Got lost in a conversation today, sometimes that happens when I am caught up in the details of my life. A moment that appears from the tattered floorboards of time and just hangs there low in the sky ……until I find my eyes reaching to find it waiting there. You never know who is going to want to talk and I found myself sharing my private thoughts…some of them known and some still holding onto the creases of newness.

I keep thinking my life is going to begin to shimmer with ease as the days carry me forward. I wonder about all the people that I will meet….between now and when I finally lay down and remember what it feels like to rest.

Here I remain, with the dust of a million fears surrounding my every step….no matter the direction I take, there will be left a trail of footsteps.

Sometimes just for a little while I want to forget.  To just close my eyes and forget that Alan killed himself, forget that I am just a girl who is caught up in a life that catches every turn in the wind. Forget that every moment is a gift and also a curse.  Forget that with every choice comes a little give.  You get something out of those decisions and you also give some things away…..learn to settle.

Sometimes I want to lay on the earths floor and just let the clear night sky carry me….lift me from the binds that hold me here and just be able to walk away.

I want to say that I feel no fear, I want to say that the aversions that hide in the dark corners of my room, do not from time to time seek me out.  When I run, and at times want so much to hide….. that this to shall pass.

I want to say that all of this is for a reason, I want to whisper in the stillness……… feel where my feet will walk.

Here I remain. Not the same as I was yesterday and not the same as I will be tomorrow. Forward moving, ever believing and strong enough for it to fall either way.

The page is coming full circle now and some of the thing’s that I have been able to outrun are now catching up to me….and it is time to slow my pace and take a breath and turn and look them in the eyes.

I am scared to death.

I am.

Yet even now that I am lost and fighting for everything…. I will not look down.

I won’t.

I will hold my head strong and look forward and even though there is nothing but a wall of grey swirling color there now, I know that just beyond is a brand new day…..

So tonight I will wrap up in a big blanket and sit on my porch swing and dangle my feet in the darkness, close my eyes and just sway there……. for a little while.

I have had some amazing opportunities find me and have discovered some magical relationships that I know will accompany me through the continued years of my life. People that are opening doors and reaching out and ushering me in…..

It is such a strange place to be at the threshold of every dream I ever dared to dream, and yet, still look back at a girl that I use to know, and to make sure as I venture into the greatness that is my life, that I always keep her there, tucked just inside my pocket.

Once upon a time…I knew how this fairy tale ended….

I am finding out what a strong woman feels like. I am doing things and sailing places I could have never imagined.

In the end I am simply in awe and this person I am, the bravery I have found….the hope…the faith and the conviction…… that I can do this.

Not only do this….but do it well.

And so tonight as the stars bid me sweet dreams….I will.

Dream of this sweet, gentle life that is mine.

I am about 12 pounds from my weight in high school. I feel amazing and am addicted to the high that you get when you get past the mundane exercise and get into the hard core of it.

So I am a familiar face at the gym and you get to know the regulars. We laugh and talk and sit in the steam room for hours laughing and talking about our day.

The greatest part is there are guys in their early twenties to men that are ninety. The whole range of people and experiences….it is a cross section of this life and I learn something every night.

So I am getting in amazing shape and I was getting a little big for my britches.

I would walk in the gym and know that I could outrun most people on the treadmill and then hit the bikes and women have come up to me and asked me to help them get motivated (not EVER a good thing to do to a narcissist).

So last week I was running and I decided to step it up a notch and run eight miles instead of my usual five…

I was running next to a girl who was younger then me and I was pacing with her out the corner of my eye….I am VERY competitive and I just thought “Hell if she is going to out run me, I will DIE before I quit before her.”

So I pushed myself WAY past the point of reason, my body was hurting and I was sweating like a prostitute in church and all of a sudden I could smell gravy.

I started looking around and I swear to you I could smell gravy, but not any gravy….the kind from KFC that comes with the nasty fake mashed potatoes that I LOVE!

Well now feeling like I own the gym….hahaha….I finished my run (yes I out run the chick-a-dee next to me) and I got off the treadmill and started looking around to see WHO had the nerve to bring mashed potatoes and gravy to the GYM!

In my head I was talking up a storm.

I mean how cruel is that. There are people there who are desperately trying to lose weight and someone would be THAT insensitive to bring a three piece wing and breast meal to torture them???

