And So My Life Shifts Once More...

Why do I consistently and persistently believe that I will arrive at some life station and remain there forever?

I thought I would never ever graduate college...it took me five years.  This is what happens when you are drunk all the time...head’s up.

I thought I would never get into law school let alone graduate from it...yet, I did, dead drunk, skimming the bottom of toxic co-dependency and alcohol addiction.  Don’t ask me how I did it, I was most literally not really there.  My name is on the diploma.  So I guess that is proof I was there in some capacity.

I thought I would never pass the bar, because failing that was the punishment I would receive for being such a stellar fuck up all the way through law school. Yet, I passed. The first time.  By a large margin.

I thought I would never marry because I so fucked over a good man who asked me when I was too young and drunk to take him or the commitment I made seriously.  Yet, another man came and asked and I said yes, and we married.

I thought I would never be a mother because I took reckless and stupid fucking chances and never got pregnant.  I also believed being barren was a fitting assignment of blame for all the fucked up shit I did and the way I lived. Yet, I got pregnant with ease, both times.

I thought I would never get divorced because I was raised by people who have now been married for 58 years. But here I am, all divorced and shit.

The above list clearly outlines that I have never once gotten the future predicted correctly.  I have always thought I would never, ever get what I wanted.  Being regelated to getting only that which I deserved which was akin to long suffering punishment and suffering.  And that could have happened.  But I have historically been blessed at every fucking turn.

What I see when I look back, is how very married I was the version of reality I was attempting to live within.  And that reality was quite divorced from an actual, living reality.

What I see now is the constant, unremitting shifting twists and turns of living.  And I have made the curve.  I have, so far at least, survived it all.  And I know, no future or tomorrow is ever promised to any of us ever.  Which is why life keeps trying to teach me, quite painfully, life is meant to be lived and enjoyed each minute we get.

I left my youngest daughter in Arizona.  Bereft and sad.  Quite unsure of what lies ahead for her.  Neither of us knowing whether this is a good decision or not.  Each of us having a hard time making the turn life is seeming to require from us at this time.  I do not want to hold her back.  I do not want to stunt her growth.  But I would be a fucking liar if I didn’t say that it was very hard to leave her there.  I made it through security and to the nearest woman’s bathroom before the tears began to fall.  And I stayed in there for awhile, falling apart in all the ways one might expect when you are asked, demanded to let go of something you absolutely do not want to let go of...

So now I toil with my thoughts, feelings, needs and wants as I soar above the earth, the closest to heaven I ever get in this life.  And I know, I know this too shall be ok.  I have made it all the way here through all of the above bullshit and so much more.  Constantly and unfailingly believing that I would never, ever make it.  Sure that I would never get the things I wanted or needed. And yet, I have been provided for at every single life shift.

Life requires pivots.  And the more we resist it, the harder it is to enjoy it.

So I pivot.  I boarded the plane and left her there.  Even though the greater part of me was mentally packing her up and getting in her truck and driving her home again.  I just trusted that this too is required of me.  Time for me to learn to be alone. Time for me to allow mothering to look different for her, for me.

I don’t love it.  But I accept it.

Life in all its dangerous shifts that seem to come out of nowhere. Blindsiding me with the good as much as the bad.  Me continuing to perseverate on how much I think the whole fucking thing is going to implode.  And somehow, we all move forward, we learn to let go more deeply.  We learn to hold on, and let go at the same time.

Again, still...

The best representation I know of holding on and letting go...