I was going to try to sleep on the plane but my brain had other plans for me. I watched the sunset down into the soft desert hills as we ascended to our cruising altitude. I tried to just focus on the beauty and enjoy it but that was not in the cards either. Instead I thought about this week, and my work, and my life and became very sad.

I got my phone out and took pictures of the plane wing cutting across the horizon and thought about how last night when I got back to my hotel room I was so destroyed I could not do anything but take a shower and cry. As the jets of steamy hot water washed the emotions of the day off my skin, so to did the tears streaming from my eyes. I did not realized how overwhelmed I was until I began to unravel.

It reminded me of that night in December I had a party at my house and got so drunk that I blacked out. When I “came around”, I was in the shower just bawling. I can remember crying out loud that “I didn’t want to do this anymore”. I remember my friend Steph on the other side of the curtain (or door) reassuring me that it was going to be OK and that we all have been there. She made sure I got to bed OK. That’s all I remember. I never wanted to feel that way again. Yet somehow I felt that way again. This time, there was no drinking involved.

I ask myself “How did I get here?”. I start by thinking about all the circumstances I am in now. On a plane flying home from a work trip that was just terrible. The team made it a success, miraculously, but the faces of those people across the conference room table are etched in my mind now and I can’t forget everything we went through in just one short week. Those are the longer threads wound around the ball that’s at the heart of me. Right on the surface and so recent and hard to stop thinking about.

Unwinding just a little more that thread leads directly to my situation at work. My constant struggle with my place in the company. My current unease with the executive management and their decisions and the way they treat people. I’m dedicated, and those people (customers) across that table or phone or PC really matter to me, but how long can I stand the constant drama? I need to either let it go and find peace or leave the company. It’s tough when these are the choices. The ball gets a little smaller as it unravels and the thoughts start to come faster.

Tough choices I’ve had to make have led me to be single. And I think that there is still a part of me that feels like that was a mistake, so I don’t want to chance making another big change and feeling 6 months or a year down the road that was a mistake.

I’m single and really struggling with being single. I’m struggling with letting go of that relationship, which seems like it was all just a mirage. Why do five years of my life feel like a mirage? How could I have been in it for so long before realizing it wasn’t real. But it was real. It had to have been. What I am feeling now is real. I still miss him. I still miss us. I have moments that remind me why I made that choice, but they are few and far between now. I can’t help but look out at the sunset and feel just completely full of sadness and regret. So is that it? Is that what is at the core of it all?

Not quite yet, because what lies just a little deeper are the biggest questions that I can never escape. What am I doing with my life? Am I a good person? Why am I here and what is my purpose? And what is the meaning of it all? And that, my friends, is what I think is at the very center.

Now that it is all lying in a big pile criss-crossed on the floor in front of me what can I possibly do but start to cry? No wonder a girl can’t sleep on a plane. Good grief.

Maybe Next Time,
Miss SugarCookie