Unbound

 Last night I had a dinner with an old lover.

I hadn't seen him in a bit under five years.  Technically I hadn't talked to him in over five years either since he is terrible on the phone, though great over text, and we had texted a few times a year just to say hello even while I was with my ex.

Technically I don't think my ex knew this. See, early on in our relationship, my ex had a kind of meltdown involving a ridiculously long text message, a subsequent phone call,  and a weird kind of compromise because of his belief he was not on a level playing field with other men I had in my life. (He was completely wrong about this, as I already had feelings for him that made the others, including the old lover, not even on the field.) The text and conversation happened at like 3am on April 1st 2017.  I remember it because I laughed that is was April's Fools Day,  but having made another type of obligation for my three days off just after that, I rolled with it, hoping I wasn't being punked.  But the conversation also meant that while he was becoming the primary person I would commit to, I legit could not tell him I was not willing to let myself be swallowed into that confinement.  I was pretty sure, even then, that he would only feel safe inside of what he could control, and he would ignore or avoid the rest. The very very brief conversation we had when I got back was about the commitment I was making to him in the way he understood it and I would honor.  I never strayed from that. Bound to those commitments in a truly willing way. Attached.

I had done that kind of dedicated oneness before. My ex husband, my children's father, several boyfriends and a girlfriend along the way.  All became my entire world and I was lost inside of it.  I relied heavily on their love and company to fill my affection and physical needs, and often they were the only ones there.  I didn't talk to seriously, or go out for any activities with anyone but them. My therapist called this codependency. He was right.

So during that three days in April 2017, I went on a roadtrip at the suggestion (more like a command, but that is a different blog) of someone I had complete trust in, and had it suggested (again, told, but more about that part of my life some other time) that if my feelings for this man who would become my ex were legit, I better figure out what the other people in my life's roles were, and just how much or how little I wanted to keep, and what that looked like.

So I went.  I all but ignored my now-ex for those three days.  A couple texts and maybe a photo, but this was about me, and how I wanted, or didn't want to connect with others. I ended up seeing several people.  Old lovers, friends I rarely connected with, a couple people I barely knew, all in a whirl wind of drinks, and meals, and activities, and sex, and driving a total of about 1500 miles over several parts of the state with almost no sleep.  I made choices, and welcomed connections, and said good bye.  It may have been the most adult thing I have ever done.  And I own every minute.

The lover I met last night was one of the people I saw during that time (the last time as a matter of fact before last night)  He was always good for my body, never judgey or preachy, or in anyway demeaning to my choices.  I could tell him what was going on, but in the way you might write in a journal, or tell in a confessional, without having him try to fix it.  And the sex was always good, with him being more giving than I was most of the time, and I was satisfied physically without any of the emotional baggage that sometimes comes with that.  He was one of the people I did not say goodbye to even with the parameters changing.  He didn't have to know my heart; he never really had, and we both liked it that way.  His heart was often elsewhere as well. We had an understanding that we could, and would, always know the difference between sex and love, and sex could be what we did when it was uncomplicated by our own commitments. I always knew what that meant.

So when I came back from the three days of self service (and it truly was all about me), I made some decisions.  I was heading towards making an exclusive emotional and physical commitment with James, if he and I could get through some other obstacles I was sure we could figure out.  I have never cheated on a relationship. I am not built that way. I know the boundaries. And like I said before, I completely honored them with my ex, verbally, emotionally, physically,  But I also know, having done a lot of self discovery and healing my own trauma since my relationship with my children's father ended, that I could never stop having other things in my life.  People, experiences, thoughts of my own. Values and excitement, and new adventures, even if they slowed to meet a partner's pace.  I didn't want to get lost, again, to the expectations and needs of someone who did not want to go there. 

And to be fair, for the last five years, I truly thought my ex was heading there with me. I wrote in another blog about how I had lost myself into him in some ways, but also recognize that a person can only give to the level of love they give themselves. He did not love himself very much, measuring his worth by money and titles mostly, neglecting his body, heart, and mind needs almost completely, and having that spill over into our sex life, or activities, and most prevalently into him dodging any talk of emotions, including love.  His go to emotion was anger, an easy enough emotion to live in if you have no other skills. I pushed, and tried patience, and even did some ignoring, all for the sake of the love I was giving by choice. And I did love him, do love him, I am just not sure he knew, or knew how to understand it.

