There's a possibility/the dogs days are over.

A year ago today, I was picking Mr. up from the airport. He flew home on a one-way ticket, BWI to MDW. He came to take me away from my hometown and all my family and friends, like some kind of Grim Reaper of happiness.

After the year we'd had previous to the move, I was full of insecurity and anxiety for the move. We arrived at our old house, where nearly everything we owned had been boxed up by me, my cousin Kim and my friend Chris. Everything was ready to be loaded into the moving truck. Only what we needed for the next few days was left out.

I felt like my life was falling apart.

I was walking away from everything I ever knew and loved for...for...for what, exactly??? For a blank slate that should have been pristine white, lit with sunlight and waiting for me to color all over it, but instead it was gray and cloudy and cold.

I will never forget putting my iPod on shuffle as I pulled away from the house after loading the trucks on the 14th and hearing the strains of the first song in the title to this post.

"There's a Possibility,
There's a Possibility,
All that I had was all I'm gonn' get. "

I cried as I pulled away. It felt like I couldn't breathe. Why couldn't "Jesus Take The Wheel" have played instead? (Because I don't own any country music.)

It was around June when I met one of the girls who I would learn is one of the most genuinely kind people in the world. I was just in the right place, at the right time and I met the right person. And Friend 1 introduced me to Friend 2, who is all kinds of awesome. And then several months later, I took friend 2 out to a random meetup one night, where we met Friend 3. (Meetup is where people like me, who want to meet people but are sick of being looked at funny for being friendly in the grocery store connect with other people online and then literally meet up in real life and hopefully the other online people aren't axe murderers.) Lucky for Friend 2 and myself, Friend 3 is anything but an axe murderer. Friend 3 is so sweet, I need extra insulin just to be around her.

And just like that, in a matter of less than six months, my empty social circle became full and better than anything I could have ever wished for.

I was thinking about that tonight, while I was out with Friend 2 and Friend 3, and their husbands, and their kids (we are fortunate to enjoy some kind of cosmic magic where our husbands all get along and our children all love each other) while we were all out for pizza together. And I felt like the Grinch, after he steals Christmas and then hears all the Whos in Whoville singing, because my heart was so full I thought it might explode. The only thing that could have possibly made the moment better was if we were eating Lou Malnati's pizza.

Then the speakers in the pizza place played the second song in the title of this post.

"Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with her drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink

The dog days are over
The dog days are done..."

And that's the story of how nearly a year to the day after leaving everything I've ever loved behind, I've found the most incredible existence that I didn't even know - or believe - existed.

I am truly the luckiest girl in the world.