Anticipation...

Well the day has finally arrived.  I leave for London tonight.  I can’t believe it.  Really, can’t believe the day is finally here.  It has been so long in the planning and dreaming and anticipating.  I am pretty sure the anticipation is my favorite part!

I fucking love the ... because it literally means more to come. And fuck if that isn't anticipation!

I love the dreaming and thinking I create when I have a trip planned.  I love where my mind goes and all the things I think about.  I love to spend time in my head, thinking is my greatest asset and likely also my worst defect...but when it comes to travel, I am chocked full of ideas and plans and excitement.  I don’t really spend anytime at all thinking of what can go wrong, I mean I guess I figure if it does, well then it does.  I will deal with future shitshows when and only when they arrive.

I have been so looking forward to this trip.  I haven’t been across the pond since 1989. I was 19.  And I can tell you, my life looks fundamentally different than it does now.

I am so excited to go and see all the things changed and different and to be sober to enjoy them all.  Not so, when I was there in 1989.  I am not sure I was sober the entire time I was there.

I love all the thoughts that come to me when I have a trip planned, and all the rearrangement that will happen inside me.  And I can’t wait for it!

Am I ready for it?

Yes, why, yes I fucking am!

Travel is something I love, something I crave, new adventures to places I love but have never seen before.  The excitement, the unpredictability of it all.  My life is so predictable, so very mundane most days, and I wouldn’t have it any other way really.    But I need the planning and the anticipation of some future event to keep me going, if I am honest.  I am never more happy than when I have events spaced out over time in front of me so that I can anticipate their arrival and how I will change because of them.

Today, I marvel in the excitement of my life while also grieving the loss of a woman who died in her disease earlier this week.  I am so sad that she is gone.  I didn’t know her well but I appreciated her.  I loved her.  I think, I understood her.  And now, she is gone.  Not even 30, leaving behind a little girl and many broken hearts.

Rectifying the stark disparity of my life and hers is difficult in my head.  I didn’t anticipate her demise, but I didn’t not anticipate it either.  The signs were there.  Her last share will haunt me, the quiet resignation that didn’t alarm me as much as perhaps it should have.  I always believe there will be more time, and often, there just isn’t.

She is gone now and I feel the pain of her loss.  Such a beautiful soul whose light has flickered for the last time.  So I dedicate this trip to her.  To her memory.  And remind myself that all it takes is one momentary bad decision and I too can end up like her. 

Life is this precarious balancing of living to the fullest but not overshooting your mark.  And I am known to go to extremes...but I know that God has these other plans for me, to be present in the lives of others, to be here, to do the work, and not take the circuitous loop that forever takes me back to where I started.

So while I reclaim some previous ground on this trip, I know that I am not the same.  And I will be changed repeatedly as this odyssey moves along.  And I will take that sweet girl’s memory with me, praying for love and relief and peace for her family and for all of us who loved her.  And I will allow her to serve as a reminder to me of what happens when you hate yourself.  When you can find nothing within about yourself to love.  And I will endeavor to shove that in the face of all my demons who haunt me still.

I can spend my life anticipating the worst and live a life that is filled with dread and pain or I can spend my life anticipating the amazing and wonderful and challenging and lovely, and live an amazing life that embraces the best way for me to get free, the very best way for me to live my best life, is to be present in the lives and for the recovery of others.

And so may I do this on this journey.  May I push off today in loving service to all I encounter.  To all I know about myself, and all I am going to learn.  May I see others as teachers sent to me to open my heart further and to teach me more about love and living.  Her journey is over, but mine is not and I intend to live it and love it fully.  This amazing, painful, wonderful, beautiful, difficult life of mine.

Again.

Still.

And today, I know to the core of my being what a privilege it is to be able to say, again, still.  She cannot.  All her agains and stills are over.  And I will hold that to me too...lest I forget that none of us are promised any other moment than the one we are in.