Rediscovering my blog is just the beginning of this rebirth of my soul. I was lost in time for so long, traveling an unplanned path.

Reconnecting with my youthful self has woken me. I have, as we do with age, compromised and settled and adapted to my circumstances. I fought hard to find the freedom and creative life I craved, but kept getting stuck.

Oh I would find it for a brief time only to have it snapped back like a rubber band to the limited reality I have lived. And things have been tough. No whining but tough none the less. Maybe that’s why I am constantly longing for a Mulligan, a real chance to get a do over.

My husband and I have had multiple do overs in life and with each other. This is our timeline: met 1974, had an amazing night talking while sitting at a picnic table on Anna Maria Island getting to know each other. This is even more amazing because he is deaf and had to read my lips in the dark. That was fall.

The following spring I headed home to my boyfriend in L.A. We had a good life together in Venice Beach. My first true love since 1973.

In 1976, summer, my current husband visited us in Venice. But I was unavailable. I was happy with my guy.

Spring/ summer 1977 we moved to Florida. We were out of our place. We were in this same place that has always been so difficult for me. We ended up splitting.

Summer: I no sooner got to my mom’s place in Anna Maria, than who should show up, my future husband. We were together for a few weeks, but that was short lived and didn’t get us together either.

Fall: My boyfriend did call and want to marry me, but I had already started down a new path. So I lost them both. I married another. I had my two sons and ended up divorcing in 1983.

Then 1984 here comes my current husband again. Lots of love, but too many problems for us. His drinking broke us then.

Well, then I was raising my boys alone. They had a stepdad for a few years, but mostly it was my boys and me.

I was alone for many years after they grew up. These were the years of living back home in L.A. Working years. Career building. Then when I was in a place I loved; Oceanside, in a job I loved; homebuilding, and had good friends again, I was ready for love.

So in 2006, I had found my old friend through the internet, my current husband’s sister. After talking for a while I asked about him. She said he is doing good. Sober, single, and a dad.

She gave him my email address and I heard from him the next day. We wrote, emailed, video chatted and made a plan for him to move to California to marry me.

Four months after our honeymoon trip across America, we’re married. It only took us 32 plus years from meeting to marriage.

We have been together for 12 1/2 years now. Any of you who were reading my blog in 2010-2011 knows it hasn’t been an easy match.

We moved back to Florida to be closer to his son. The marriage license was more based on the need to be legit for a custody and visitation battle. I started to feel he didn’t really love me. I felt he didn’t really want me to come to Florida. He just wanted to go home without me.

We planned to buy a house, but the housing market crash of fall 2007, and lack of well paying jobs in Florida kept us from achieving this goal.

These feelings that he didn’t really want me here, the horrible climate here ( I know a lot of people think it is paradise, but not compared to Southern California beaches), and the loss of my career, my family, my financial security, all played a part in my losing my mind and wanting to run home.

Unfortunately, no work or only low paying work and the credit crisis made escape impossible too.

I did leave for a while which is also covered in the earlier blogs. We have been back together for 7 1/2 years and doing okay. As told In My Life post this week, communications are tough going. We are stronger for having survived raising his son together, fighting and struggling through my frustration over living in Florida. We’re doing better now.

The thing is I have had to give up a lot of pieces of myself to stay. I don’t want to be alone. I have lost any chance of going back to the career I had then. I am almost retirement age now, so what else can you do?

You settle down and make the best of it. True happiness is never a guarantee. You take your happiness moments where you find them. You change your mind and self into a person who can live in Florida. You spend all your time alone and try to find some peace in small victories and creative adventures. You fight for the minimal life you can accept, but you are accepting it.

The serenity prayer asks God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Well I accepted I can’t change my husband, his disability, or his never having faith in me. Not even believing when I say I locked the door. He always checks it. I have never failed to lock it. Yet 12 years of not believing in me.

I accepted this, but it took stomping down the real me to be able to endure it. Part of this journey to health and fitness always leads to healthy change of mental attitude.

So I don’t get a real Mulligan. I can’t go back to 17 or 20 to make something different of my life. But I can change back to being me. I have that wisdom now.

This rebirth does mean, I can’t accept this lesser version of myself anymore. I have over and over told my husband what kind of relationship I want us to have. I have also told him, I have to take care of my well being. He knows and promises to make the effort to help keep us together while I grow back into myself and continue to grow. Hopefully he will grow with me. I don’t want to fight anymore. I won’t fight. I will walk away into my peaceful self. I won’t settle for crumbs of love anymore.

I don’t know what the future is going to be, but it will be the real, uncompromised, me.

It started 6 months ago when I finally got back on my health plan again. I feel so much healthier. My mind is exploding with thoughts and my soul with emotions.

I reached into my past memories and found the me I was going to be. I can’t undo the last 42 years, but I can make the next 10, 15, 20, 25 or so years I have left, being me getting closer to the me I would have become.

Another start back to me today was changing my hair color to my natural color. Not the natural silver but back to brunette.

I mean I have been living as a blond. I am anything but blond. Its not even right for my personality.

It’s all changing which is the only constant in this life of mine. What a ride it will continue to be.