But, I didn't completely lose myself this time.  I know exactly where I need to go to heal the grief I still feel, and be okay with others playing their roles. Friends. Lovers. Confidants. I am not alone. I am sad he never knew that, either.

So last night I had dinner with an old lover, and all the euphemisms that implies.  And our rules had stayed the same. I didn't lose myself to him in anyway I didn't want to.  I am pretty sure I never will,  even as I open up all the possibilities. I am going to be okay with the strings untied.

There must be a reason, right?

 Writers block, writers block, writers blocks.

That is all I have to blame this three and a half year absence on. Probably that.  Maybe that. Could be that.  Or maybe it is just some laziness, or some huge fucking self doubt that anything I wrote will have a readership.  Do I need a readership?  Apparently, yes.

I had already decided not to enter the contest.  Because it both bores me and frightens me every single year.  How hard is it really to write a complete story in 101 words or less?  Really fucking hard if truth be told.  And yet I write them easily as soon as I sit down, popping out at least three of them without much effort, and knowing that if I enter them, at least one will be published.  Sad, but true, that I can now pick the one that will get to the final printing without any effort here either.  Because, honestly, they are good.  Well, at least one of them is always good. One is usually okay.  One is almost always crap, but finished just the same, so entered, along with the rest. One is all I need.

And one is what I got this year. Again. Another one published.  That makes at least one published every year I remembered to enter. I think the blahness of it, broke my desire to write at all. All the excitement I could muster amounted to shrugged shoulders.  The word meh completely defined.

I found out yesterday that one of the stories was published.  I opened the online edition and found the pages for the contest results, and poof, there it was. Black and white.  Proof that I am either a good writer, or a small crap writer with a good formula.  Still not sure which.

To that end, I am starting the blog again.  I need to write things longer than 101 words, and write them more frequently than once a year.  It has been a while since I sat down to type, and just let the words come, and have them mean something, or nothing, and not be worried about any potential audience.  The blog seems the best place. Especially as the new year is about to start, and instead of feeling thrilled about being published (again), I am disappointed that it is the only thing I did. Legit. Nothing else.  Not on my blog.  Not in word doc.  Not in my really beautiful journal. Zilch. Nada. Zero.

This is it.  Day one.  Writing so that I can say that I did.  Maybe work on my craft more than what I did for 99.99% of 2021. 

And maybe do some work on why I haven't bothered in 41 months.  I know there is a reason.  No idea what it is yet.

What does Proverbs 31:26 know?

I hope the decisions I am making stick.

That sounds like I could be flaky.  Maybe, but only to myself really.  I can’t tell you how many “eat healthy” plans I have started, how many resolutions I have made to exercise, how many times I have made plans to clean, purge, organize, only to feel like a failure when not one, but all of them have fallen apart. I have not finished (or even worked on) the novel.  I have not bagged up all those clothes that I hate (they are still on my closet/bedroom floor).  I have not cleaned my garage, or my Tupperware cabinet, or my bathroom cabinet (or floor, really). I own a really good set of hand weights and a treadmill.  I try to dust them periodically.  I think I still own a bike.  Somewhere. Maybe.

But that is such a different thing than what I do for people.  Everyone except me, it seems.

I make it to work every day.  I make sure my children have underwear and lunch.  I have gone on field trips, and baked cookies, and been the taxi for a lot of events. I visit friends who are only in town for the day, or travel to them when they are “close”, having come in from another state or country and really, California is not *that* big, right? I make phone calls to meet time zone requirements, even at the price of sleep.  I listen to heartaches and joys, sometimes when the space between us makes me ache to touch them.  Truly. I love doing it.  My children, my family, my friends. Connection. People are the reason I breathe. 

So why is this the wrong thing to do inside of potentially romantic relationships? Or actual romantic relationships? Or just dating? Or sex hookups?  Why is the connection not allowed?  They are people, right? These men I invite into my head and heart and bed, they *are* actually people, right?

But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I get really excited meeting new men.  Very much actually.  I figure I have weeded through 10 gazillion profiles, of men who are cheating on their wives (please don’t tell them), who are bi and just want a chick to hang out and watch them while they take it from the guy (maybe my boyfriend, you know, if I could just arrange that for him),  who are only looking for FWB-hookup-bootie-call-wanna-do-it-in-the-park-car-rent-by-the-hour-motel-could-you-pay-cuz-I-am-behind-on-my-child-support. So if I got past all that, to an actual date, I have to be both insane, and stupidly hopeful.  And one date is great.  Two dates is better.  Talking on the phone, texting to say hi, laughing as we get to know each other is perfect.

