Six months.

It sounds so ridiculously short on paper, but this last six months has been more than enough to turn my entire life around.

Six months ago, I was fairly happy with who I was, except for one key thing: I was lonely. I had just about become resigned to thinking that I was going to spend the rest of my life alone, and I was preparing to learn to deal with that.

I’d spent the previous nine years getting my heart broken badly, twice, and trying to recover from those. I felt happy enough on the surface six months ago, but deep down where I didn’t let myself think much, I felt that I was too scarred and broken; that no one would ever want me and that I wasn’t capable of loving wholly anyway.

Six months ago I had been completely independent of anyone else’s actions for almost nine years. I was used to being in charge of all of the decisions, and if I made them with any thought to anyone else in the long term, it was the kids. And the kids were bound to grow up and move away at some point, and weren’t really a part of any decision-making. I was the one who decided where and how we lived, how money was invested, who earned every penny that went through our household, and who even decided what we we going to have for dinner every single night. It was all mine, all of the responsibility and all of the weight of keeping two other people alive and fed, and I never got to share it. I was used to carrying that load by myself, so I hardly ever noticed it, but it was there, slowly breaking my back.

It wasn’t all bad; I like being in charge, and I like having things done my way. I liked not having to report to someone else, not having to fight about money, not having to worry if someone else liked what I cooked for dinner. The kids could eat it or shut up about it.

Six months ago I met a man who made me rethink the benefits of being in charge all the time. It wasn’t overnight, and he certainly didn’t set out to do that. I slowly and sometimes painfully went from being the unquestionable head of the household to remembering how to consider someone else’s opinion, and to respect their input. I’ve been alone a long time, and had forgotten some of the little things about living with someone else, and even though we’re not technically living together yet, I’ve come to see that doing so won’t be such a disaster as it would have been when we first met. Then, adjusting was painful, and I am stubborn, and trying to do things, even little things, a way other than mine would have brought out the mule in me, and that wouldn’t have worked well for a relationship.

I slowly relearned the art of give and take, and that things aren’t always on my terms, but they’re good anyway. I learned to fight the controlling streak in me that grew over the last nine years. It’s not all gone, not yet, but it’s sure better than it was six months ago, and I’m a better person for it. Besides being happier in general, I’m more relaxed about lots of things, things that he doesn’t have anything to do with, and he’s the one that taught me that.

I didn’t think I’d be able to love again either, not wholeheartedly, six months ago. It never occurred to me that I also didn’t know how to be loved, as I’ve never known what I was missing there. But he taught me that too, and patiently let me round the corners off of my own heart and learn to be whole again. They say that welds are stronger than the metal they’re bonding, and I think that might be true for hearts too. I hope so anyway.

So, six months ago I was sort of a broken human being, just trying to get along the best way I could, and mostly succeeding. Today, I feel so much more whole. I would have said I was fine then, but looking back from here, I see that I wasn’t, not really. I’m getting there now though, and he’s the one giving me that. And he doesn’t even know that’s what he’s given me, I don’t think. I think he’s just doing what I’m doing; walking along one step at a time, becoming better in the process, and certainly happier. Fortunately, we’re doing it together and in the same direction.

I feel unbroken. And this six months is just the first of many half-years to come. They’re all laid out ahead of us and I couldn’t be happier about walking that way with this man.

edited to add, after I thought about it some more: I didn’t mean to suggest that he changed me. No, it was being faced with the prospect of this kind of love, which I hadn’t ever even dared wish for, that made me want to adjust my ways of being in order to be successful at it.