As I sat in the ER looking around at all the sick and sad- looking people, it was all I could do not to cry. I was on complete sensory overload. I felt exhausted, drained, depleted. Everything on my body hurt, even my hair. It was almost 9 p.m. and I'd just worked a grueling 11-hour day, only to come home to a column deadline and my crying 9-year-old daughter.
She was playing on the playground at school when she and her little friends noticed the soccer goalpost on the ground. Being mischievous fourth-graders, they decided to try to lift it back into place. It didn't take too long to realize that the pole was too heavy, so the band of munchkins abandoned their bright idea to save the soccer field, dropping the heavy pole right on to the foot of my little pook. She sobbed as she recalled the tale and insisted that her foot had been "crushed into a skillion pieces."
As I looked around the crowded emergency room, I took stock of the people there—husbands with their wives, mothers and fathers with their sick children, older children with their sick parents. Everyone there had someone to take care of them. A wave of sadness washed over me and tears filled my eyes.
Why was life so hard?
I fought to keep the tears from spilling onto my cheeks, fought so hard that I began to shake and my baby took her little head off of my lap and looked up at me. "What's wrong Mama?" she asked softly.
"Nothing baby," I answered, smiling brightly to hide the lie.
"Pinky promise?" she asked, holding her tiny finger up.
I hesitated; we never break a pinky promise. The tears that had been welling up in my eyes slowly slid down my face as I blurted, "Did I break your heart by leaving your father?"
Oh God.
She smiled beautifully before answering, "I used to be really sad and all I wanted was for you guys to get back together, but then brother told me something that made me feel better. He said that he wasn't mad at you anymore because you were finally happy. He said that you were sad for a long time before you left and that now you seem better. I'd rather see you be happy."
From the mouths of babes. A smile took the place of the tears and I said, "Thank you for being so honest, Moon-pie."
"But ..." she said, not done sharing her thoughts. I waited for her to find her words, not knowing the effect they would have on me.
"You're not happy anymore. You work all the time, you're tired all the time, you cry all the time, you're sick all the time. You always tell brother and me that life is about choice. You say that if we can choose between being happy and being sad, we should always choose happy because life is way too short and precious to waste on sadness. So, why are you choosing to be sad?"
She is so her mother's daughter.
I sat there pondering her question. Why was I so unhappy?
I knew the answer was as clear as the swelling of my daughter's foot. I am breaking my own rules. I am being run by my life instead of the other way around. Much like the days of my married life, I find myself staying in a situation that makes me unhappy because I am afraid to make a change. How very arrogant of me to think that I'll be happy "someday" when I know that all that I am promised is this very moment.
It is time for change. It's time to realize that I write a column that I hide behind to keep myself distanced from ever having a real relationship, always trying to find my next story instead of my next true love. I have a career that is driving me into an early grave. I have an ulcer that is causing my stomach to fall right out of my butt. And at the root of it all, I have two children that I take for granted will never grow up, never move away and never resent the fact that I spent their formative years wallowing in self-pity, mourning a life that I walked away from. And that's just not okay.
So, it is with a heavy heart mixed with a renewed sense of self that I say good-bye to the pages of Las Vegas Weekly. The place that I came once a week to fall in and out of lust, get my heart broken, break hearts and basically tried to make sense of it all. I may not have found love in the romantic sense, but I did find a strong sense of self-love and for a girl from the hood who made good, that's more than I could have ever hoped for.
I have so loved sharing my ups and downs—or was it my ins and outs?—with the city that I quite literally have grown up in. Thanks to all of you who shared the journey with me, for your love and support when I was broken and didn't think I could take another step—only to find that you just gotta keep on livin'. And even to those who took the time to articulate their feelings of disgust, hey, at least you knew who I was, right?
As the nurse finally called my daughter's name, I knew that I'd finally decided on a new path. "Hey," said my little Moon-pie, "You're smiling, you look so pretty."
"I'm choosing happy," I said, kissing the top of her head.
"Promise?" she asked, lifting her little finger into the air.
I wrapped my own around it and answered her honestly: "Pinky."
Sonja covered the ins and outs and the ups and downs of relationships for the Weekly for more than three years. We wish her the best!