I was talking to my coworker the other day about things that are just meant to be.  I was meant to get the job I have now, I felt that the first time I went in to interview.  I knew that later on when things worked out in a round-about way.  I was meant to have the little boy I have now; he was meant to live when the first time I was pregnant I had a miscarriage and that fetus didn’t make it.  It was meant to be that our nanny walked through the door and we just felt…right.  We almost lost her to a higher paying family, but they didn’t choose her.  It was meant to be.

My coworker was saying that she wasn’t worried about her house hunt, because things would work out the way they should.  Tonight I was going back through my Facebook timeline and found a post that was published on a more mainstream site that I had written 3 years ago.  It was amazing what my mindset was like then – amazing actually how much I was missing Seattle and did not like living in Hawaii.  It took me to other blog posts I had written, and other indications that life in Hawaii was not for me.  I wrote a lot about how I missed who I was, and how I hated what I had become since moving there.  In fact, this blog was started so that I could remember to be happy about living on an island in the middle of the sea.  I wasn’t though, no matter how much I wished.  I don’t think it was Hawaii that stifled me so much as being near my family and the toxic environment I was in.

I wrote this on January 2, 2012:

I could go on and on about how much I’ve changed since moving away from Seattle and back to my homeland.  I miss my old self.  I remember when we first moved back, I told my husband that I was surprised because I was now surrounded by people with sour looks on their faces, who never smiled and always looked glum.  I remember looking in the mirror and telling myself I won’t become them.  I am now them.  I don’t want to be them.  I have a beautiful boy and a child on the way.  I have a wonderful husband who adores me.  I have a great cat who hates everyone.  I don’t want to be an asshole anymore.  

Seven days later I started this blog.  I started it to dig myself out of the toxic rut I had sunk into, and remind myself of why I lived in an island paradise.  Van Beek’s comment on that post was “Every place is what you make of it. You can live in paradise and it feels like hell.”  Four days later I quit my job.

My father has a need to “explain himself” to me.  My mother has a need to “make things right”/”divorce your father”/”everyone is mean to me”.  I have a need to not partake of their world.  I have a need to utilize the push they gave me to finally realize what was meant to be – and in this case – what was not meant to be.

Do I miss Hawaii?  I miss it for my boys.  I cry a little inside when I realize that they won’t be able to spend lazy days frolicking in the surf, digging in the sand, and playing in the sun.  But that’s all I miss.  My friends are moving away.  No one from my family generation lives there anymore.  I don’t miss the strain of trying to make financial ends meet, of knowing that we would never, ever, be able to afford to buy a house without help.  I don’t miss being tied up with money strings.

Most of all, I love almost everything about my life right now.  Seriously.

I love the relationship I have with my children.

I love my job.

I love that I can take public transportation.

I love our nanny.

I love the friends that I am making, the friends I am reconnecting with, and the friends that I always had.

I love that I can go back to playing with our budget for hours on end, fiddling with numbers for the future, because we both have incomes.

I love that I feel like I have options in the world right now.  I don’t feel caged, don’t feel smothered.  I feel, finally, like I can breathe.

Some things were just meant to be.