Brave Enough To Be Bliss

I know all too well that life isn't fair, but I can worry about the future, or I can simply take in this present moment and make the very best of whatever it is. The bad doesn't last forever unless I carry it into the future and the good may not last forever either, but if I fully experience it in the present, I sure will have better memories to carry with me. "I am slowly learning what it means to be human. I am slowly learning how to forgive the past. How to accept that sometimes beautiful things end, that sometimes the timing isn’t right, that sometimes the messiness of life gets in the way. I am slowl y learning that endings aren’t something to be upset about, but rather, I am slowly learning how to appreciate how damn lucky I was to experience something real and hopeful and light in a world that sometimes fails to be soft. I am slowly learning how to be alone. I am slowly learning how to wake up in the middle of the bed. How to make just one cup of coffee in the mornings. How to hold my own heart, how to take up my own space. I am slowly learning how to stop filling voids with other human beings, and instead, I am slowly learning how to confront the void itself. How to heal it. I am slowly learning what it means to be human. What it means to make mistakes and learn from them. What it means to be both happy and sad at the same time. I am slowly learning how to do the damn work. How to stop running from what is heavy and uncomfortable in my life. How to take the easy route less and less. How to grow myself, how to be a better person. But most of all, I am slowly learning how to just be, at this moment. How to exist. How to understand that I cannot control life, that I can only experience it in both its light and its dark stages. I am slowly learning how to laugh and cry and feel through it all, how to welcome the confusion and the joy that comes with loving, and living, and breaking. I am slowly learning how to accept where I am. I am slowly learning how to simply believe in the person I am becoming." Bianca Sparacino "Doing love is the ‘work’ in a relationship. It's learning how to keep returning to love when we have strayed from it. When we've let our fear overwhelm us, when we have let our nasty patterns get in the way. When we’ve let our expectations get too high an d unrealistic. When we’ve lost our way to ourselves, and we stop showing up in an authentic way in the relationship. So, we have to keep doing love for that one person to continue to be the one.” Jillian Turecki John came by one Sunday evening in June, and we had one of the very best talks we’d ever had -- and since we’d had lots of really good ones, that’s saying something. That night he wasn’t the man , he was the human being and, if it was possible, I loved him even more. It was good and healthy. And after that, it was like when he put forth effort knowing I was dating Dan, but better because we had shared more, experienced more, and learned more about ourselves and each other. It was like his heart was leading his communication and decisions. He was the good man I had always told him he was. He picked me up to have lunch or he would bring lunch in more frequently for us to share, just the two of us. It felt like a fresh start. Like we had both chosen C at the same time, but we had already established a level of trust, so it was much more comfortable and safe because we already knew each other deeply and intimately. The details are John ’s story, not mine to tell, but the short version is he resigned and left the practice. He said he had planned to leave in a few months anyway, but he hadn’t told me that part yet, so I was stunned. I tried to be supportive and encouraging, but it was a di fficult departure and there really wasn’t anything I could do to help. I wanted to believe things would be OK , but deep down, I knew they wouldn’t. Without the daily interaction we had through work and because I was still employed there and would be a reminder to him of all that he was going through, I knew it wasn’t going to be good at all. A part of me wanted to hope, but the rest of me knew it was time to grieve. Grieve the loss of working with him…and so much more , because once the floodgates opened, there wasn’t going to be any way to stop the tears that would be unleashed. At least not for quite a while. I tried to give him some space, but then I was told something I really thought might help him and wanted to share it with him. I told him as much in a text and he agreed to stop by. It was so good to see him, but so hard too because I feared things were never going to be the same. I knew he was hurting, but I was hurting too. I held it together and shared what I wanted to with him. We talked for a bit, which was emotional, and he was kind, but said he had to leave. He called later and then texted a link to this song. It’s a long song, the lyrics start at about two minutes. I didn’t have the opportunity to misunderstand like the first time he sent me a song now that music apps display the lyrics, so I listened to and read the lyrics… over and over and over again. The first few verses follow. I’ll never forget a few months earlier, talking in my home office one night, he said, “Whenever I’m happy, something bad always happens.” And something bad was about to happen that would break …my…heart.

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