So you’ve found your way here to my blog and I’m sure you’ve done a little browsing and have seen the tag line here “The Art of Intentionally Winging It”. What exactly is that? Isn’t that some type of contradiction?
Years ago, I found myself tragically single. What was so tragic about this? Only one thing, my mind. My personal lense in which I viewed the scope of my life was destroyed. I had tried so desperately to control the outcomes of my life that I had literally twisted them into a million broken pieces, when they broke I felt completely broken.
A little back story…
In my teen years I had practiced this behavior known as Co-Dependency, and if you’re not familiar with it here’s a brief definition of what that looks like.
Codependency is characterized by a person belonging to a dysfunctional, one-sided relationship where one person relies on the other for meeting nearly all of their emotional and self-esteem needs. It also describes a relationship that enables another person to maintain their irresponsible, addictive, or underachieving behavior.
My daughters dad had a history of addiction, we met in high school and I began all of these super destructive behaviors that all involved manipulation and control. Essentially every move he made was met by a threat from me. Smoke weed? We are breaking up. Lie about it and I find out, breaking up. This would then cause him to prove me wrong, get me to agree to take him back which I would give him conditions or rules to follow. Then I win. I could only keep winning if he kept screwing up. This cycle went on for years. There were only a few moments of clarity where I broke free, but I was so addicted to my behavior that I didn’t feel like myself without codependency which would eventually drive me right back to him.
Doesn’t this sound exhausting? Oh trust me it was and I loved it. Without the drama I was so bored. Something about the drama gave my life purpose. Trying desperately to control him and our relationship gave my life purpose.
When I was 22, I became deeply exhausted and sick of our cyclical behavior. I think he could sense I was getting tired of the years of nonsense and was trying to separate myself from what made us, US. He proposed. New Years Eve, down on one knee, looking up at me so hopeful.
“Why are you doing this?”
His face filled with confusion. In my head somehow I had figured he knew how fucked up we were too and what on earth was he thinking committing to a life time of this? No thanks.
We spent 3 years apart. Those 3 years, age 22-25, were monumentally important for me to establish a life without him. I still saw him due to exchanging our daughter but our interactions were minimal. He dated a few very serious girlfriends who moved into our home and spent time with our daughter, and there were times where I tried desperately to control that, but I’d remind myself I couldn’t control him anymore. I practiced letting him go over and over during those 3 years. I saw him for who he was without me, without our cycle and somewhere in year 25 I decided I wanted to try again, for our family and with my new found independence and freedom from my codependency I thought things would be different.
He made it clear when we got back together he was going to enjoy smoking weed, drinking with his friends and just being himself with no hiding, I agreed. I wanted him to be himself with his own issues, and I din’t want to be affected by them because I was an adult woman with career goals now. I had learned how to live on a single income as a mom and intended to keep climbing that ladder without relationship drama. Many times he would tell me he wasn’t happy and that he didn’t really want to be with me, but I would convince him it would be better and we could be a family. There I was, forcing my way in. Still manipulating, but now in a different way.
He smoked, he drank. I hated his friends. I was okay with all of it though. Police officers would come to our door looking for him. He lost his license, he went to jail. All the while I kept on with my goals and just ignored his issues and let him deal with them on his own. What I didn’t realize is that without my codependecy trying to control his behaviors, he didn’t feel loved. He felt like I could really care less about him or anything he did, so he did worse and worse. He tried harder and harder to disappoint me. He never got a reaction from me. I remember on his birthday, he was sitting on the floor in the living room telling me he had no reason to live anymore. I had no response. I literally said “I can’t help you with that, you should seek professional help” I was supposed to be his partner. I was trying so so hard to fight my own demons I was unwilling to support him and help him fight his. Inevitably, he found someone who would listen to him, who would support him and so he started to cheat.
This is where I found myself tragically single. Let me paint the picture so it’s really clear.
