May I say that I hate the quote “Put on a little lipstick, you’ll be fine”?  It just gives false hope that good intentions and a positive attitude can get you everything you need out of life.  I am tired of well-meaning people telling me that I will eventually met someone, that I am right where I am meant to be.  What if I am not?  What if I end up alone, even though that wasn’t how it was supposed to be?  What if I took a seriously wrong turn somewhere?  I’ve done precisely that more than once.  I am still paying for my naiveté and the one chance I took on a relationship.  I know that this seems so overblown, but I’ve been here before.  That is exactly what terrifies me.  It did not end well.

Fortunately, I am not the same person I was at 23.  As much as I would love to believe that things will be different this time, I can’t help but recognize how quickly my life is changing.  This is my last regular semester of my teaching certificate program.  I recently received my student teaching assignment for this fall.  December 2016, pending mandatory testing, I will have my teaching certificate and will be off to begin a new career.  I will have to adjust to not being a student once again.  I am terrified.  I won’t have an excuse to put things off anymore.

There will then be nothing standing between me and starting the adoption process.  I am planning for it to take several years, so as I wait to finally start a family after all of these years, I’ll hopefully settle into a new teaching career.  I have no idea how I am going to reconcile the fact that I want to share my life with someone with the blatant fact that I can’t see it happening for several reasons.  There really isn’t even anyone to date at this point.  I just hope that one day, the right man will come along and prove me completely wrong.