In my entire life I’ve never belonged to a clique or a group of friends. In high school I would have friends, but I’d bumble along from group to group, never really feeling like I belonged. I notice that even as an adult I shy away from groups and often have to force myself to attend group events or parties. Because of my group avoidance I’ve created a very eclectic group of friends throughout the years that I gotten to know on an individual basis (most of whom have heard of each other, but never met).

I’ve always used boyfriends as a way to occupy my time and was never really not in a relationship throughout high school. Unfortunately college was really no different for me. And post college. The longest I’ve ever been single since I was 14 was 8 months, which also happens to be the time frame that I had my vow of celibacy and wasn’t really interested in dating men (right before meeting my KISA). The interesting thing in all of this is that I no longer keep in touch with a single one of my exes, so it’s not like they held such a critical part of my life that I couldn’t live without them. However, given the fact that I would often put them before my friends you would have thought that.

I will admit that I’ve done a better job of not having to be around the man in my life at all times, but in talking to my KISA tonight I’ve realized that I still do it to a certain degree. I don’t care to be the girl that people dread when they are in a relationship because they never see or hear from their friend again until she needs them. I don’t want to be the girl that is defined by others because of the guy she’s with instead of who she is as an individual. And, I genuinely love hanging out with my friends and find it gives me a kick in my step. So, I’ve decided to add another New Year’s resolution – spend more time with friends. I realize resolutions are supposed to be specific and measurable, but I don’t care to have my friends feel like I’m forcing myself to hang out with them because of some goal; I want to be conscious of it, but not make it forced. And for those of you that live outside the Bay Area – consider this your warning that I may show up on your doorstep if I haven’t visited you in a while; invite optional.

My KISA refers to me as a game changer and I’ve had many friends ask what my secret was to being a game changer and I’ve never really had an answer: I always thought it was just the right place at the right time. Granted, my KISA claims that when he went on Match.com he had zero intentions of settling down and getting in a relationship. So what does a farmer’s daughter have that makes a kid from Boston want to settle down?

I started browsing a book called “Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl – A Woman’s Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship.” Anyone that knows me well knows that I have no issue holding my own in our relationship, but I was still curious with some of their theories and have been scanning different sections that were of interest to me. There was one section that resonated with me and I think it might have some merit.

One of the things about me in relationships is that I refuse to kiss a guy unless it’s in passion (which has never happened on a first date) and I’ve never slept with a man unless I was in love with them. Now, my KISA is an incredibly attractive, attentive, and intelligent man (I might be bias, but I know too many people that agree for it to be just my opinion). Because of this good fortune he has never had an issue attracting women and is one of the only people I’ve met that will have random strangers approaching him just because of this. This means women have never waited very long to become intimate with him.

When we met, as I’ve mentioned before, I was on the last few months of my year long vow of celibacy. Obviously I didn’t mention this on my dating profile as I knew it would deter most men. It was our second date that my KISA learned of this. He asked me to be exclusive that evening, just a couple hours after he found out, even though he was still dumbfounded at the revelation. And, I should mention that I still had yet to kiss him, something he’d definitely never experienced before. It never felt like the right moment until the evening of our fourth date,  11 days after meeting for the first time. I won’t go into the detail on how long it took me to dance the horizontal mambo, but I’ll just say I didn’t make it to the end of the three months that were left in my vow.

One part of the book talks about how men like a challenge, which I’ve always known. However, I’d never really thought about the intimacy challenge. They like the chase, and my KISA was definitely having to chase me. Plus, it set me apart from every girl he’d ever dated in the sense that he had to fight for it and be patient with me. By the time we decided to take it to the next level he was already in love with me and my determination; he was in too deep.

Granted, I’m not convinced this was the only thing that made me a game changer for my KISA or that it would work with every guy, but the fact that I set myself apart from others was an apparent reason why he has chosen me to be his wife and no one else.

My Knight in Shining Armor (KISA)

If I could cure the world of one thing it wouldn’t be cancer. Or AIDS. Or even the common cold. I know it sounds heartless to say, but while these are terrible things I think there are other kinds of evil in the world that even a scientist isn’t able to find a cure for. I would cure people of fear. Before you write me off as a heartless person, hear me out.

