Welcoming 2010

A friend of mine, who recently published a book btw which can be found at Amazon, pointed out today on his Facebook page that technically the new decade doesn't begin until 2011.

It made me think about the last time I heard this debate. 2000 - the new millenium? Or did we have to wait for 2001?

I didn't wait. I'm not waiting now. This first decade of the 21st century found me exactly where I'd left off. Married and not particularly happily, and a spook.

6 months after it started I was still married but no longer a spook. Spinning wildly and feeling like I'd been completely betrayed by an organization I'd given my entire adult life to I was faced with the choice to shut up and be obedient...or be able to look myself in the mirror in the morning.

The face that looks back at me is older, sometimes sadder, but always confident in knowing that I may be imperfect but I am my own person. For the first time in 17 years I told a certain government agency "no." It cost me dearly - but not as dearly as if I had been compliant.

On September 11, 2001 three thousand people lost their lives. The result, I believe, of an intelligence community going horribly wrong. We saw a part of that in 2000 and we were largely silent...or powerless...in the face of enormous determination and incompetence. I sometimes wonder if things would have been different had I been strong enough to take the stand that needed to be taken.

It is the impossible wondering of a woman. I don't know that anyone would have been strong enough to stand up in the face of the accusations and delusion we faced and do what needed to be done. It was hard enough not to just agree to be "wrong" and be allowed back in to the fold.

The past 10 years have been the best of my life in terms of personal growth. I've accomplished more, experienced more, and become better. They have been harder than any other 10 years of my life. I am still a mom but my work is different and mid-decade I finally bid adieu to a good man who was not the man for me. I know less today than I did at 34.

But today I am grateful for being so much more than I was at this time in 1999. I am praying for the second decade of the 21st century to be one of more joy and less hardship. I am hoping for...hope.

I might end this year skinnier. I might be healthier. I might be more successful. But I will, for certain, no longer be just the "ex-spook." The Agency is my past. I need it to stay there. I am a better person for having left - time to be that person all the way through.

NL