You can't fix something that isn't broken...

After twenty-four years living in this skin, I have only now begun to feel comfortable in it. I am seven years into the dating hoopla, and I believe I probably have a few more dreadful years ahead before settling down and finding someone who can handle the woman I've become.

I remember what naïve, untouched, and blissfully idiotic felt like, but that was years ago, and I can't imagine there's any part of me that would choose to live that way again. Of course, I did not jump straight from “All American Girl” to my... uh, current state... because in my naievety I for sure thought it best to drag myself through trials that no ounce of innocent love could survive. So here I am: twenty-four years old, an English major working as a medical receptionist and living paycheck to paycheck, a surviver (as I like to say) of a not fully thought through abortion, a single mother to my bastard dog (literally), slightly more jaded than I ever wanted to be, and living in a different city then my heart... currently residing in South Tacompton with two of my ex-fiance's best friends (FYI: I don't suggest it, unless of course you're an emotional cutter like me. And then, it's completely ideal).

This life is not what I signed up for, nor anything I thought I would ever experience let alone survive, and I realize I am only at the tip of the iceberg:

For the first time in my adult life, I am single and am thankful for it (or atleast getting there). I don't know what it's like not to need someone else to “fill my cup” so to speak, but I'm learning. I enjoy looking at myself as a work in progress; I'm open to learn and am excited that I have control of where my life is headed. At this point, it involves and affects no one else. For the first time in my life I'm learning how to be selfish and how to work towards my own dreams. I never wanted this responsibility, like many girls I imagine, I wanted so badly to be saved by my soulmate... and apparently, that's just not going to happen for me.

After having my fiance leave (completely out of the blue, I might add, as well as owing me thousands of dollars), I for sure spent two months in my room crying, begging, and waiting for him to wake up and see my worth. I then dove head first into two months of dating a fantastic man who fell on my lap just in the knick of time. He is a man who saw my worth more clearly than I; a man who treated me like an absolute goddess; a man who is the epitome of who you take home to mom and dad; a man whom I love to pieces as a person, yet a man who I just didn't fall in love with. I have now spent two weeks (and three days) so fantastically and depressingly single... that I have the wine bottles, cab bills, mascara-stained pillows, and mystery texts to prove it.

I'm not sure I've ever been so bipolar in my life: free yet trapped, full of both laughter and tears, confident yet having to face Michael's rejection, and thankful to be surrounded by the strongest women in the world... yet completely annoyed at all of them for pushing me not to settle and to be equally as strong.

I've been amazed by what I'm capable of surviving, and how much it's changed me, yet how much I'm still me. The core of Maggie cannot be tainted or taken away by what life throws my way (or rather, as normally the case, I jump into). I have been told recently by close and distant people that I have a spirit for life that seperates me from everyone else. I cannot tell you how this knowledge, and the fact that maybe I do have something to offer the world (and maybe even one day a soulmate), has carried me through the days and nights that I start to lose faith in why this is all happening to me. “Why me!?”.... But now that question has changed to “Why not me!?” As my articulate and darkly hilarious friends have now grown to say, "...this situation could be much worse. You could be going through it... while living in Haiti.”

These are the women I surround myself by, the women who I have laughed with, been on double dates with, spent nights watching “Sex in the City” with, cried with, yelled at, and of course... my personal Maggie touch to all close relationships... written CRAZY passive aggressive emails to before thinking twice about what I'm actually saying to them. Luckily, they're all just the type, to laugh and say, “Ohhhh Maggie.”

I have to say, that if I've learned one thing through the big mess that I like to call my life, is that you always have your mother and your girlfriends. And really, I don't know how I didn't realize it before. I've always been taken in by these women (physically, emotionally, financially, etc.), and I've had all my 3am phone calls answered...even if hung up on just as fast ;) They have taught me what it means to love another person completely and selflessly, what it means to make your own dreams a priority, and what it feels like to truly and wholeheartedly believe in someone else. They have taught me how to forgive, they have brought me my first laughter after months of depression, and they have taught me what it feels like to have someone love you no matter what. They have taught me that lying is not worth it, whether it's lying to yourself or to others. They have taught me how to communicate, and how to let people 100% in. Quite frankly, they have taught me how to be alive and how to live a fulfilling life.

What these women have given me is something no man has ever, or will ever, teach me... because maybe, I've already been “saved” by the women in my life. I searched my Seattle over for a man that would bring me all of this, and thank god I didn't find one. I'm much better off today than I've been in the last seven years, even counting the hormonal and blissful minutes of my relationships. I am living for me, everyday, and I'm still close to the key six women in my life. I honestly, and I'm not kidding, never knew you could live for YOU and still be fantasticly tied to someone else... and now I have six of them.

I count myself blessed that I have so many best friends. Recently, my roommate asked how I can call so many different women “best friends”, and my answer is simple: Each of them are wildly different, we do completely different things with each other... yet, they each are crucial to my heart. I've found true intimacy with them, I value them, and they know more about me than anyone on this earth. They are apart of why I am the way I am, not because they force me to be like them, but because they teach me how to be myself. We are all different and have met through completely random encounters: there are actresses, a sport fanatic, a woman who I was terrified of all through high school, a woman who met her husband while in high school (gag me), and my crazy mother. None of them are quiet like eachother, but all of them know and love (...well maybe just put up with) every part that makes me who I am.

A key part of this, that I thank every heartbreak for, is that my doucherocket exes (and my deadbeat biological father) have somehow brought these women into my life. Whether it be women I met through my boyfriend's friends, a woman a boyfriend has screwed over just as bad as he did me, or a woman who happened to get laid by my biological father... baha... I love you mom..... The point is, my heartbreak had purpose enough to bring these woman soulmates into my life, so maybe (and at this point it's just a maybe), these heartbreaks also had the purpose to make me stronger, love myself more, be able to weed out the bad seeds on a first date, and just all around make me the woman I am supposed to be. One day I might say they were supposed to happen so I can meet “the one”, but at this point, the thought only makes me swallow my throw-up burp.

Oh! And welcome to my blog: I'm a complete narcissist :)