One year ago today, I moved back home with my two younger children, single again for the 4th time in my adult life. Happy to be rid of the drama that was my life, though it turns out it was just the beginning of the end of the drama.

I want to cry – to bawl my face off – but I’m not sure why. I can’t tell if it’s the unmitigated joy I feel in being free of that past, in discovering, piece by piece, who I really am, as scary as that is, or if it’s the glimpse of no one waiting for me, making me ache in my bones for someone to put their arms around me and stand between me and this big, bad world – if only for a moment, if only in my mind. Not that I would tolerate it for long, of course, but I do so ever long for it now and then, mostly when I’m tired, when I question what the hell I am doing and if I have a plan?

I’ve had a year full of endings, each showing me another part of me I have to let go for me to be the real me, yet I’m surrounded by beginnings, just waiting for me to begin.

It’s all up to me, and I wonder in these wee hours who the hell left me in charge? I’ve been so absorbed in making down appear to be up, wrong appear to be right, impossible seem not only possible, but probable – yet when it comes to choosing where I go from here, without all that madness to make sane, I’m lost. Inter-FEAR-ence, no doubt.

Fortunately, I’ll go to bed and to sleep and when I wake, life and all its urgency will take over again and I’ll be fine. But sometime soon I’ll have to figure this blank slate out.

Happy damned anniversary. Here’s looking at me, kid. Time to put my money where my mouth is.