I didn’t realize how emotional about this I would be until I sat in a chair in my living room, staring at my computer and thinking, “I’m actually doing this.”

Like … it shouldn’t be a big deal. I just read a chapter, listened to a single, ten-minute module lecture (with PowerPoint for reference), introduced myself in the discussion thread, and watched a couple of videos. And yet? My eyes are welling up, and it’s a little hard to breathe. Well, harder than it usually is, but life with asthma, am I right? I had given up on myself and didn’t realize that I had. Even as I typed that, the realization of that fact settled even more deeply than it did when it first popped in my brain.

I had given up on myself. This was the best my life was going to be. I was little more than a woman in arrested development, gradually edging closer and closer to old age with little more than a few physical (and plenty emotional) scars as evidence that I lived. I was slovenly, unlovable, crass, broken, and pointless. The only things that loved me were a weird, misshapen dog that wasn’t even mine and two cats that destroy everything (and I wonder about their level of dedication sometimes, anyway). I was right back to where I was when I was married. Nothing had changed.

There’s so much to unpack here, and I don’t think I can do it in one entry. But this move? I’m healing. I’m actually fucking healing. So I’m going to go after this BSN degree with everything I’ve got, if for no other reason than to prove that I’m not stuck anymore.

I am getting better. I have work to do, but I am getting better.