I've been noticing something about myself lately. I'm happy. Like, for real happy. I couldn't tell you exactly when it happened, but I've been smiling more, feeling more relaxed, and genuinely enjoying my days. I didn't wake up one morning with some big revelation or decide I needed to become a more grateful person. I've just been going about my life and realizing that I really, really like it.
Which is a pretty big deal, considering how I've felt for the last several years.
For most of my life, I was the outgoing one. The social butterfly, the life of the party, the person who knew everyone and was always up for whatever was happening. I was basically a hummingbird on a tight schedule, flying from one thing to the next, making friends everywhere I went, and rarely staying in one place long enough to develop deep relationships. I had a ton of people in my life, but very few I was truly close to, other than my husband. I wasn't very reliable, either. I had the best intentions, but there was always something else going on, somewhere else to be, or another shiny object that caught my attention.
Then COVID happened, my dad died, my health went to shit for a while, and work became an increasingly miserable experience. I gradually stopped wanting to be around people. I didn't feel like making an effort, and I certainly didn't feel like being my Gemini, seven-personality, outgoing self anymore. I went from being the person who could walk into a room and know half the people there to feeling like a wallflower in my own community.
I thought I'd lost my confidence. I felt insecure, disconnected, and pretty rudderless for a long time. I couldn't figure out what had happened to the person I'd always been, and I assumed that eventually I'd get back to being her.
Except that wasn't in the cards.
For eleven years, I owned and ran a medical practice, and while I loved many of the people and the work we did, the responsibility was enormous. Employees, patients, finances, a building, and an endless stream of problems that sucked up my attention. Every morning felt like a new episode of What Fresh Hell Is This? Even when I went home, my brain was still at work trying to figure out how to deal with whatever nonsense had happened that day or what fresh nonsense might be waiting for me tomorrow.
I was exhausted, distracted, and not a whole lot of fun to be around. I spent so much time being responsible for everyone and everything that I wasn't paying nearly enough attention to my own life, including my marriage.
That part bothers me a lot when I think about it now.
Mark is such an exceptional human being. He makes me coconut milk lattes in my favorite mug every morning, cooks dinner almost every night, and forces me to eat something before I leave the house. He showers me with kisses, tells me he loves me all the time, and sends me cute little otter memes on social media about slippery water ferret love. We've become the kind of couple who communicates through romantic otter content, and yeah...I like it.
He's been doing all of these things for years, even when I was so consumed with work that I barely had the mental bandwidth to ask him how his day was. I loved him just as much as I always had, but I wasn't showing up for him the way he was showing up for me. I'd listen to him talk about trout or tequila sales while mentally working through tomorrow's problems, and there were plenty of times he could 100% tell I wasn't listening.
I hate admitting that, especially because he's never stopped being wonderful to me. He's been right there through all of it, including the really hard stuff that breaks people, supporting me, loving me, and putting up with a version of me that wasn't giving him nearly enough in return. Looking back, it upsets me how much time I spent distracted by things that mattered so much less than he did.
Now I find myself genuinely interested in his day, what he's thinking about, what he wants to do, and whether he might want to watch something besides boat shows on Bravo. We take walks together in the Preserve looking for snakes, sit outside in the sunshine with coffee, and spend time enjoying each other's company without me being distracted by a hundred other things. I love that man so much, and I'm really enjoying being his wife again instead of just being the exhausted person who lives in the same house.
My friendships have changed, too.
I've gotten incredibly close with my friend Lily, and our afternoons sitting on her porch with her dogs have become one of my favorite things. We talk about our businesses, our marriages, our lives, and what it's like to be two women running businesses, supporting our households, and lucky enough to have husbands who absolutely adore us.
We talk about serious things, ridiculous things, and everything in between. There's no competition, no weirdness, and no need to impress each other. I love having that kind of friendship, and I don't think I realized how much I'd been missing it.
Through Lily, I've also gotten to know my friend Addie, who's a lot younger than me and owns a thriving interior design business as well. She's smart, kind, genuine, and just a lovely person. I've found myself looking forward to getting to know her better, which is a pretty big change from the last few years when I had very little interest in hanging out with, well...people.
People around my small town have also started reaching out, following my new business on social media, and reconnecting with me. It's been really nice, especially after spending the last several years keeping mostly to myself. I don't know if it's the new business or if I'm just more open to people again, but I'm enjoying it.