But maybe not.

Because I have got to date three or four a few times.  I have been hopeful that the guy meant the texts and comments that said they were enjoying themselves, and please could we see each other again.  I have for sure kissed them.  I probably had sex with them.  I have probably contemplated how to have a date that includes my friends (vetting, it is a real thing), and I have probably shared some of my disasters.  We will have laughed, because we are all just people, and people are more than likely similar, and have the same stories in different packages.

So when did it become a terrible thing that I actually WANT to be in contact with someone I am getting to know?  No, I did not invite you to move into my house.  No, I did not ask you to let me move in to yours.  No, I did not ask you to come to my daughter’s debate team luncheon (I barely want to go to these events, I would not torture you with it), or be an umpire at my son’s baseball game, or help me sort books at the Friends of the Library sale.  I didn’t ask you to pay my taxes, or drive three hours for a lunch date, or meet my brother, or even ask you to stop dating other people (yet.  We haven’t had that conversation.)  I didn’t ask you to get a tattoo of our anniversary date, or buy me a ring, or get on one knee.  What I asked for was to say Good Morning back when I texted, maybe just once every couple days.  I asked you to actually call when you said you would. Like at 9 or so, after the game is over, and the kids are in bed, and you are not too drunk to hit redial. I asked you to plan a date you said you wanted when you left on Sunday morning, sometime before I accept another one with someone else because you didn’t make plans. 

I am not clingy or needy or bitchy because I want you to be interested, too.  Get to know me, too. Is it too much to expect you to find out a little bit about why I told you I like the new Maroon 5 CD, or why I am pouring a glass of the new Napa Valley Riesling, or if you had ever seen a particular movie, or if after telling me you were gone hiking without cell coverage on Friday, though the weekend, that you say you made it safely out on maybe Monday or Tuesday?  I am not trying to take over your world.  I am trying to share mine by whatever means we have available to each other in the limited amount of time and space in our very very busy universes.

That said, the fact that you are not coming through says something.  Maybe it is me.

Am I just flaky, or are you expecting me to be because of what society has said to you about the nature of commitment? Should I be a FWB, GGG, DTF, BDSM, 420, BBW, DDF, and HUR? Is that what I need to be to get your attention?  How about instead of all that, I just be myself? 

So this goes back to my original line about hoping my decisions stick.  I have made some of the decisions about relationships, and weight, and exercise, and cleaning before.  Resolutions, promises, plans, blah blah blah.  What I think has been missing is a really true loving kindness to myself.  I am kind to others, why not to myself? Why do I need to be sexy, thin, seductive, demure, readily available yet distant and uninterested, a mom, a cheerleader, super forgiving, never angry, AND have a clean house, no baggage, and the self-esteem of a mosquito to meet another person’s requirement?  And more importantly, do I HAVE TO keep beating myself up about it because I am not perfect?  Of course you didn’t call back, because I know all my flaws and I could not possibly live up to being normal, much less fantasy, material, right?  I know it, because kindness and forgiveness to myself is not really possible in this body, in this house, in this history.  I don’t deserve you.

So the decision is to not feel that way with EVERY.SINGLE.PERSON I meet. It is about finding value in exactly who I am and in the amazing things I offer. While at the same time being kind and willing to see my flaws, embrace them and change the ones I can, without judgement. I seriously wonder what that is gonna look like in practice.  Maybe like a clean kitchen.

*She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.* ~~Proverbs 31:26

 

 

 

 

Love and Sadness

I have been sad for the last little bit. 

This is not depression.  I know what depression is, and how it feels in my body and in my head.  When my son, Seth, died, THAT was depression.  I walked through mud.  I don’t know if my heart was beating because I wasn’t listening to it anyway.  I made it to work and was disgustingly efficient in my job.  Not because I gave a shit, but because if not, I would have had to slit my wrists with the tediousness of it all.  I did not have the energy to move, to breathe, to feel.  It was all a wash, I was the clouds, nothing felt good because nothing felt bad.  I was feeling nothing.  No pain. No anger. No hurt.  No love. No gratitude. No guilt. No connection to anyone or anything.  I didn’t even have the energy for lonely, because that was a far way off, and I couldn’t get there. I just didn’t care.

So this, this is sadness.

