It happened today in a moment. For weeks I had been feeling fine, life was good, everything was falling in place. But this morning I heard it, the unmistakable whisper in my ear.

“You can’t do this on your own.”

And all the feelings of joy I had been feeling over my promotion at work, the handle I had on life, the way the kids have really come into their own, and the high I was still riding on from a fabulous weekend spent at the ocean…..it all disappeared and in crept a dark cloud of fear.

I can’t do this on my own.

It didn’t matter that I AM doing this on my own. It didn’t matter that suddenly all the dreams that I had set out for myself as a little girl were all being placed as gifts in my lap. It didn’t even matter that all my dreams that I envision for the future do NOT involve a man on a white horse who will rescue me, but instead place ME as the hero. No. In that one moment my singleness as a 30 year old woman and my singleness as a parent of two young children bore down on me. Thoughts of college tuitions and braces and first cars overwhelmed me as I realized that I didn’t even know how I was going to afford daycare during their summer break in 6 months. And instead of the empowering feeling that I had risen above and gotten so far in my journey, I suddenly saw the road up ahead. And I saw it for how long it really is.

We tell ourselves lies throughout our lives. I’m not pretty. I’m ordinary. I’m too fat. I’m too skinny. I’m not smart enough. I will never be great. I don’t deserve happiness. It’s useless to hope when it will never happen. Life sucks and that’s just the way it is. I have to work this dead-end job because I could never have the job I really want. There’s no way I can afford to buy a home. I am ruining my kids through my mistakes. Where I am now is not nearly as far as I should be.

I can’t do this on my own.

The lies are easier to believe at times because we have ingrained them so deeply within us. They are the messages that were told to us directly. They are the messages we learned through observation. They are the messages we adopted as our own mantras to keep us from reaching our full potential. And it takes a mental shaking, a literal moving of the head, to wake up from the delusional hypnosis we have put ourselves under and start telling ourselves the truth. I CAN do this on my own. I AM doing this on my own. It may not be the way I had planned it in the beginning. As a little girl I surely did not plan on raising two kids by myself. My Barbie always had a Ken. My Raggedy Ann had an Andy. My dreams always had me sitting across a sunlit table drinking a cup of coffee over a newspaper, sharing sections of it with my husband as we enjoyed breakfast. This life I have now is not exactly the life that I had created in between imaginary and reality. But when it comes down to it, in a lot of ways it’s better.

And of course I want to get married again. But do you want to know a secret? Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I want to be the only one in charge of the way my life goes. I want to be the one writing to earn a good living to carry the kids and me comfortably, living in a house I bought near the ocean, knowing I put my kids through college and that they will be able to succeed in their lives because I was able to devote all my attention to raising them. Sometimes I think the very thought of settling down doesn’t sound as relaxing as the term implies. In fact, it makes me exhausted to imagine including another person’s life into this family, knowing it will change the dynamics we have already put into place. And when everything seems to be fitting like a puzzle, at times the idea of adding another parent doesn’t seem to fit. But of course, the rest of the time I am hoping there is someone out there who can be a real father to my children and a good husband to me. And when the whispers start again, I am much better at chasing them away. I can do this on my own if that’s the way the cards lay. And if it ends up that way, let me tell you something, I’ve gone through far worse. And I survived.

Email me at winecountrymom@winecountrymom.com