I believe most evil in the world stems from fear. For example, jealousy often stems from fear. If you’re jealous you have a fear of that person cheating on you, fear of them liking someone else more than you, fear of them viewing you as inadequate, a fear of them doing something you don’t want them to do, etc. Complacency is caused by fear: fear of change, fear of a new job, fear of unfamiliar surroundings, etc. What about the awful things that go on in the world that aren’t stopped because of fear? You can draw connections of most things back to fear.

Now, what happens when we live with fear? Best case scenario we live with status quo. Worst case scenario we live with pain – enduring things we wouldn’t normally tolerate because the pain of dealing with them is less than the fear of making a change.

How would your life be different if fear didn’t exist? What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

I’ve always said that I thought I was destined to work for a non-profit one day. I knew it would have to be something I was passionate about in knowing I’d be trading a comfortable lifestyle for helping out the greater good. I think my business expertise combined with my passion would make me unstoppable.

On a another subject, most ladies that are in their late twenties and early thirties have biological clocks that are ticking. Men and young women often think this is just an expression, but as an educated woman in my early thirties I know the statistics by heart at what age I need to have kids before my chances for miscarriages and defects reach concerned heights. I hate the undue pressure it puts on us as we want nothing more than to be a mother but it puts us at risk of settling for someone less than we deserve or having kids before we’re really ready.

So, what happens if that prince that all the Disney movies promised doesn’t swoop in to sweep us off our feet? What happens if fate is busy and not giving women what they want? What happens if it’s just not the right time? How do you buy more time on an aging biological clock? I love the quote by Winston Churchill – “I like things to happen. And if they don’t happen, I like to make them happen.” I want to help the people that think like I do and want to make something happen.

Tonight I researched the cost to do egg preservation, not necessarily for myself, but just out of curiosity. Here in San Francisco it’s about $10,000 + $500/year for storage. I also researched the cost for adoption, which is averages $30,000 domestically or $44,000 internationally; three to four times the cost. That’s a considerable amount of money to save up just to have a family because you’re not ready when your biology thinks you should be.

Given the very basic research I’ve done, I want to brainstorm ways to form a non-profit to help women raise money to buy more time. I realize there’s a lot more research that would need to be done on this topic and it’s merely an idea right now, but I want to explore it. I’ll post more on this as I continue to think it through.

Sometime I become frustrated at my brain because it doesn’t work in the way I intend for it to or doesn’t work to its full capacity. Today is one of those days. I’m not sure if it’s just exhausted from the past couple of sleepless nights or if it’s just too full from wandering thoughts, but it has been letting me down today; I really needed it to work for a training I facilitated and again as I stared at a blank screen all night wondering what to write.

The truth is my brain’s ability more often surprises me than lets me down. I let it run on cruise control and the algorithms it creates or the writing it does surprises me in such a way that I immediately try to think of some reason why it was a fluke. I see pictures I take and wonder if it was luck or if my brain somehow could see that was a good angle or a good shot. I start talking and am impressed at how intelligent something sounds, forming as it comes out of my mouth.

Now, I’m not the kind of person that thinks unkindly of myself; sometimes I would argue that I maybe give myself more credit than I deserve. However, my brain has the capacity to work in ways I didn’t think I had in me. I’m learning that maybe the best thing for the brain really is exercise. And, I don’t mean exercise in the sense of doing Lumosity or Sudoku, but just trusting to know that if I’m patient with it, it’ll do what I’ve conditioned it to do. And the results may surprise me.

In most places in the world it’s very difficult and uncommon to leave the city where you live or to move classes. I’m beginning to learn that while the US is the land of opportunity, leaving where you came from is still not easy.

I grew up in the county seat of a farming community in the heartland of America. My hometown has 4,000 people, so even if you don’t know everyone by name, you still recognize the regular faces in the grocery store. Life out there is simple in a way that only people that have lived in bigger cities could understand. The simplicity is represented in the lack of traffic lights or the churches that outnumber the bars, 5 to 1. I didn’t recognize the simplicity when I lived there, feeling like it was suffocatingly small and looking for every reason as to why I should leave my hometown. I found my escape to do that through men.

I moved out of my parent’s house when I was 18, disagreeing with their beliefs on how I should behave and feeling betrayed when they comforted an ex boyfriend of mine during our breakup because he didn’t have the same family support I had come from; my family had become that for him. Full of piss and vinegar I moved out to the country with my friend Jessie, only to learn she wasn’t the quality of friend I thought she was. I went to a technical college that was the next town over and was actively dating. During that time I met a guy, Nick, that was a total asshole to me from the beginning, but I seemed to be drawn to that after my last serious relationship was a guy I could walk all over. Nick lived about halfway between my hometown and Madison. As I was finishing up my Associate’s degree I moved in with him and commuted to school every day. Our relationship didn’t even make it 9 months as I realized how toxic we were. Thankfully I had less than a month left of school and had plans to get a job and move to Madison.

