When I was a child, I had a master plan. Go to college. Graduate. Get married the summer following. Buy a house. Travel the world. Work on my career. Be a top executive by the age of 30. And have two or three kids so I would be done having kids before I got "old". It was picture perfect within the definition of success that cultivated from the community I grew up in. And I actually have a handful of friends that was able to do most of these things like checking off a box on a list.
However, by the time I turned 25, I had thrown away one career. One long-term relationship. One move across country. One or four opportunities to travel the world. I had hit a mid-life crisis only a quarter of a way in. Going into making my 30before30 list at the age of 25, I had nothing out of my picture perfect life.
I had broken it off with my college sweetheart immediately after college. Two months into teaching full time, and I wanted out way more than I ever wanted in. And believed that none of these things were even in reach by the time I was thirty.
I did make myself one promise me one thing, "allow yourself to fall in love again", which is how such a cheesy statement like "fall in love" made a time sensitive list. I did not believe that I would find "the one" but I wanted to find myself enough to trust others again with my heart. I dated, I tried, and then I quit attempting to rush things.
I backed off completely from ever attempting love somewhere in between the age of 25 and 26, somehow allowing myself to fall into a love story that I would not trade for the world. Of course, it is easy to say these words now that I have a lovely husband that wants children sooner than myself and has a heart larger than anybody else I know, but I promise to everyone reading this that when I originally wrote down the goal of falling in love again, it did not mean "find a husband". I just simply wanted to open my heart up again, and I am truly amazed on the blessings that came from it.
