The year following the breakup was better than it could have been but still a bit tumultuous. I didn’t feel like fighting a lawyer myself, so I got one of my own. There were properties and financial assets to fight over. Not one of my prouder moments but I wanted to scratch his eyeballs out. Nick wanted everything.
I threw myself into school, and my businesses, and I started working 18 hours a day. I thought I had handled the breakup quite well; I only cried a few times. I surprised myself actually; I thought it would have been harder?LOL. I would later discover that was quite the assumption. After a year of fighting, I ran out of energy. Nick was a smart enough lawyer he could have drowned me in paperwork, and my lawyer was feisty enough to give him a run for his money but by this point, I was tired of litigation. I didn’t want it to end up bitter. He wasn’t a horrible guy; he was just the wrong guy for me. That didn’t mean there needed to be bitterness for the rest of my life.
Despite my lawyers better advice, I called him to settle. I wasn’t going to come out the winner in this deal, but it got me out of a court fight. I was so unbelievably sick of lawyers. Nick could keep all the houses, I just wanted the furniture and enough money to put a down payment on a home. I told him he could have everything else. Sometimes the fight just isn’t worth it. I wanted to move on.
As time went on it got much harder than I had anticipated. There were constant reminders of our relationship. In fact they were everywhere. I was drained really, in every sense of the word. Up to this point, I had done so well on my weight, and I was making such good strides but then, everything went to shit. My gas tank had run out. Running businesses and trying to finish grad school while going through this tumultuous breakup took a toll and it surfaced on my rear end. Almost overnight my progress made a screeching halt. Not quite what I had in mind.
Texas didn’t feel right anymore. As fate would have it, my business partner was from Minnesota. The same state I had visited years before. It seemed a little ironic. In November of 2010, I made the decision to move to Minnesota. Most people thought it was because of the new business, but that was only one small fraction. I was suffocating in Texas. The only thing that kept there me all those years was Nick, and now he was out of the picture. There weren’t any more homes to take care of; it was just me and there was nothing holding me there anymore. Sure, my folks were there, but I was ready for a new adventure. I wanted time to work on me. I wanted to pursue this new dream of mine as crazy as it sounded to everyone else. I wanted four seasons. I wanted trees! I wanted some peace and quiet for awhile. The fact that I only knew one person in Minnesota didn’t scare me. The only thing that did scare me was not going. If you aren’t willing to take chances sometimes then you have no right to complain when things don’t change and get better. This is how I saw it. It was crazy….. sure was, but looking back it was the best thing I ever did. In February 2011, two weeks after I graduated, a big moving truck showed up in front of my home. It was now or never.
I arrived in Minnesota on February 28, 2011, to find my home with 5.5 feet of snow in the front yard. That first week didn’t get above -10 degrees. Cold wasn’t a good definition coming from 70-degree weather. It was a shock to the body on every level. I didn’t own a pair of boots, or scarves or gloves. I barely had a coat thick enough to brave freezing weather let alone sub-zero temperatures. Needless to say, I was ill prepared.
Bean There.
Hahahahahha… That’s what I felt like the first time I came to visit you in January, with nothing but a t-shirt and blue jeans!!! WHOLEY CRAP…. it was COOOOLD!
{{laughing}} cold is right.