Well I was mad and I thought someone has to stand up for the “People of the Gym.”

So I started walking around looking for the jerk.

After making the rounds several times without luck I decided to just go and get my spinning done.

It was not until about 15 minutes into the ride that I looked down and noticed that every time I pedaled I could smell the gravy…..

Then I remembered. My son had mashed potatoes the night before from KFC and when I went to pour the gravy on his potatoes I squeezed the container to hard and spattered gravy all over my shoes and my jacket and clothes. It was not until I put the shoes on again and the jacket and started sweating that the gravy smell came out…..

So yes….I was the gravy girl at the gym.

And I thought all those people wanted to work out beside me for my good form or my witty conversation…..naaa it was simply my smell of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes…..oh and can I get the gravy on the side?

I was taking down Christmas the other night and I was moving things around and carefully dusting them off and those moments that followed me around that night were very capricious.
It is sad enough to be taking the holiday down, but to find yourself being carried down a memory lane when you are not expecting it…..is tough.

Alan’s mother gave my children a picture of their father for christmas. Each little frame captured the smiling face of their father, a little reminder of him to sit upon their bed side tables and watch over them while they dream.

I was grateful to her for that gift, but at the same time I could not bring myself to look at the picture.
I am the one who took it. While standing at the top of a fern laced mountain wrapped in the moist air of Hawaii. I remember telling him to say “hula girl” so he would smile big.

Well as it always is….mother fate held cards that I could not see and she gingerly played them when I was least expecting it.

In my cleaning I picked up the frame and dusted the glass and in that moment, our eyes caught. I looked into that silly little frame and got caught in the eyes of the man that I had loved for most of my life.

In that second he was there….and the familiarity of him flowed upon me.

The house was quiet and the kids were all in bed. The moon was hung just outside the livingroom window and I was there, alone……except for Alan.

In his eyes I was carried back to when we were dating, the night he proposed, the moments we laid in bed and laughed till we could not breathe and tears bled from our eyes. Long hot afternoons when I would watch for his car to pull in the drive….the million and one times during the day I would try to think of something I needed to tell him…..just so I had an excuse to call and hear his voice.

My Alan…..I remembered.

All of those feelings come rushing in as the flood gate that is distraction usually keeps them at bay and I found myself suddenly sobbing.

I could not breath. My body crumpled to the floor as a rag doll and I held that picture in my hands, looking into those eyes and I just let it all go.

My body physically hurt from the release. It hurt from hours and days and weeks and months of pushing the pain somewhere where sting could not be felt. But as with all things…..it must come to be.

You have to feel it and lay with it and cry with it….to allow it to go.

So that night got me to thinking. There is a balance in this world, there is.

So those moments of such tremendous suffering and sorrow and pain must be balanced. There is a reason I am here walking this path. There are lessons that I have learned and things to share with others and my job is to learn, to watch, to grow and to be able to take the lessons of my life and use them.

Wouldn’t it be a shame to suffer and hurt and endure it and then take all of the lessons and just sneak off to my own little corner and not share the lessons so that someone else might learn something and not have to wade through the same darkness.

If I can look at another and say…I know where you are. I know how you hurt. I know how you feel….to be able to to that is an immense gift and to that I say….. give me more. Teach me more. Lead me through more.

My courage and strength are enough. My heart that longs for better not only for myself and my children but for all the people I love….is enough.

These moments of our lives are gone in the twinkling of an eye. Almost two years since Alan took his life. Two years.

The thing to remember is that life marches on….ready or not. Two years and then three and then five….they will pass. It is you deciding where you want to be when that time is up….that is your choice.  I know that I never want to look back and see a weak girl who did not give the very most she could give….

I just wrote a dear friend and I am going to share the words I wrote…..”I know this sounds incredibly silly…..but when I have no money and I am stressing about bills and braces and house payments and money….that is when I give a 20 dollar bill to the homeless guy on the corner. When I am so tired I think i will die…that is when I go shovel my neighbors walk…..when I dont think I can possible take another breath I go run six miles.
Just to remind myself that I am alive. That I in fact am here for a reason. That I am much stronger then I ever knew and that this life is worth living….and worth living well.”

That is the gift tucked deep in the matters of the heart. The gift we all have been given. The gift of learning to survive, and not only survive….but in not only saving yourself….save another.