When you take a two year hiatus from a project, it’s natural that a lot of life is lived in the interim. Luckily, when that project is a blog, you have a permanent record of where you were in a specific moment of time. What you were doing, feeling, saying. What were your struggles, what were your triumphs. My, how far you’ve come.

Two years ago, I was on a journey that left me at the healthiest and happiest I had ever been. I worked my ass off to whip said ass into shape: physically, mentally and emotionally. Sadly, I find myself further from that frame of mind and body now than I’d like to be. And it would be easy to feel really discouraged about the regression. It would be easy to think that the last two years have been wasted effort. A waste of precious days.

But take another look, and you’ll see an entirely different story.

If you read this blog when I first started it, you may remember my thinly veiled references to a relationship I was trying desperately to get over. A relationship that, when it ended, left me with a lot of confusion and a lot of pain. I never shared too many of the details of the relationship and the subsequent breakup in this blog – this person was still in my inner circle of friends and, while we never spoke of it, I knew he read my posts from time to time. So out of kindness to him, I kept the details to myself and those who knew us both well. The pain was there, all the same.

But in reading back through the start of this journey, it’s clear – at least, to me – that he was a driving force behind the steps I was making toward a better, healthier, happier me. When we first started dating, I thought I was in a place that was open to the kind of relationship I thought I wanted. But at the time, I was dealing with insecurities that had plagued me since my early 20s. And while he didn’t suffer from those same insecurities, he, too was not in a place where a relationship made perfect sense for his life at that particular time. Even though our connection and chemistry was instant and palpable, it was a relationship that neither of us could sustain. The two of us weren’t whole as individuals, so could never hope to be whole together.

Our breakup, then, became a rallying cry for me. A wake up call more clear than any I’d ever had. I took advantage of the finale of our relationship and found my way back to what I needed to work on and love most: me. And so I did. I worked hard to become a person who was singularly whole; a person whose core was so solid that it could never crack under the pressure of a relationship.

I was lucky that despite the pain of our breakup, this person became one of my best friends. As we were growing as people, separately, we were coming together through a friendship that, while not perfect, gave us both the strength to keep moving toward something more productive for us both. To become better versions of ourselves so that, one day, we could grow into the people we thought we were when we tried to ignite a relationship in the first place.

So I could look back at posts from two years ago, remember where and who I was at that moment, and feel envious of that person and what she was able to make from the pieces of her life. The person who took a heartbreaking moment and turned it into personal triumph. As I try to muster up her spirit now, in the face of more personal adversity, I can actually feel nothing but gratitude for the timing and circumstances of my life. For the person I was then, and the person I am now.

After all: if it wasn’t for her, I would never be getting ready to walk down the aisle with the same person who ignited this flame in me two years ago. The person who, after we broke up, made me want to become the best possible version of myself. Somewhere on our separate journeys, we found our way back to each other. And now as I reach another impasse in my life, it’s he who gives me the strength and support I need to keep going. To help me make my way back to me, again.

Always, always, trust the timing of your life.

Love,

Megan