Here I am standing in my house, I no longer live here. I haven’t lived in my house for 30 days. I’m here now to get the remainder of the things I’ve left behind. My living room is now filled with another woman’s furniture. I look down and see my notebook on the table, pick it up to also now find another woman’s hand writing in my personal journal. As I flip through I find a budget list with this woman’s hand writing. At the top of the page there is a label “Things That Cost Money” I roll my eyes. I go down the list. Gas, grocery, car insurance, clothes that fit me, wait… clothes that fit her? Is she on a diet? Next line “Baby clothes”. I read the line again. BABY CLOTHES. My heart stops beating, the silence in the room sweeps over me, I feel my knees go weak. I put the notebook down, I sit down and call my best friend. I tell her what I’ve read and I ask her if there is anything it could possibly mean besides what I think it means. She confirms “Tiffany.. She’s pregnant”
Tragically single.
Fast forward 1 year, my ex has moved to Florida with his now fiancé and they’ve not one but 2 babies, yes they had twins. Good news! I survived all of that. The cheating, the moving across the country not helping with anything for our daughter while he was away, the engagement, the birth of my daughters little sisters. It was a blessing he left because theres no way I could have faced all of that. One minute I was kissing him good bye as I left for work and the next my world was a shit show and quite frankly it felt pretty white trash. How did I get through this? The art of intentionally winging it??? No of course not!!! I still hadn’t mastered this skill. What got me through was a false ego I made up in my head for myself. She was full of resentment and she felt she was just too good to deal with such a reject of an ex. So she didn’t. Until he moved back home with his fiancé and his new children and with the intention of being a part of Aeva’s life again.
Suddenly all of the grief all of the fear poured right back out of me, bursting through my glass house of an ego I had built to protect myself. How did I respond to his return? I ran. I ran my little butt with my child all the way to Colorado with this idea that I would create a new life away from all of my pain and away from everyone telling me how to raise my child and how to co-parent. Why? He can leave, so can I. Too bad so sad. So I left.
I settled down in a small city right outside of Denver, and found a position on Pearl Street in Boulder Colorado as a stylist. Everything seemed to be going fine, until a few months in. My close friends, who were essentially my back bone in Colorado and helped me with my daughter Aeva, suffered a tragedy. The male counterpart of this couple committed suicide. He had been struggling with mental illness for most of his adult life and though he seemed intensely happy most of the time, he couldn’t fight off the darkness eating him up inside. I considered moving home immediately, the girl who lost her partner moved home immediately, leaving me without a back up plan. I chose to stay anyway. I’m stubborn, I said I was going to build a life and so that’s what I was determined to do!
Have you ever felt like the timing of your life somehow rules everything? Like there is some cosmic force who fights you because the timing isn’t right? That cosmic force was all over me! For the next 6 months that force came in the form of intense anxiety and nearly paralyzed me. Every day I would drive from Denver to Boulder fearing a flat tire or a car accident. The thought of being totally alone with no one to help me or bail me out was so strong I couldn’t fight it. In February my car started to have some problems, so I brought it in and lets just say I’ll never own a Volkswagen again for as long as I live because guess what? There wasn’t anything wrong with my car at all. What was wrong with my car was apparently “ROUTINE MAINTENANCE” and this routine maintenance is mandatory as soon as this particular model goes over 100,000 miles. This routine maintenance also cost 2,000 which was the rest of my savings and after spending that I truly couldn’t afford one more mishap.
I came home. Tail between my legs. Colorado chewed me up and spit me out. All of that resentment, all of that running and now I had to face it all. I had a lot of time to reflect on things while I was in Colorado, I was lonely and stressed 90% of the time. i came home with this intense appreciation for family. I also knew I had some soul searching to do, I had no desire to reconnect with my old friends because so much inside me had changed. I wasn’t the same person I was before. That death changed me. Having to face my issues changed me. Guess what? I’m still working through it all. Issues don’t just go away, we have to continually work and push through them. That’s life.
