What is "enough?"

I remember a line from the movie "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" where Sandra Bullock's character asks her father, played by James Garner, "Daddy, did you get loved enough?" And to that he replies, "What's enough?"

This morning, for some reason I have to give this pause...I have called this to memory and now I have to let it sink in, because it is something that must be acknowledged while in the here and now, in this place that I am in. I must decide for myself what exactly is enough means to me.

I remember what it was like to be in love for the first time. That wonderfully magical summer and subsequent senior year in high school. That year of eternal bliss that I have spent the last 13 years trying to replicate. Trying and tried to replicate. I still look back and I think, that when I was 17, I knew what "enough" felt like. Perhaps it was the glow of youth and because the years had not yet tarnished me or made me synical. Perhaps it was him.

Nonetheless, it was enough. My first love filled me to the brim.

Somewhere along the way, somehow in my journey towards womanhood I lost touch with that. I found glimpses back in people like Buhl and then in the-husband-formerly-known-as-mine. In hindsight, they were never enough because they never really gave their wholeselves to me. They each gave me a part but nothing like that long ago, faded memory of how I once was satisfied and content. In turn, I compromised for a life less than what I truly wanted or even deserved. Somewhere along the way I let familiarity and the desire to not be alone guide me down a long and lonely road of being with someone who was a good person, but who brought out the worst in me.

Somewhere along the way I forgot who I was. I forgot how to live, how to laugh, and how to love.

When you realize you are dying as a person you have very important choices to make. My choice was to say goodbye to that life. I began a new one when I admitted to myself, to my ex-husband, to my friends, to my family that I was moving on. And for the first time in seven years I breathed. For the first time in seven years, I knew I could move forward, I knew I was alive. And it was enough.


I realized a couple months ago that because of those years and the moving forward after, I had completely closed myself off to the ability and possibility to love. I forgot what it felt like to feel anything. For someone who wears their heart on their sleeve, that's a sad realization. It's like realizing you are an emotional void and that all you have been doing is self-destructing. Self-destructing because what else is there to do when you don't feel anything and don't really care. One night while watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" the dam broke and I cried for the first time in as long as I could remember. It was then, after all that time that I knew I had the ability to once again feel...something.

Step forward.

In my quest to move forward in my new life I haven't spent alot of time figuring out what it is I want or ahem, require of the next Mr. Nat-X. I haven't decided what will be enough for me. I've been out with a lot of men who remind me of what I don't want, but very few who actually remind me of what I do. I haven't figured out what that magic line between settling and fulfilled is. I'm not sure I know. Perhaps it's time for me to figure it out.

I just want someone to love me for me. I don't want anyone to complete me, I just want someone who compliments who I am as a person. I want someone to laugh with, someone who isn't willing to give up, someone who is not content with just the same old same old, and someone who is kind. I want someone who isn't afraid to show me how he loves me. I want flowers for no reason, kisses in inappropriate settings, and friendship above all. I want someone who will be a great father and who will take an active role in his children's lives. I want someone who slows me down or speeds me up depending on the situation. I want a man who isn't afraid to move forward and who is willing to grow. Someone who has his own interests but includes me in them as well. A man who it hurts to be without and who yearns for me the same. I want to be with a man who takes responsibility for himself and for his family, who invests in his spirituality, and who leads by example. I want a man who isn't afraid to be a man.

More than anything, I want to never settle for anything less, ever again.

And yet I am scared that even still, even if all of the above is found...that my unquenchable desire for something more will still never quite be...

enough...