On a bus into the city, hoping today is the day where I am finally told that I am free to start a life that was already started years ago. Free to lay to rest a portion of my life that encompasses years of trying so hard to match a picture held in someone elses head that I completely lost myself to something that I would ultimately fail to do. I have had this hope before. Many times in many years. Maybe today will be the day, maybe many more years will pass. I talk a lot about finding the joy, the lesson, the purpose. These years have taught me many things that I am glad to know. They have shifted my responses to stress, made me slower to react to upset. They have taught me to try and understand the picture that another person sees even if it is drastically different from my own thoughts or feelings. They have taught me to be myself and to find love and friendship close to me instead of accepting the visions of people who like the rough idea but are desperately unhappy with the details that make up who I am. That is a path that only leads to being told to leave. I have learned to walk into most situations asking what can I learn from this? I have learned to live with waiting. I have learned to live with loss. I have learned how to allow things to sit heavy on a shelf instead of constantly weighing on my mind. I have learned an entirely different sort of calm. These lessons serve me well even if they are not the lessons I would have chosen, and even if they are not a part of the life that I would have dreamed of living. I have no choice in what happens today, just as the years have been full of many things I had no choice about. What I do have control over is this: I can choose how to file my thoughts and feelings. I can file them away as horrible bitter things. Or I can continue to do as I have have done. I have hopes about today, yes. But what comes will come. And afterwards I will put the day on a shelf and go home to my family, for that is where my peace lives. Stress can make parenting difficult. Or parenting can be that oasis in a stressful time and place.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 12:30:42 +0000