Hello! My name is Dena. I've recently become 42 and single. As I started dating my (soon to be) ex husband at the age of 17, the transition to being one instead of two was a scary prospect. For years I had wondered if I was capable of being single. I decided to start this blog for many reasons, one being I needed to kill the extra time that I now find myself having with nothing to do except overthink things. Another reason was that I wanted to document the good, the bad and the ugly moments that surely would arise in my new reality. Lastly, I felt that if I expressed these experiences through writing I would have a better understanding of not only my current situation but how I found myself here. I'll begin today with a brief synopsis that will be expanded on in future blogs.

Sometimes we all know things and I had known for a long time something wasn't right. Everyday I'd wake up to face my day and I tried to convince myself otherwise. After dealing with my third bout of depression, I realized there was no hiding from it anymore. I was married to a good man, owned a home and had a great job. My (soon to be) ex certainly had his problems but as any good wife and friend would I overlooked some and tried to help with others. Oh, I loved him, I knew that but something in my heart wasn't there. A few years ago we lost our well paying jobs around Christmas and as I always did I tried to spin it into a positive thing. "We'll do better than that place.", "They don't deserve us." and the old "blessing in disguise" kind of stuff. The reality was, at our age and with our qualifications the job market was unkind, to say the least.

Things did not get better. I watched my husband slip into his own depression and though I tried to be supportive I was dealing with my own issues and obstacles. Fear of not being good enough was one of them. I needed him to buck up and take care of me because I had no idea how to do it myself. As things got worse and the money ran out, I had no choice but to find myself a part time job because certainly some money was better than no money. I never realized how that little part time job would ultimately change my entire life and that is exactly what this blog will be about. As the story continues to unfold you'll see how I had no choice but to be strong and to find the inner strength that we all have within us and how far we can go if we truly want to.