During this same time I met a guy, Tim, at a wedding that I’d gone to with a groomsman (who I’d made clear I was only friends with, but I knew he wanted more). Tim was the best man in the wedding and it was love at first site. I can still remember everything about my first time meeting him and interacting with him. I couldn’t even contain my flirting with him that evening, even though I knew how disrespectful it was to the guy I’d gone there with. I’d lost all self control.

He lived in Madison and came to my graduation. Shortly thereafter I moved in with my aunt and uncle that had just relocated to Madison, but spent most of my free time with Tim. I became to know the city through him, which essentially meant knowing the west side and eventually moving out into the suburbs with him. We parted ways after 5.5 years and I moved into an apartment in that same suburb.

A couple months later I decided to enroll in a global MBA program that would require me to quit my job and live in 5 different countries throughout the course of it. I ended my job in April and decided to take the summer off and move back to my hometown. That lasted two days. I realized that as an adult I couldn’t live with my parents again and no longer knew how to live in a small town; I had somehow outgrown it. I instead split my weeks between my hometown and living in another Madison suburb with a new boyfriend, Brett, before leaving.

I changed a lot during my time overseas. And, I realized pieces of me were being scattered everywhere. There were a lot of places I could see myself living. However, the hard truth was if I wanted to continue my (currently long distance) relationship it would require me to move back to Madison. Furthermore, the recession hit while I was overseas and my strongest network of potential employers was in Madison.

I got a job just a short couple of months after returning and settled into living in the suburbs with Brett. He promised to be open to the idea of relocating for his job, in knowing how much I wanted to spread my wings again. I felt unsettled in coming back to Madison, like all the things I’d learned and experienced during my time overseas were just a dream. On New Years Eve he told me that his company was looking at him for a position in Fargo. North Dakota. Yep. That Fargo. Thankfully he didn’t get that job, but instead got one in the Quad Cities (Moline, IL; Davenport, IA; Bettendorf, IA; Rock Island, IL). I very reluctantly relocated with him, but kept my job. I commuted during the week and then worked from home another couple of days a week. Quad Cities was not an area I felt was home and I think Brett and I both knew it. We broke up after 2.5 years and I had no option but to move back to the Madison area, where my job was.

I moved into an apartment in a Madison suburb and dreamed about where it was that I was going to live next. I’d looked into getting a visa to move to London. I talked to my friends in DC and started actively looking for jobs out there. All I knew was that Madison no longer felt like my home. About 8 months after moving back to Madison is when I met my KISA. He lived in downtown Madison and I began exploring that area of Madison, which I really hadn’t done in all the years I lived there. I fell in love with a different part of the city and we bought a house downtown. We spent a year and a half living downtown, but found that Madison still wasn’t our city. We were having trouble finding like minded people that were in relationships, but still wanted to go out. Plus, many of our friends had kids. He’d always spoke of his desire to move to San Francisco. I wasn’t opposed to it – my only desire was to live in a big city again.

We made our way west to San Francisco at the end of last January. We found it to be polar opposite of Madison in the sense that everyone goes out and many people are single. To have a kid in your late twenties or early thirties seems to be unheard of with the people we hang out with. We have embraced feeling youthful and he is officially home. I still am not, though. I love the city, don’t get me wrong. And, I’m doing what I set out to do. But, part of me feels like it’s not home for me. It’s not somewhere I’d see raising my kids. There aren’t a lot of people that share the same values as me. I feel like a prude because I don’t binge drink, I’m not into drugs, and I’ve never had casual sex. I’m not saying everyone here is like that, but there definitely seems to be a lot of them. I don’t feel like I belong in the vibrant energy that is San Francisco.

The problem is I no longer know where home is. I couldn’t live in my hometown or Madison as I feel I’ve outgrown them. I feel like I’m too old for San Francisco. Is it possible I’ve wandered too far and am now lost? Too far gone to go home and now homeless? Pieces of me are everywhere so will I ever be whole? Is there a place for people that leave their hometown but still want to keep their old values?