To be very clear, this is not about any one person.  He, well, he is just a starting point and an ending point to this little piece of the story.  I miss him.  Something terrible if truth be told, but not enough to hate him, or want what I thought we had, back.  I have learned.  What I miss, and what I am struggling with, is the part of myself that I felt while being there.  I miss how open I felt.  I miss how honest I was.  I miss the sense of building, and staying present, in the quiet spaces that seemed a thread in my world. I miss how I felt worthy.  How the sharing of deeper thoughts and deeper love moved me, helped define me, made me better.  I had seen through, and past, all the very surface flaws, in him and in myself, and had accepted that for grace.  I have no regrets.

In the process of learning all this, the feeling I have of missing part of who I was, and who I still want to be, I shared the whole thing with my children.  Yeah, yeah, go ahead and give me the lecture about adult conversations around children, but since this was directly in their path, their input on their mom’s journey is important.  Here is what I learned:

      

     My son was totally taken in by the facade.  He believed the lie.  He had adapted himself to believing that people are always good, something I had always encouraged.  He understands about lies, and actually thinks he is a good liar (He is not, but he is 11. He might get better). He also understands, without a doubt, that lies are a choice.  That there is never a good excuse for a lie, no matter what you tell yourself, and that lying never actually helps, even if you think so in the short term.  He also gets that he had nothing to do with the lie, and it said nothing about him, and everything about the teller.  My son has lied, been caught, had to pay the consequences, and more important, been decidedly made to actually have to stand up for the lies, own them. In person. Take the fall out.  He learned, perhaps the hard way, that not everyone sees life that way, and won’t come through for him.  But he doesn’t want to give it up. That would be a dangerous place for him.  It would mean that the lie won.  And from an 11 year old perspective, there is only win and lose. For my end of it, and what I learned about myself is that I take full responsibility for his anger, his doubt, and his ability to adapt.  Bad things happen, but who you are in the midst of bad things is actually the best judge of your worth.  I put someone capable of lying in his path, and trusted, myself, that my judgment was not skewed. I was wrong. My judgment was completely wrong, blinded even, but I helped my son understand that even though there was a lie that caused the pain, it was not his or my lie.  We stayed intact, and true to our own beliefs about trust and love, and that we did not want any of that to change. Not ever.  We would not let this, my son’s disappointment and confusion, define us.  We got to stay exactly who we are. And he was sad.

      

     My daughter was not even remotely taken in by the facade.  She saw everything.  She knew, for her, and without a doubt, that talk is cheap, actions mean more, and that consistency of actions make the most impact.  She knows that people are flawed, but that recognizing flaws and doing better is the only way to make things work.  Watch, learn, do something different the next time.  Apologies are not needed in her world if not accompanied with actions that make the apologies real.  So, lie, but figure your shit out and don’t do it again, like ever.  Judge, but figure your shit out, and don’t do it again, like ever. Be sarcastic, and cruel, and distant, and hurtful, but do it because you didn’t know better, and then when you know better, do better.  She saw, without a doubt, that the same mistakes were being made in our world that had been made in others, all without remorse, responsibility, or attempt at change. And that while she knew that my son and I were being taken in the wake, she was gonna stand out and watch until we figured it out, and did better.  She knew we would.  She had seen both of us live with our hearts on our sleeves before, and come through when we finally had it stomped enough to have a lightbulb moment.  She decided she loved me, if not the relationship, and knew, even as I doubted myself, that I would get out of it eventually, ethics and honesty would win. She was right.  And could point it all out in black and white, accurately and unquestionable.  She was worried that I had lost myself, that I didn’t see. And she was sad.

     

      Me.  Well, I saw the facade, ignored it, and let my heart lead.  I saw how things didn’t add up, but also believed that “surface” was not my point of view.  I was confident about my own worth, about my own authentic part.  I was truthful and forgiving, and accepting, in a way that I wanted the real people in my life to be.  I was my son and daughter combined. Open, but too trusting.  Honest, but giving away too much.  Building and present, but with a foundation that was too unstable. Aware, but too forgiving.  I had done exactly what I had hoped I wouldn’t do, and exactly what I wanted to do at the same time.   No matter how healthy I was in my approach, in my actions, in my trust, if the other person I picked couldn’t keep up or adapt, then my progress forward both inside and outside of the relationship was flawed.  I could do nothing about it, but watch the trainwreck occur, sure, for some completely unnameable reason, that love would be enough. And I was sad.

