There is a soft sound coming from somewhere near by, sweet and melodious but I can’t discern where it might be coming from. I am in that state between a dream in sleep and waking. I open my eyes. My room is still bathed in the shadow of early morning. My cat is sleeping beside my upper left thigh rolled into a ball, head tucked into tail. I carefully free my arm from the warm layers of blanket it has been cozy in to sneak a quick scratch to the cat. She lifts her head to look at me. I am greeted with a quick chirp. I love this cat. Hubby and I rescued her during the Big Life Shutdown (Covid-19). I can still hear the tune that stirred me. I am able to hear my inner voice quite clearly and I am sure it is me thinking about a song that I just can’t get out of my mind. I am awake in the light of a new day.

Some times life changes in ways that is unexpected and unwanted but it happens so pull up those big girl panties and show up. I am changing. I am not the person I once was. The person I strove to be in my younger years I now find distasteful. I surprise myself with how unready I was to be a grown up. Silly fantasy instead of planning a life. I could have gone to college. I could have been anything I wanted to work for but I chose a different path. I have no regrets. The less travelled road often reaps the best hidden gems; BUT, I can not undo the years where I felt like I was less than everyone. Was I not as intelligent, not as wise, not as beautiful as everyone around me? Maybe but unlikely. What was I? Complicit. No excuses. My sisters and I were raised without much expectation so I rose to that level. I was complicit in my own failure to achieve something greater than I had been exposed to .

I tried to never have any friends. I rarely reached out to family. I liked to pretend I was all alone in my misery. I really desperately wanted to be seen but I was more afraid to experience any more emotional pain. In my adult life I managed to find love and get married. I let my wall of defenses down long enough to allow myself to find love. Life changing in so many good ways. I think it is the real reason I have allowed myself to grow as a person. I was accepted as I was; not as a token to what I might be or what I could become. Just me, warts and all. I have love and I am still married.

People are so simple and yet so complex. We will do anything to make a friend and then everything to make them go away when they get “too close” or a conflict develops. Someone I was once very close with recently told me that over the past few years I had become increasing hard to be friends with. News to me. There were no warning flares, no “hey! you are being a bitch”, no “this isn’t fun anymore”…. just avoidance, from both of us. I think we both knew in the back of our minds that our friendship had seen better days. Our friendship started to feel like an old married couple who don’t want to face the truth of their dead love; we dragged our friendship around, until I made that step. I committed the worst deed. I spoke up. I fancied the idea of chasing after her, to make things better, to right whatever wrong I may have done; but, I stopped myself. I am better than that. I have learned how to say goodbye. I know what I am worth, what my time means to me. I am no longer interested in trivial bullshit I had no hand in creating.

In the light of a new day I know I will make other friends. I know I will let others drift away from me and I will be drifted away from but at the end of my days my life will still be better for all of it. The memories, the laughs, and yes, even the tears. I will miss her. She taught me many lessons, some life changing, some soul burning, some life affirming. You can’t make anyone like you. It has to be a gift freely given. No regrets.

In the light of a new day? I am enough just as I am.