clinging

I was holding on so fiercely to a love that only hurt me. I was chasing a few good memories that stood out in a gray life of frustration and mistrust. suddenly all of that is behind me; literally behind me. i am looking forward. I am not sure to what, I don't even really care, I am still just waking up to the reality of the over-ness of it all. It feels good. Like a good pain that you know is leading to healing. I have lowered myself for so long to a point of begging for love. Begging for affirmation. As if one boy was the key to the significance of my existence. I don't need to move "on". I am just moving forward. I don't feel alive, and exuberant. I don't feel depression and grief. I feel, right. I feel solid. I feel correct. And I feel that it will all be OK.

I still have the good things. I have silly aspen climbing in my  bed at 4 am every morning. I have truck, smelling like a skunk and sneaking on to the couch to sleep. I have four girls fighting over every imaginable thing. I have 4 pairs of liv jeans. three pairs of baldies. I am ok. This is the good life. It isn't the everything life. But it's the good life. when I can still get excited if the hardware store is in the green because our sales are better than last year, and I can be stoked that my kids are getting b's in school. and I can breathe a sigh of relief because nobody hates me and I don't hate anybody... it's a good life. when things that don't directly affect me are still important to me because of what they mean to someone else, it means I am living. It means that I have relationships and I am not dead, right?

Head full of doubt, because none of it adds up. Because the odds are against me, against success in the terms of the world. Head full of doubt because I am still alone, and wonder if I always will be. Road full of promise. The sun is shining. The kids are well. The job is still here. The people I love will all survive whatever crisis they are in at this moment (susan). I will survive. And there is no crisis. Wonder of wonders. Just steps. Every day, steps. more steps. Lord willing they're all going in the same direction and not schizophrenically all over the place in a paranoid grasp of desperation. No more insanity. No more banging of the head against the brick wall, pursuing the same elusive objective to the same fruitless end. No more chasing the tail to eat the shit. No more.

This broken back will heal, this broken heart will mend. This twisted mind will smooth out like river rocks under the turbulent waves of life's raging river. If that isn't cheesy poeticism, I don't know what is. But I am all good. Life is good.