So back to the sadness.  I am sad because I miss him.  Something terrible if truth be told, but not enough to hate him, or want what I thought we had, back.  I have learned.  What I miss, and what I am struggling with, is the part of myself that I felt while being there.  I miss how open I felt.  I miss how honest I was.  I miss the sense of building, and staying present, in the quiet spaces that seemed a thread in my world. I miss how I felt worthy.  I am sad because, for this one moment in time, I was wrong, and love was not enough.  That is a rough lesson. 

But here is the other lesson I needed to remember.  Love is an action.  Love as a verb meant that this was perfect. I knew exactly how it looked, how it felt, who I was, and what kind of gratitude I was made aware of every day simply because of the flaws.  I had my own beliefs about love tested, and I did not fail.  My sadness is that there are still people in my world, in my children’s world, who don’t get it.  Who still see love as some kind of feeling that requires no work.  It took having this sadness to realize that maybe I need to work on it more for myself.  Love myself with the same kind of love (as an action) as I have been giving.  Let myself feel everything I experienced in giving it away to stay in my world and grow.  The sadness is that it is not there yet.  I am still in doubt.  Can I do it, find love where it already lives and work to keep it, grow it, cherish it? No matter what kind of package it comes in, especially if the package is me?

Nope, not depression. I care about this.  And sadness will serve me just fine to move me forward.

Fake Flowers and other 5th grade tragedies

I continue to struggle with what is real and what is not real in my world.

There are only 6 days left of school, and my son is feeling every single one.  In his world, he stopped learning things of any value a month ago.  To his defense, he is one of the smartest, fastest learning kids around.  Things in his head just click, and common core standards have left him bored with the lessons that are taught 12 different ways so that everyone gets it, when he got it the first time, finished all the lessons and enhancement materials on the first day, and has to sit, often for another week, with nothing to do.  This in not a whine about the failing health of the school system in California, or even a justification to let him be a slacker (I don’t let him, read on), but more of a baseline for how to balance what is real and what is not. 

My son is 11.  He has started puberty.  Yes, every bit of it.  Hair, height, food, sleep patterns, disgusting smells, and the over use of hair gel. What has also come with it, for an overly intuitive, smart ass, super witty, hysterically funny kid, is a complete sense of loss of reality.  His body doesn’t quite fit, his voice doesn’t quite sound right, his desires don’t quite match his abilities, his logic is totally flawed even when the argument is flawless, and he is angry. Angry, like all of the time.  There is zero justice in the world, good things happen to bad people, while good people get hurt, and he gets no say.  He has decided that the real world is not to his liking, and since there are no actual requirements to participate, why bother.  He has already passed 5^th grade even if he does not go to school for the rest of the year, so why bother.  It, for him is one more way that the world is showing him that it hates him.

But that’s not real.  The world does not hate him.  The world, more than likely does not give a damn about him.  But I do. 

He may have figured that out.  I mean, I am the person he is taking all this anger out on, and I am the one that hasn’t left. Anger is real. He gets to have that and I get that it is testosterone infused emotion, fueled by introspection, and a little bit of laziness. He hates transitions.  And in a world full of them, especially in his recent past, he is struggling. He is questioning his place in the universe, his value as measured by someone else, and how to break out of that while still wanting to be taken care of.  How much of the real world, (that couldn’t care less about his 5^th grade science project), does he still have to put up with before he can be done. And does he, in the true sense of the world, need to rely on anyone else for his own sense of freedom.  If everything in his world is subject to change, how does he know what is real?  If everything can change, his body, his heart, his mind, that what can he rely on.

On the sill of a bay window, in a kitchen I have been spending a lot of time in recently, there is a new bouquet of artificial flowers.  They are sorta pretty, until your realize the red is too-red, and the green is too-green, and the narcissus are too-white to be actual paper-whites.  I won’t even talk about the Styrofoam and glass marbles in the clear vase hat make up the base, because there is no water.  No movement. 

I know how the flowers got there, and heard the story of why they are preferred.  It seems fake flowers are preferred because they do not change.  There is no fading of color.  There is no stagnation of water.  There is no dropping of dried petals or crinkled leaves.  There is never any imperfection.

I thought about this for quite a while, about why this might be a desire at all.  I got it, the need for stability, to have something in the world on which you rely, which you can predict to be the same.  Lasting.  Forever.

Except nothing is forever.  Everything changes. Lasting, without change, is not true. The only thing real is that which you create.  Real requires work.  Fake, well, fake is an illusion.  A mask.  A charlatan’s crystal ball.  No one gets to know what happens.

So as I try to explain to my son that everything changes, nothing (including the school year) is forever, how do I also help him know that I am real?

