These weeks are dense with milestones: my birthday, my wedding anniversary, my sister's birthday, my son's birthday ... Every milestone fills me with joyous appreciation for what I have and what I am simultaneously with despair over how far short of the mark I fall, and with grief of those we've lost who don't get to celebrate with us.
It's a complicated juggling act, and I believe that the virtue of this juggling is that it keeps us human and it keeps us truthful. The downside is that it can be far too easy for this juggling to slip out of balance, and instead of simply noticing 'ah yes, there's that ball that carries with it frustration and despair' but then it's up in the air again so the joyous ball can land momentarily, it becomes possible to forget to release the despair ball or the grief ball, so that the joy and appreciation ball falls to the ground, unnoticed ... and then we are out of balance, unsure of exactly what happened ... Unsure how we once again ended up where we swore we'd never go willingly again.
We do go there willingly. We love our identities and we hold fast to them. Despair and darkness are my secret inner self, and there is a part of me, at least, that believes they are my truest self. But I choose to reject that self-judgement.
So, today, again, I choose to remember all I have to celebrate, and all I get to work on, and all I get to keep trying ... and I will keep juggling those three balls, never forgetting to release them back into the air ... I will choose not to let the joy and appreciation fall unheeded to the ground to lay in the corner gathering dust. I will keep it in the mix, juggling it deftly with all the other things that make me up.
For I am human. Complicated, truthful, flawed, and ready to be more than just a memory of pain past.
