It’s amazing how the span of an afternoon can change things forever.  You never go into it anticipating something life altering, but it was the living example of the premise that one moment can change our lives forever.  To experience it 3 times within the course of the last week is intense.  Sunday afternoon I was working on my writing (my book specifically) when my husband and son went to our neighbors.  I joined them when I was done with my work for a late lunch that she had bought for everyone. We talked and talked—I listened a lot and found out about this woman’s character and saw her heart and understood she doesn’t have a lot of that female connection, the same way I’m missing it too.  The topic and tone of trust hit me hard.  She expressed so much of what I felt and experienced over my life, the difficulty of finding women/friends that can be trusted and who maintain that trust.  She and I are both people who defend fearlessly and have very strong senses of right and wrong.  Her best/closest friend is an Aries and mine was a Taurus.  I’m the Aries and she is the Taurus.  We both believe in karma and juju and sage ourselves, and she believes in manifesting and she is living proof it works—I actually want some lessons from her.  But what is amazing is how the universe brings people together over random crap like this.  I’ve mentioned before that I didn’t have the best impression of her from when we first met.  I acknowledge it was wrong of me to buy into what I was told from others.  What’s funny is how my longest relationship began in a similar way: I didn’t have the best impression of the person right off the bat.  Granted I knew more of that person and their reputation, but it turns out that was the person I found myself struggling to ever let go of, even to my own detriment.  That isn’t to be dramatic or say that is what will happen with this woman, but the point is, both relationships started with misinformation and possibly some prejudice.  And once the work has begun to get to know people, we see we can’t live without them. My opinion was corrected as we got to know each other, her kindness and generosity evident.  But in that afternoon, it shifted to something entirely.  I understood her and saw the connection—and that I could have connection again.  It’s ok to trust.   

Tuesday afternoon.  I thought this woman hated me from the start.  She absolutely didn’t have the right idea of me and had expectations of me that I clearly didn’t meet.  I’ve had similar experiences with people where I felt like a disappointment and had no clue why. Her confidence made it difficult to even have a conversation at times.  It’s funny, after speaking with her and hearing her opinions and thoughts on someone who works with us and seeing her behavior toward this person, I see she clearly didn’t like me in the beginning either.  Hearing her placate and speak to the other coworker, I see she did the same thing to me, especially in our first meetings where she was trying to teach me more about her team’s process.  We didn’t have the best introduction.  Between her not liking something about me and me not really knowing the role I had been given (I was not hired for the team that interacted with hers so it was a STEEP learning curve and I struggled hardcore), we didn’t give each other much space or tolerance for error/mistakes/learning who we were and what we were doing.  Over the course of this year as I have developed my strength and worked to understand the dynamics of the teams, I see that we are very similar people.  Again, the universe works in insane ways sometimes.  Again with the rocky impressions and beliefs about someone only to find out we are so aligned it’s like hating/having issues with ourselves.  The thoughts and feelings and the parallels in our lives, the experience themselves are uncanny down to very specific issues with our husbands, how we view ourselves, the sacrifices we made for our families, our belief in ourselves, and things we did to ourselves when we were younger.  There is no way that could be replicated.  The intimacy of the events experienced were damn near mirrored in our lives.  I’m not alone. 

Wednesday evening.  I’d come home from work and needed to get a few things done for holiday prep while my husband and son were across the street.  After some time they came back and my husband was already slightly inebriated.  We played darts and I felt my frustration rising because I no longer drink like I used to—previously I would have joined him.  I haven’t given up alcohol entirely, but I do NOT drink like that.  Seeing people drunk and trying to communicate with them as their ability to communicate decreases is so hard, especially when sober.  We’d had a significant argument this past weekend, ironically that was another shift—I’d been gone for about four hours after the argument and in that span I realized that I would not move forward another inch until things changed—and he knew it was true because I’d left.  When I got back at 4:30 in the morning, I told him that things needed to change and it couldn’t wait any longer.  So Wednesday evening- I had seen that every day so far he’d still been avoiding what was essentially the ultimatum I gave him to figure himself out and decide what we were doing next.  He realized it because I brought it up and I was very direct that I wasn’t kidding about what I had told him, it was time to figure this out.  He started talking about an opportunity we’d had a long time ago, one I hadn’t considered for a while.  I’d been crying about something with my family and the intense feeling of regret that washed over me and I felt like we were out of certain options.  He then brought up this opportunity and I felt regret in that moment as well because I looked at what could have been had we started this a long time ago.  But he stated that we could still do it and something clicked: was this what he wanted to do?  Was this what he figured out? Was this the way out of the crap we’d been dealing with?  And in that moment, intoxicated or not, he was clear to me.  He was scared and insecure about his options in life and he regretted not doing things sooner and was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to do it now.  I had the same fears and the same regrets.  So now that we’ve identified the issue, maybe we can actually do something.  Regret is only final if you let it me.  It’s ok to try again.

It doesn’t take long to change as long as we let the change happen.  The events align and suddenly it’s like someone turned on a light and we just understand.  I’d been feeling that for a while because the people that I’d previously been hanging around were speaking ill of the things I was doing and they weren’t very supportive of what I’d been doing—and that was on a professional level, trying to get my career off the ground.  I’d thought they wanted what was best for me but they just wanted me to do what they thought was best for them.  They didn’t understand what I was doing in the slightest and then started talking shit, right to my face.   And now there are people around me who are genuine, ironically the people I was told for so long weren’t genuine and were superficial or conceited.  I now I see they align with me more and those other people just didn’t want me to go because they thought they could control me.  Sometimes it takes the universe repeatedly bringing people together whether we like it or not to understand that we are meant to work together, that we can’t rely on what we are told about someone and we need to trust our instincts.  It only takes a conversation, or sometimes three in a week (maybe four?) to change perspective enough to allow the shift to just happen because we finally understand the truth of who we are and how all these pieces fit together.  Trust  that the right people will find us and when we are constantly brought together, we need to pay attention.  Watch the people who continually cross our paths because there is a message there.  A few hours can teach us a lot.  Like relationships change and evolve and some people aren’t meant to stay in our lives forever.  We need to be open to the correct support, learn from the past, hope for the future.  Sometimes the light needs to be turned on a few times for us to get the message.  The message comes at the right time, so really pay attention.