No accidents. No coincidences. Take stock. Look around, who ever is there, HERE, now...has a purpose. And I do too. I believe in the balance of nature and the universe. I know that we are capable of far more than we dare to conceive, and I, if nothing else, am here to make you laugh, snicker, or maybe, just maybe, if you lay the burden of judgement down to listen and learn, maybe, you might...BELIEVE....Maybe not. (shoulder-shrug) Your call. I'm here, either way.
I have this way (always have) of putting it all out there. Placing it before you and everyone before you can say it. I did this when my newborn daughter (now 5) looked like "George Constanza" or a "Pakastani NYC cab-driver". I'll beat you to it. I won't change now.
I am an INFIDEL. I have committed the heinous and incredibly despicable soul-crime of cheating. I lied, mostly to protect and preserve the innocence of my kids, but still non-defendable. There are casualties, collateral damage, weight-loss, humorous rumors, and an entire town either picking sides, spitting fodder or at the very least sending this link out AS-YOU-READ-THIS. (hey, guys...S'up?) I am not hiding, rationalizing, or asking forgiveness from anyone except those dishonored by me, those in my heart and those lives I've directly effected.
There is also a strange peace in the F&CK YOU that silently emanates after the grief shifts, and the age-old idiom: "Life goes on..." seeps into the fissures of your life. Let me saddle you with the first (or is that the third?) of my many analogies, and parenthesis: Imagine your worst. YOUR WORST secret, or demon, or misdeed being broadcast on blast to everyone you know and don't know. To peers, and school teachers, playgroups and charity circles....Not even factually, or with any last bit of perspective or context. Imagine the lies, the specific people, the depths of deceit and personal emotions were hung over your head in neon, updating like ticker symbols as information gets shared. How, I ask you, would you feel? Not, what you think you'd do, or how you'd never be ashamed because you don't hold any ugly truths, but how you would FEEL?
I can tell you....you might feel like running, betrayed yourself, or exposed and raw like a zoo exhibit at your most disappointing, gut-wrenching time. The thing is, there are all kinds of us. All types, "sinners", "hypocrites", "victims", "deplorable social misfits", or...instead of labels that can't possibly encompass all that we are, or all the roads and wounds and brilliance that put us where we are, but that we are, I AM still me. The vulnerable woman, daughter and mother, wife and lover, human and honest liar. Yes. HONEST LIAR. Lied to those closest, whomever crossed through my duplicitous path, and more sadly, myself. ( note to you: Don't do this).I have been sleep-walking. Hovering in that emotional plane that stays busy, over-functions and looks the part, but never, not really, ever lives authentically. I took this rupture/rapture? to set into spin a series of events (my husband, so eloquently named: "the quickening") that would shine a prismatic light to burn through the veils and shrouds we all so naturally build and weave to stay in the complacent, the mundane, the seeming reality that "pain is part of it", that "self-sacrifice for greater good" is not only necessary, but rewarded and saluted by our peers, and that "love always fades", and identity is shaped by perception...only that. PERCEPTION. (is reality...right?) WRONG.
What if, I ask you? What if I were to not-so-secretly, tap your shoulder and whisper with a come-hither finger, "shh" and deliberate glimmering eye to show you the malleable membrane that is "perspective", forget "perception". That is of "others", I am only interested in that which is YOURS or MINE.
What if, roll with me for a second, we ARE NOT A SUM TOTAL of our failures and defeats, but instead a pattern of experiences, and energies all linked and swirled in a beautiful, breath-taking tapestry that is our LIFE....here for the taking, innately valuable and available NOW. All things, non-mutually exclusive- sad and shimmering, hopeless and possible, mirrored balance of dark/light shadows/reflections, loneliness/ love , anger/gratitude, all here, in your reach despite the former. Despite the false-beliefs or prisons of your own limitations.
What if, after being flattened, and mortified at 37 as a "home-wrecking whore", a "selfish negligent", I am filled with the overwhelming feeling of being blessed? What if I feel nothing, NOTHING other than the absolute knowing that I have a clarity, a new gift (I'll get to this later), and utmost humility that at such a young, yes young, age....I get to GET IT.....rather than wait till 50,60,70, or panic to say/do, redirect the list of regrets I'll no doubt collect and fester over in the face of mortality and lost time?
See the grace in standing up in the mess, fighting on with a dance of self-value and authenticity that flutters and floats above the fray and says: MY WORTH IS NOT UP FOR DEBATE, its ever-growing, ever-evolving and not here for interpretation by anyone, ANYONE- NOT also, living truth...really, not pretending ( as I have for more than a decade!), but living. THOSE people and THOSE alone, are where the make and matter of life rests and revolves.
What if, that sneaking suspicion you had that some effervescent magic exists, bloated and busting out of the moments and miracles exists? In the expanding love you've felt, the people you've KNOWN have left you stronger, braver and more alive than before?
Why not? Why not now? Why not from here, a platitude of gratitude, a message from a mess, a sliver of belief that mistakes don't make me, shape me or allow anyone the power with which to decide FOR ME, FOR YOU, what IS, what ISN'T or what SHOULD BE?
From the bottom, that may very well be the tippy-top of something submerged beneath the muted realm of what you think you know, there is a blooming shimmer of beauty, beyond the limits you thought were possible?
What if? Why not? I say "Thank you." I mean to tell a story. I hold no presumptions that you care, but I DO. I care. Big. You'll see. Or you won't, but you'll wonder....and that my friends, and foes...is the beginning of something...
Even if from the bottom.
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