If you’ve survived this story, I’m about to get to the climax where OMG IS SHE FINALLY GOING TO TELL US WHAT ACTUAL F THE ART OF INTENTIONALLY WINGING IT IS? Uh yah I sure am!
So here’s the deal, I went out to Colorado feeling like I left all of the drama of my life behind and I was given a clean slate and then Colorado took one glance at me and said, we don’t allow people who run away from their problems to experience the beauty of this amazing Colorado life style, so go home, deal with your shit and then we’ll talk. I feel in life there is specific timing in which things are meant to be and if the timing is not right, life will smack you down smack by smack until you figure out that you’ve got some work to do and you probably have to take it all apart and start over. Ever make an IKEA furniture item without following the directions to a T? Yeah it’s like that, omg i SCREWED UP STEP ONE! You try and figure out if theres a way around taking it apart and starting over.. nope there’s not. Sorry.
So, if life already has this plan for you and no I’m not a religious person but I certainly don’t believe we all just grew out of the ground one day, then what’s the point of worrying about anything! LETS JUST WING IT! WOOOO! Ok, no you cannot wake up, stretch and say fuck it lets go to a winery in our pajamas this morning because I’m carefree and winging life. Nope, that doesn’t work… but it sounds pretty fun, and if one day you’re looking for a friend to do this with, let me know…. ANYWAY!
Life does need direction. You have to have an idea of the things you want and where you’re heading and you have to get really clear on that. If you aren’t clear, you’re not going to end up anywhere, you’re going to end up in loops. Like me and my codependent relationships, cycling over and over again. Picking the same bad relationships over and over again. You have to have intention to make changes and to seek out what you’re actually looking for.
I am definitely not saying GO AFTER YOUR DREAMS BECAUSE YOLO! Knock down every door until you get what you want! No. I’m not saying that. That sounds entirely crazy and stressful! I’m saying.. Intentionally.. WING IT. Create intent and a goal, then have a ton of fun LIVING YOUR LIFE until strangely enough you end up opening the right door that leads you to that end goal because the timing in your life lined up! Crazy I know but literally every good thing that has happened in my life without a struggle has somehow been handed to me wrapped up like a pretty present. I didn’t beat someone up saying GOD DAMMIT GIVE ME THAT! THAT’S MY GOAL AND I NEED IT NOW! I was like: it would be so nice to run my own business someday but I don’t feel ready yet. Then one day when I was starting to really hate my current job, an old friend reached out to me. She let me know she was moving up north and looking for someone to take over her business. She had a chair in Minneapolis not far from where I live that she was renting, and if I wanted the chair and her clients she’d love for me to have them. It was so crazy because I had been saying in my head I needed to leave my job, my commute was killing me I couldn’t stand being told what to do anymore and I was ready to start looking at my options. Literally the moment I got to the point where I was just plain old ready, the job of my dreams was handed to me with a bow on top.
I had intent. I knew I wanted to leave my job. So if I want to leave, where do I want to end up? What type of work environment am I looking for? Do I want to open my own business, or work for someone else? I had already been making mental notes on what I wanted and checking them twice before I even started putting my feelers out there.
The same thing happened to me when I stated dating again and it most definitely has happened for me over and over again in motherhood.
In motherhood my approach was and always has been, I have no IDEA what I’m doing but I’m having a great time doing it.
Dating took a lot more intent and prayer and patience.
I will be writing more blog posts on specific events in my life where the art of intentionally winging it has literally saved me time and time again. Dating, motherhood, friendships, you name it. I look forward to sharing all of this and my end goal is to write an entire book about it someday, but I felt deeply this was my first step before that end goal. So here I am, sharing my knowledge about not knowing a damn thing!
Thank you all so much for reading this and I look forward to writing a lot more posts about intentionally winging it in the future!
Don’t forget to say hi in the comments!
Intentionally Winging It,
Tif