I thought I do a story time series of funny, bizarre and hopefully somewhat inspirational for my blog & channel. These are all stories that happened before I met my amazing husband.

Enjoy….

Continued from my prior post…

“Don’t Come 4 Me!”

Days later, (at the post office) I simply asked, “Are you aware that your wife called me?” He looked shell-shocked, perplexed, and said, “No, I did not know that.” I told him, “Well, she did,” and I was nice about it because I didn’t want to cause any trouble, but if she ever calls me again, all bets are off. He said, “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” and we never spoke about it again.

Long story short, I went back to the States. We kept in touch, just emails here and there, and when I announced that I was returning to the south of France, he eagerly volunteered to help me find an apartment, and he was a lifesaver. He taught me how to identify scams for myself, so when I got back to France, we made it a point to get together for dinner just to catch up. So, of course, I had to ask him to clarify the whole situation regarding “his wife.” I brought it up, and he explained that he was never married. She was a live-in girlfriend, and at the time, they were separated, but she was still living in the apartment. She moved out almost immediately after I returned to the US. After realising we were both single and already well acquainted , we decided to spend some time together he invited me out to his place in Nice.

After a month of dating “he wasn’t feeling it.”

“ I wanna be in love again and I’m not getting that feeling” meanwhile I’m thinking we are not teenagers anymore. Love comes and it goes. It’s nice but I really think that there are more practical ways to approach. A relationship. 

I look for someone I respect, someone I feel safe with, and someone I can laugh with; that’s all I’m really looking for. He said, “Oh, I want to feel in love,” and I said, “OMG , he really is SO very French.”

As I approach 50, I reflect on my journey as a single woman over the past 20 years since my last relationship, acknowledging the challenges and rewards I’ve experienced, and feeling proud of the life I have created despite the lack of lasting romantic connections.

 In the midst of my disappointment, I decided to sketch as a means to channel my creative energy.  In my art class we practiced by sketching the same thing in timed repletion. Every three minutes and you would turn the page and repeat the same sketch for about 20 minutes.

The idea is to get you out of the right brain and into more of a creative motion where the left side takes over; your intuition just flows. I found a sketch of a couple embracing so I sketch this over and over again. 

As I sketched that same embrace over and over, it struck me that perhaps the love I seek isn’t always about a person—but about a way of being. A way of loving life, of holding space for hope, of building something beautiful with my own hands. 

In the same vein. I wrote a few goals down, one being to live in a home overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.So I kept sketching, keep writing, keep imagining that home by the Mediterranean, knowing that what I nurture today is the foundation for the life—and love—I truly deserve.

So here I am, two years later, blissfully married to a loving man, living in our villa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Looking back I can see that I redesigned my life with out realising it.

Bizou…

Thembi