Ahhh 2009

I spent a little time last night and this morning reading over the past year or so on my blog. It amazes me to see the difference a year makes. Going into 2009, I felt so many things that I'm struggling with as we head into 2010.

I think I spend a lot of time worrying what to write, for a blog, a status, etc... when I should just be writing. For me. If I never post it anywhere, I'll have it to look back on someday and hopefully think “Wow, you've come a long way since then... but what a ride huh?”

I don't want to do a wrap up of 2009. I have no intention of doing that. Talk about the year, the roads taken and not, sure. But there's no way to even begin to try and wrap up anything about the past year. How do you wrap up a year that seems to have wanted nothing more than to test every single thing in your life? Every move, every thought, every feeling. 2009 can bite it, ok? I'm not wrapping him up, I'm not delivering him anywhere with a shiny bow or a smile on my face.

I have never known, until now, just how much you tell yourself that you shouldn't think or feel a certain way. That you should always feel and think kindly, openly. Yeah, it would be amazing if it worked that way. But it doesn't. You may not want to feel something... guess what? You do anyway, regardless of what “should” or “shouldn't” thinks, and all you end up doing? Is feeling a hundred times worse for having an emotion in the first place. How could I think such a thing, feel this way... Because we're human beings, flawed and imperfect. Selfish and fearful. That doesn't make bad people- it makes people people.

I had thought I was done with these feelings, done with questioning, wondering... Is everything a test? EVERYTHING? When do I get a pass? When do the tests get easier, the answers come faster? Why is there always such struggle and hurt with these tests? Because you have to face the monsters in the closet someday. You have to learn who you really are, under all the walls and fears, the anger, the joy... who are you? Where is your strength? How far are you willing to go to find the way, find yourself? What will all of this crap teach you? What won't it teach you is the question.

I get that life isn't a destination, and that we are constantly learning and changing. We have to accept and move on, adapt and change with the rest of the world.. but we don't have to do it immediately, without protest, without wondering just what the point is.

The point is to find your balance. Yours. Not his, hers, anyone else's. Just yours. Find that, and the rest will seem a little easier. Just a little. At the end of the day, you have to make peace with yourself before you can with anyone else. And you have to accept that you aren't always going to be the person you want to be, with all the perfect responses that you “should” have. It just doesn't work that way. We don't work that way, and really? How boring would it be if we all had the same response to everything, the perfect answer to all of these questions, a 100% on every test? You wouldn't learn nearly as much... and you sure wouldn't have as much fun.

Do I always look at the woman in the mirror and find that contentment? Not by a long shot. But I think she's ok, most of the time. And I know her heart, those pieces she doesn't share with anyone but herself, and that I find peace with. Because only I know what's really in there, underneath all I say and do, all I show to the world. And that heart is a good one, albeit a cautious, sometimes cynical one. That heart has carried me through a lot of things, has broken a thousand times, and has loved beyond anything I ever imagined. That's an accomplishment.

I don't know what the next year will bring. I don't know what tomorrow will bring. I wish sometimes that I did. It would make life a lot easier. But, life isn't made to be easy, is it? Life is about risking and searching. Learning, falling, and getting up again, each scar a sign of something you have come through, something may have knocked the wind out of you, but in the end, you did get up. Maybe a little less confident, maybe a little more jaded- but you got up. Sometimes that alone is the lesson- that you can get up again. You can brush yourself off, pick up the pieces, and rearrange them to make something different. And who knows? That something different may turn out to be what was supposed to be, all along.