And the best part is that I'm actually interested in really getting to know people rather than just collecting acquaintances like I used to.
I've also started noticing little things that I barely paid attention to when my head was full of work.
The clouds on my drive this morning rocked me. I love seeing the contrails across the sky because they remind me of my dad, and I like to think he's up there keeping an eye on me and pointing me in the right direction. I look forward to sitting outside in the morning sunshine, going for walks with Mark, and having time for my mother-in-law's heavy metal detox smoothies before work.
Yes, I am now that person who gets excited about growing cilantro under my countertop light for my smoothie. I mean...why fight it? It tastes infinitely better than that "organic" City Market crap.
I'm thinking more about taking care of myself, too. Eating damn protein, exercising, getting my hormones sorted out, fine-tuning my supplements, and maybe breaking up with tequila for a while. Let's not go crazy, though. I want to feel good, and I'm finally in a place where I have the time and energy to do something about it.
And then there's my new business, which I absolutely love.
I'm doing work that feels meaningful, helping people in a way that comes naturally to me, and it's growing. But I don't have employees to manage, a building to maintain, or hundreds of patients whose needs ultimately become my responsibility. I get to decide how much I work, who I work with, and what my days look like.
After eleven years of running a medical practice, I cannot adequately describe how amazing that feels.
We're a little over a week away from closing on the sale of our medical office, and when that happens, I will officially be DONE. No more building, no more business to wind down, no more endless list of things that need to be handled before I can move on. I am so ready.
None of this means I've suddenly figured out how to live without stress. After all, I did end up in the hospital thinking I was having a fucking heart attack last week. Thankfully I was not. I've still got plenty going on, and I can still get myself pretty worked up when something really pisses me off.
But I'm noticing a difference in how long I stay there.
I can have a terrible day without letting it ruin the next three. I can get frustrated, deal with whatever needs dealing with, and still come home and enjoy my evening. I'm not spending nearly as much time replaying conversations in my head or worrying about things I can't do anything about at that moment.
I'm not suggesting I've become some remarkably calm, enlightened person. Mark would laugh out loud at that one. I still have my moments, and I’m sure I always will. But the good in my life is outweighing the bad by a pretty significant margin, and I'm getting better at not letting the bad shit steal quite so much of my time.
And with all of these changes, I've been thinking about the person I was before COVID, before my dad died, before the last several years of feeling so disconnected from myself.
I used to think I needed to find my way back to her. I thought being quieter, less social, aand less interested in putting myself out there meant I'd lost something important.
But I don't think that's true anymore.
I was fun back then, and I had some great times. I was also scattered, inconsistent, and not always present for the people who mattered most to me. I was constantly moving, and I don't know that I ever gave myself much time to appreciate what I already had.
I like myself better now. I'm more grounded, more reliable, and much more interested in the quality of my relationships than the quantity. I'm paying attention to my husband, enjoying my friendships, and building a business that fits into my life instead of taking it over.
And speaking of appreciating things I hadn't paid enough attention to, I've had a realization about my mom recently. I've always attributed my ability to figure things out, get shit done, and handle whatever life throws at me to my dad. I was convinced that's where I got it. But watching my mom over the last few years has made me rethink that. Since my dad died, she's managed her house, her life, and her volunteer work at the cancer center with a level of determination, creativity, and persistence that I don't think I've ever fully appreciated. She just figures things out and gets on with it. And it occurred to me recently that my mom might actually be the most capable person I know, and I am so lucky I got those parts of me from her.
And now? I'm sitting here thinking about Mark and his otter memes, afternoons with Lily, my dad's contrails in the sky, and how nice it is to drink my coffee without mentally preparing for whatever disaster might be unfolding at work.
Don't get me wrong, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. My hair is currently falling out after losing weight on a GLP-1, and I've spent an absurd amount of time researching pumpkin seed oil, saw palmetto, biotin, and every other internet miracle that promises to save it. I've always had nice hair, and watching it disappear is really messing with my vanity.
I still have plenty of stress, things that worry me, and days when I'd love nothing more than to tell someone to fuck all the way off. But those things aren't taking up nearly as much room in my life anymore, and I'm actually enjoying the people, the work, and all the little things that used to get lost in the noise.
I don't know how long it's been since I've felt this content with my life, and I'm not particularly interested in analyzing it to death.
I'm just really, ridiculously happy. And that's enough for me.