This week some of that belief about what is real, and what is not, hit me.  With some words I did not create, I was labeled as invisible. Non-existent and dismissed inside of a world I was creating.  This hurt me more than I realized when I thought it through, but not for the reasons you might think.  Yes, I still have all my deep seeded fears about no one ever getting to know me, and about no one seeing me, and well, about being disposable and worthless as judged by my mere existence.  I know the words were just words of self-protection and zero ability in the moment to make the hurt stop, truly.  What hurt was my own self-doubt that I could change.  What if I was the fake flowers, pretty for a time, but with no substance?  What if I really was surface and shallow and not able to adapt and learn?  What if my being real, flaws and all, wasn’t enough?

So I picked real anyway.  I am real.  I adapt and I change.  I will not stay the same, without growth and I decided to try this in practice.  What if all this frustration my son is feeling is much the same as my feeling of not wanting to be fake (I mean, really, how many more times do you have to do math papers you aced three months ago just to get to the end of the semester). 

I want my world messy. Calm, easy, moving forward, but messy.  I want leaves on the counter from real bouquets. I want conversations that are hard but real, and filled with love.  I want to change the way I do things even as I make mistakes.  I want my son to get that, too, that I will change with him as his needs changes, and we will be okay as we figure it out.  That transitions are real, and that I will help him through it as I transition myself.  I want him to see that modeled in my life with other people who are real so that he can see that change is okay, and maybe grasp some (of my hard learned) lessons that life and love are fluid, always adapting.  I hope he sees other models in his life doing the same.

It is exciting.  Scary.  Terrifying, actually.  To get to move out of fake and in to real.  I also hope I get brought flowers (apricot-colored tea roses and dutch irises are my favorite, just in case you need to know that), and I will happily clean up the fallen leaves to open up space for more real in my world.  Join me.

Just a beginning list.

Gratitude. A not complete list. Just a list for today. A small micro-shift in my outlook.

1) Coffee.  Not having an allergy to coffee. The social aspect of coffee.  Having coffee made for me.  Having the coffee made for me brought to me.  Having my own travel mug for the coffee made for me.

2) A job. Accrued time to take off from the job.  The paycheck that the job provides.  The money from that paycheck that lets me pay for my life. A boss who gets that I have a life.

3) My ex-husband’s claim of sobriety.  My ability to see how his lack of sobriety affects me.  My ownership of how toxic our relationship was. My ability to see my role in our toxic behavior.  My belief that genuine sobriety exists and that he can have it.  My self-trust that I can see myself clearly with or without his sobriety.

4) My children. Everything about their amazingness in this world.  The knowledge that we can fight and still be amazing.  Faith that they know I am doing my best.  My best being good enough. Their best being good enough.

5) Chocolate.

6) This quote: “The light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion.  The tunnel is.”

7) Email.  Spell check. Keyboards with backspace keys. Not immediately hitting the send button.

8) Willingness. Openness. Honesty. Mistakes. Forgiveness. Ownership. Freedom to take another path.

9) People. People in my world who keep showing up even when their path is hard, too.  People who love me. People who see me.  People who talk.  People, who, when they talk, talk with me and not to me.  People who are flawed.  People who are human.  People I have the grace and good fortune to be allowed to love.  People who let me in.  People who hold my hand.  People who kiss my tears. People I trust.  People who trust me. People, who, when they read this, if they read this, know who they are.

10) Journeys. Growth. Change. Progress. Backsliding. Learning. Sharing. Giving and receiving support.  Letting go and holding on. Knowing when each is important. Knowing how.  Failing at knowing how. Starting again.  Trusting that I am on the path I am supposed to be on.  Hope, that when I am not on the right journey, something with guide my path.  Never giving up. Acknowledgement that if I can change, I can hope for it and see it in someone else.  Holding hands while on the journey so as not to get in each others way.

11) Emotions. Every single one.  No hiding. No Fear. I get them all.  That any single emotion is not all-consuming.  That the strongest emotion is love.  That love really does work.  That I can love without apology and without regret.  That I can be all in and not lose any part of myself to it when I remember to do it from a place of love.  That the people in #9 get them, too. Humility to understand that I cannot control someone elses emotions, nor have any right to.  The wisdom not to try.

12) Happiness.  Not as an emotion, but as a state of being. Knowing I can claim it and not take anything away from anyone else. Grace to not flaunt it. Happiness where happiness is.

13) The amazing power of truth.