Finding Myself

Caution: If you don't want to read depressing pity-party ramblings, then don't read this and go here instead.

Can 1 decision change your life? I know that it can, but there are other factors that also feed into everything else. Everyone says my life is just beginning, so then why does it feel like it has ended? I guess it's a chapter ending, and a new chapter has yet to start. Looking back on the short 25 years I have had, most of them have been wonderful. However, this past year has been anything but. There have been highs, but more lows than I care to count. How can I say that, considering that in the past year I married the love of my life, we started our life together, and I got the most loving little puppy? Yes, that all is wonderful, yet I still haven't been able to stop mourning my previous life. My friends tell me to be happy, because I have a man that loves me. Yes, I do, and I love him also, but does that mean I have to give up everything else for love?
They say that I need to get over it and just be happy with what I have, but I can't. I can't pretend to be happy. What really bothers me is that I was one of the those girls that said I would never give up my life, my independence for a guy. And yet, that's just what I did. I have a husband, yet no independence, nothing of my very own to be proud of. If I knew what I know now, I would have never made the choices I did. I was the independent woman, living on her own, with a job that I went to college for. I thought everything would fall into place. I had my man, and everything else would come too. Now I know it doesn't work that way. I have been on both sides of the fence, and every time I look over the fence and see that the grass is just a bit greener on the other side. Single women want a man to come home to, and I get that, because that's what I wanted to. But the lesson I learned is that a man can't make you happy (it seems so simple right?) You can't give up everything that means something to you and expect one thing to make you feel whole. The only thing that will happen is that you will feel resentment toward the one thing, no matter how hard you try not to.
My single friends tell me I have it all, but they don't get that they have good jobs and are doing something with their lives. I screwed up by leaving an opportunity. My friend that I worked with told me she knew I wouldn't find a job when I left. I asked her why didn't she tell me this a year ago? She says, "would you have listened?" Yeah, probably not. I was blinded by love and everything was puppies and rainbows. Others asked if it was really wise to leave a stable job. I can answer now, no, it wasn't.
I've tried to get back into teaching, and I've even had 4 interviews, but I now know it's not enough. I've been out of the classroom for a year. Now it's going on 2 years. There is no way I will get hired being out of the classroom for 2 years.
So what now? Where do I go from here? I refuse to take just any job, hoping for my big break. I have a feeling that I need to cut my losses and start over. I need to go back to school and find something that makes me happy, and if I decide that's it's teaching, then I will take more classes in education. If that's not what I decide, then I guess I'll take other classes.
Overall, I know I can't change the past, and all of the choices I made were my own. I'm really trying to deal with everything, and maybe when I find peace with it all, I will end up finding myself.

-Brina