, he’s going to meet the true me. Not the me without a backbone. Not the me still learning how the world works. He will meet the me who built her own empire, the me who knows exactly who she is and exactly what she wants and is finally, FINALLY ready to settle for nothing less. And if he’s right, he won’t feel threatened by it, and he won’t see it as something he can throw away.

The validation I needed was already here, inside this big hopeful heart I have been handing around to everyone else. I am pulling that nig bleeding heart inside and doing what it has always longed to do and protecting what is precious within it like my life depends on it, because it does.

As they say: If I’m too much, go find less.