Sometimes when I think about my fiancée, and I’m not aggravated over how he left his coffee cup next to the sink (why not just put it in the damn dishwasher it’s literally RIGHT THERE), or giggling at his butt crack sticking out when his shorts hang a little too low on his hips, I ponder what my life was like before him.
When he’s particularly frustrating, when he’s asking me about dinner and I’ve been running around and working nonstop for 12 hours, I romanticize those days.
There’s something unmistakably appealing about being a single woman in her 30’s, living alone, financially stable. The only responsibilities are your own bills, your own work, your own job, yourself. You can be focused on self-improvement activities one day, and bed rot watching Bridgerton for 8 hours the next.
I got to enjoy a few perfectly single years in my 30’s before meeting my fiancée, I mean REALLY enjoy them. I relished in them. Luxuriated in the experience of being an adult with a decent job, able to travel, life full of friendships and little romances. Few responsibilities. Those are the days that I dream about when I get annoyed over finding the kids’ dirty socks in the kitchen or when I worry about the future.
The years before, when I was young and single, they weren’t always carefree bliss. I just have to remember a little further back, to the years before I finally got myself together. I had struggled for more than 10 years and recently my life’s been wonderful enough to make those hard times fade away. There were some fun times before, but mostly it was an uphill battle trying to get my life together.
I was one of those unfortunate casualties of the ’08 financial crisis. Just a couple years out of college I’d so proudly, after my parents convinced me to, bought a cute little condo in Tucson. Well, it was a condo. Maybe not cute. It needed some work, but they were solidly of the opinion that buying a fixer-upper 2 bedroom was better than renting a perfectly acceptable one bedroom. I trusted them and I got a mortgage. It was what you were supposed to do. Buy a place, build equity. Stop paying someone else for your home. It was fine at first. I was barely making enough money to afford the payments and HOA, but I made it work as much as I could. I was able to fix a few little things, like swapping out some light fixtures and some paint. The flooring was a wreck of weird mauve carpet, uneven and oddly lumpy in places. Leaky bathroom fixtures, the windows seemed like they were going to rot out of place, the kitchen was tiny and more than dated, it was hardly functional. I put what little money I had into a new fridge and stove so I could eat at home. It wasn’t much. All I could do was put some lipstick on the pig and live there.
Still, it was nice. I was a few minutes from my job, I felt like I could do what I wanted there. I got a little dog, a dachshund, from a man I worked with that was looking to rehome her. She was 6 months old and his 5 other dogs were picking on her. I was thrilled. I had always wanted my own dog, and I was living somewhere that couldn’t tell me I wasn’t allowed to have one. My mom was staying with me while my dad was building their house in Texas, and she named her Muki.
Muki was a dream come true for me, an angel with silky fur and sharp little teeth. If you know anything about dachshunds, you know that’s not entirely accurate. She was not an angel. She didn’t bark at all for two weeks. Until she did. She hated being in a crate and hurt herself in one, forcing me to let her be free roaming. She slept in my bed and snuggled against me under the blankets like I was the only thing in the world keeping her safe. I walked outside in the Arizona sunshine with her every day, took her to the dog park every day. We made little doggy friends. There was one big thing that kept her from being the greatest dog of all time. She refused to potty outside on a leash because she’d been conditioned by my old coworker not to (he didn’t want to pick up her poops on walks) and I wasn’t able to break that conditioning for her entire life. That sweet little dog. She was great at using potty pads. Unfortunately for the condo’s awful pink carpet, she didn’t really distinguish between the potty pads and the carpet.
I still couldn’t afford to replace it. I settled for a lot of cleaning.
Then I was laid off from my job. Depression kicked in along with crippling anxiety. I couldn’t afford my car payments. Or mortgage. I focused on keeping electric, water, my phone, and the wifi. I was online for 12 hours a day trying to find a job, and sometimes just trying to escape. I walked Muki because instinctively I knew that even if she wouldn’t potty, the sunshine was critical to my wellbeing.
I lost the car. I was going to lose the condo too. It was a matter of time.
I was adrift, depressed, selling everything that would sell, turning my spare change into cash for my phone bill. I had gotten a roommate, and I found another job. A terrible, low paying job in a temp agency. It wasn’t enough money and by then, it was too late. I lost the condo too and we had to arrange a move. The failure at that point was just adding to the mountain of failure I’d been getting buried under, I hardly felt anything at that point.
The depression overtook the anxiety and there wasn’t much room for fear. Just sadness. I pondered over the regrets. Why did I let my parents talk me into buying that dumpy condo in the first place when I really couldn’t afford it? Why did I even try to live on my own in the first place or move to Arizona to follow a boyfriend that didn’t want me to live with him? All those regrets were lessons. I wouldn’t make those same mistakes, I would make new, fresh mistakes instead.
My roommate, Muki, and I moved into a place that didn’t have carpet and had a cute fireplace. It was a good few months. Stressful still. But she and I were in it together, sharing a rental car, being like sisters, doing everything together. We were able to walk to a favorite nearby bar. We had friends, we had fun. Still struggling. Still eating dollar menu burgers and flirting for drinks.
That job was terrible though. My boss was a little creepy, not in an obvious way, but something that put me on edge. I’d been through sexual assault more than once, I could feel when something wasn’t right, and I was often on edge around men. One day, someone brought a weapon to the office and my boss told me to keep my finger on the panic button and lock the doors. I wasn’t even scared that day, it just annoyed me. Something needed to change. That wasn’t a normal reaction. I should have been scared, it was a scary thing and I was reacting like a teenage that didn’t want to help wash the dishes.
