Stay this low and allow myself to sink lower.

Or get my head out of my ass and pull myself together.

I’d come out to Maine to do the latter, and within a few weeks, ended up kissing my handsome, good guy neighbor, in one fell swoop killing a promising relationship of friendship and camaraderie and turning it into an awkward relationship of avoidance and unease.

I needed to talk this out and to do it, I wanted to call Robin. I wanted to tell her all that had happened and listen to her saying the things she always said to me. How sweet I was. How smart I was. How beautiful I was. How I deserved good things in my life. How I deserved to be treated properly. How I deserved to be cherished and protected and respected.

But I wasn’t taking Robin’s calls, only exchanging quick texts and emails, which would now be only texts since I’d sold my computer.

And I’d cut myself off from Robin.

I couldn’t call Josie or Alyssa because I could tell they were close with Mickey and they’d think I was crazy, stupid, weak and lame for doing what I did.

And in the awkward relationship stakes, they’d side with Mickey. He was their friend. I was just a new acquaintance who was grasping onto friendship with all I had because I was so terribly needy.

And I knew they would, not only because they’d known me two weeks and him for ages, but because my friends who hadn’t defected because I’d lost my mind after Conrad left me had defected when Conrad left me.

No.

I had to figure out what I wanted.

I had to figure out who I was.

I had to create a home.

I had to win back my children.

I had to build a life.

I had to get some self-respect.

I had to stop acting like an idiot, weak and selfish and stupid.

I had to start looking out for me.

I had to stop being so needy. I no longer had a husband to fulfill me. I had lost the children who, simply breathing, gave me all I could need. I had to find something for me that would fill those voids.

And I couldn’t sink any lower. I couldn’t live another day feeling like I had that day. I couldn’t live another week, another month, an eternity, feeling like I had since Conrad told me across the bed we shared, the bed we made our children in, that he was leaving me for another woman.

I’d left my life behind because it was not a good life.

And I’d come to Maine to change that life.

So I had only one choice.

No matter what it took, no matter how much time, no matter that it made me bleed, no matter what it cost me, no matter that it would take everything I had and force me to find more, I had to do what I’d come to Maine to do.