On 'Settling'

Almost a year to the date before my divorce was finalized, the movie Zootopia was released. In it, there's a line where two parents are giving their daughter life advice. Their sage wisdom is conveyed thus:

"Bonnie Hopps : Of course, it is okay to have dreams.

Stu Hopps : Just as long as you don't believe too much in them.

Stu Hopps : Judy, you ever wonder how your mom and me got to be so darn happy?

Young Hopps : Nope.

Stu Hopps : Well, we gave up on our dreams, and we settled. Right, Bon?

Bonnie Hopps : Oh, yes. That's right, Stu, we settled hard."

Two years prior to the movie's release, a friend texted me one night as I was walking through the store with my family, and asked me: "Are you happy?"

I took a few minutes, looked at my daughter sitting in the buggy as her dad pushed it down the aisle, and felt my lip start to tremble. My answer?

"I'm content."

A few minutes later, his next question: "Is that really good enough for you? Are you really ok settling for content when you could be happy?"

I was immensely glad my husband was walking in front of me, because I had no control over the tears that started falling from my eyes.

The story of the things that happened in my marriage is long and complicated, and honestly doesn't matter anymore because I've now been divorced longer than I was ever married. Suffice it to say though that I 'settled hard' was the understatement of the century in terms of describing it.

The next relationship I attempted ended up being rather painfully and unfortunately little more than a rebound. Near the end of it, the man sat me down in the kitchen and told me that I would never find a job that allowed me to work and write a book at the same time, and instead of holding onto the dream of being a writer, I should just settle for what life had given me and go back to school for whatever degree I could complete the fastest instead, because wanting to write was a fantasy, and I needed to face reality. Not long after ending that relationship, I found a job with the company I've now worked for for 4 years. In that time, I've published 2 novels, completed one I started over a decade ago, and am now in the process of another. Oh, and I finished my Bachelor's degree last month.

After living through the life I did and ending up settling for my current home when I lost hope of finding a single-family home in my price range in good enough condition for me to manage on my own (we'd only been dating about 6 months when I started looking, so the plan was for me and the kids), and then having it be a complete and total disappointment, I have simply hit the point where I can't even be CONTENT for settling for a living environment in which I literally NEVER have total privacy. Settling for things in my relationship with my fiance and kids, and with my job, I could handle a lot better if I had an environment in which I could be completely isolated to decompress. I'm an introvert. I have strangers living on either side of the walls of my condo. Even when I want to cut loose, I'm so afraid of the neighbors complaining that I end up flying to the complete polar opposite end of the spectrum and having a full-blown meltdown because I'm not able to adequately escape from dealing with life long enough to recharge my battery. My kids don't have a back yard they can play in freely. The dog doesn't have a yard we can just set her loose in to run. For some reason, our cell phones will automatically decide that we're out of the house if we move them a fraction of an inch. My current therapist and the first therapist I saw as a teenager both agreed that one of the best things I can do is isolate myself in a room where no one can see or hear me, and hit something soft like a bed, pillow couch, etc., with something like a blow-up baseball bat, pool noodle, or flexible tubing. I am literally terrified to do that here because no matter where I go in the house, SOMEONE would hear me, and the few times I tried it, it sounded like I was beating someone. I can't sing as loud as I'd like to, and as a consequence, I rarely sing anymore. I don't have front windows, so I can't create a cross breeze, and instead have to run the air conditioner when I feel like I can't breathe, as we can't put fans in the windows due to HOA rules. I cannot settle any more than I already have, and if I have to keep living in an environment that stresses me out, I can't be a healthy parent or partner. So not only am I throwing money away on an HOA that is completely useless, and on home improvements that seemingly have zero impact on my property value, I'm also throwing money away on therapy because I don't have the ability to do what I'm being taught to do in order to improve my quality of life!

At this point, I simply cannot see telling someone they should settle or be prepared to settle as anything other than toxic. It's no wonder we have so many people depressed and stressed to the point of alcohol and drug use, in a world that considers telling people they can't ever have everything they want as normal. What the hell is wrong with the world?!?