I began interviewing like crazy and was offered a position in Phoenix, 2 hours away. The job paid a bit more, but even better than that, it came with a car. My roommate started interviewing for a promotion in between the two cities that would also provide a car for her. She got the job too.
We were planning a move together. I was able to stay with friends during the work week while she watched Muki at our little rental. And a few weeks later we moved together for a second time.
Things were still tough, but it got easier over the next few years. I had a company car, I had a slightly better paying job with tiny annual raises. I still struggled, still occasionally had to sell jewelry or all my DVDs, but I began to relax. I got promoted, I dated, nourished friendships. Paid my bills.
Something wasn’t quite right, wasn’t quite enough to fully relax. I was probably still depressed so I was drinking quite a lot. Sometimes getting drunk, inappropriately, unhealthily, blackout drunk. Nothing so often to be an obvious problem, but it was a problem. I filled my free time with other people. Obsessively putting my energy into friendships and working and volunteering. Joined multiple dating apps. The dating I was doing wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t about trying to find a partner. It was about filling my time, keeping me so busy I couldn’t sit and think. I was seeking something to fill my anxiety-hollowed out heart.
Anxiety is wild. When you plug it into google, you get a pretty solid AI definition.
“Anxiety is a feeling of fear, dread, and uneasiness, often characterized by physical symptoms like a rapid heartbeat, sweating, and tension. It is a normal, future-oriented response to stress or danger that can help with coping. When this, or excessive worry, becomes persistent and interferes with daily life, it may be an anxiety disorder.”
Anxiety was such a normal part of my early adult life, I got used to it. It became a creepy little friend in my brain that I could set aside with a vodka red bull, or blame on the butterflies of meeting someone new on a date, or the stress of forgetting about a deadline at work. Fleeting little emotion, that anxiety. Not pervasive anxiety like when I was skipping meals because I couldn’t afford to buy more groceries. I was afraid of what was going to come next, but I was keeping myself so busy that I wasn’t able to wallow in the fear. It just came out every so often when I slowed down too much.
I’ve been lucky the last several years. Multiple raises at work, bosses that recognized my hard work and low salary and opted to fight for me to be paid more, something I don’t think I ever knew to ask for myself, never though I deserved to ask for. Something my anxiety told me I wasn’t worth. I should have fought for myself sooner.
All those attempted relationships. Men that I pictured a future with, felt those butterflies over, thought to myself, “for sure this one is it.” They didn’t want me back. I wasn’t worth it to them, maybe I wasn’t worth it at all. The ones that did want me back, they also added to my anxiety in ways that I couldn’t stomach. A man I thought I was in love with but he wouldn’t recognize he had a cocaine addiction. A man that was good on paper and wanted a commitment from me, but wouldn’t actually commit his time to me. A man that moved away just when we started getting close. A man that was nice, but ultimately we had nothing in common and nothing to talk about. A man that had robbed some banks with an ex he warned me was going to reach out to me at some point to ruin any chance at a future with him. A parade of men my dog hated that either weren’t good for me or weren’t ultimately interested enough in me to build a future.
I wasn’t lucky in love until I was. I’d moved to the Montrose area of Houston in February of 2020 with my cute little Muki. It was a dumpy little apartment, but it was in the cool part of town, and I was traveling regularly for work. It was cheap, had some character, it was perfectly fine. I felt good about my life, financially stable, near family, ready to accept being the cool, single, travel aunt. My anxiety was at an all time low.
I swiped right on a guy with a few vague pictures and a mostly empty profile and he asked me to dinner in Webster. We met up at Whiskey Cake, talked about ourselves, and felt relaxed. He was kind, he was different from the men I’d dated before. He had been married twice, had four kids, wasn’t looking to have any more. He told great stories, he seemed genuinely interested in me. He walked me to my car, I leaned in, and got a warm hug.
I really pondered over that one in the car on my 30 minute drive home.
Seriously, a hug? Not even an attempt to go in for a kiss. I thought about that one for a while, assumed I met another man that didn’t think I was worth it. Oh well, dinner was delicious and fun, on to the next one.
It wasn’t on to the next one. He asked for another date. And another. And another. And Covid hit and we kept dating. He moved in, then we left the tiny apartment for a suburban house. And we built a life and he proposed. Here we are now, getting ready to marry, raising his twins, and just opened up a business together.
I spent so long trying to get away from the fear of failure, of falling back into deep financial insecurity. I reached that place, I had rebuilt my credit and spending habits to make sure that I wasn’t going to find myself drowning under a mountain of letters from creditors, hiding from the doorbell. And I spent so long trying to find someone to share my life with and build a dream with. I found love, we had financial stability together, but now we’re finding ourselves in a precarious place.
The anxiety is back. Starting a business is terrifying. Starting a business when you have built-in background trauma surrounding financial failure and loss is nearly debilitating. Everything is fear and worry, and for someone that spent years failing, the very whiff of potential failure is enough to send me into a spiral.
But that’s not what we need. We need me to build our social media following and create ads. We need me to continue to work my day job and drive the kids to tennis. We need me to clean the house and do the laundry while he’s running the business. We need me to join local organizations that can help us grow. We need me to find ways to get our name out there and get people in the door. And for that, I’m here, picking up an old favorite past time, writing, tossing in a backlink here and there while I type into the void about my life.
Tiles and Golf and Dogs 
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