In Due Time

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to get married and not have to work...to survive by being taken care of by a man. Considering the state of my parents' marriage, and the dissolution of it, I don't know how this could have been my intended game plan. But, as has often happened in my life...when I was determined and headed on the wrong path, in the wrong direction, there were road blocks...many times they appeared just as I was about to drive off the cliff.
While that cockamamie idea may have been my plan, it's certainly not the plan that was in the cards. I was never allowed to depend on a man to take care of me, to relinquish my power over to someone else, to not realize my potential and talents and value in the work place. Someone wiser and more powerful than even I am made sure of that. So, I've had to struggle with finding that thing that I always yearned for and desired. And as I muddled through that struggle, never being able to find a suitable mate to surrender myself to, I have discovered that I am able to take care of myself. I'm strong. I'm powerful. I'm dynamic. I'm resilient. I can stand on my own. I can survive and sustain myself in plenty and in poverty. I have been allowed to set myself up so that I will never need, never have to depend on any man. With this knowledge and realization and fact, comes power.
The desire for that relationship comes from a different place now, a different perspective...one that is clear, not convoluted as it was before. I have become a different person...one who went from simply wanting to be "taken care of", to one who is proud that she never was.
As I made my way through both prosperous and lean times over the past few years, I grew, I matured, I made wise choices for myself. I have reached a point where the idea of having someone else take care of me is now uncomfortable, unnatural, unthinkable, unfathomable. How could I ever do that? How could I have wanted to do that? To relinquish my power, my voice, my abilities, my options?
This path was a long one. This was a lesson that took many years of sometimes wayward navigation to learn. Even when I was an unwilling student, I had a faithful teacher, who never abandoned me, never lost sight of how the end would justify the means.
They say when you're not looking for something is when you'll find it. I can't say that I've ever stopped looking for my other half...but I can feel that my fervor for doing so wore off some time ago...I had to focus on other things...like getting a job, becoming a super model, and having an improbable love affair with the unlikeliest of candidates....creating some glorious memories that I will always treasure.
Perhaps now that I've reached this point in my development as a mature, independent woman, the teacher will deem it time for me to find what I'd, to a great extent, stopped looking for. I wouldn't be at all surprised. It's too soon to tell. But, whether it's time or not, I know someone's got their big, bright blue eyes looking out for me.