There's A Country Song In My Life

Sometimes I secretly believe I have ESP. Not really true. (Notice the addition of the word really? Kind of gives me some wiggle room. Cause sometimes I scare myself with how right I am about stuff! haha) The secret is I just have been through so much, experienced so much that I can usually detect the scent of been there done that and react to countermand it or lay back, pick up my flapping oars and glide my little dinghy through it the mess.

I think that's one of the gifts of growing up in a halfway house. By no initial choice of my own I've seen a lot in my life. I've been through a lot. I can tell you there is no magic in making it through. There is only looking for signs that something is happening again. Reoccurring. Seeing those signs, recognizing familiarity and making the most of what life hands you - with grace and dignity.

But I knew one day I'd get a chance to make something right. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I only hoped that it would be done nicely.

I got the chance this morning to re-open an old, deep terrible wound in order to clean it out and allow it to heal properly (and this is totally an analogy) and I leapt at it. I'm not so good living in the gray area of life. Gee...really Candi?!?! And whenever I get the chance to wrap it up, put a bow on it and file it under DONE, FINISHED, OVER AND OUT I go for it.

At the end of the hour and forty minute conversation this morning it felt like I had done a tour of Afghanistan. I was worn out, dehydrated and shaking from having my opportunity to make a big hurt go away. About halfway through this conversation though, I became aware that the amount of pain I was putting myself through in order to hear what I thought I needed to hear might not have been worth pulling off the scab and probing around with a sharp toothpick (again, analogy).

It was frightening how every single mistreatment, every slight, every painful memory came flooding back. I not only remembered, but felt as if I had relived the entire saga. One year in one hour and some change. In that hour I heard everything I needed to hear. The problem was - with every apology was the memory of why it needed to be said. It got hard to listen and I began to feel so tired. That November to Remember kind of tired, that both deeply saddens and frightens me.

I listened a lot - because this person talks a lot. And so I heard a lot. And I knew certain things would happen to them and that certain ends were inevitable for them. I got to kiddingly say, I knew that would happen because you know I'm never wrong and hear laughter on the other end. Because - uh hello - I AM never wrong. (Reason #152 on why I live alone...)

But I'm rarely wrong not because of ESP, but because I have seen and heard and experienced a lot -living with "housemates who took anti-hallucinogenics." It's nice to know it was all good for something! Hee hee. They honed something in me. Yes, something besides my mouth. My heart. My pathos. In my life I haven't seen it all, but pretty damn close to a whole hell of a lot!

S when the laundry list started in on how this went wrong and this relationship didn't work out... (Gee really...I'm so sad for you...world's smallest violin playing in background...) I just smiled inside and thought, My God, you couldn't see that coming? I mean their patterns are so deep and loud their stage name could be Glen Plaid.

Something I didn't like began to happen. I immediately started to imagine and tally up my own laundry list of Woe Is Whut You Done To Me. Picture me mentally bobbing my head consistent with trying to enter a serious game of Double Dutch jumprope, while I listened politely waiting for a break, so I could chime in. But on like bob number 56 I started to think to myself, wait! Why do I want to play this? My life is amazing. Everything is going really well. I'm very happy. And this whole rigamarole was a lot of pain to go through for closure.

(Closure. A word I now understand to be highly over-rated as being a necessary evil. It is evil and maybe not so necessary. Hmm...maybe I'm growing up and looking a little better in shades of gray!) And so I took a breath to stop it, or at the very least hop in, but the tears kept getting in the way of my talking.

In my forced silence I suddenly happened upon the perfect accessory for gray - it's the words "I forgive you."

I know. Imagine.

I forgive you. I have forgiven you. No need to go any further. Because I have forgiven everything. Likely months earlier. Forgiven. (Not forgotten. But why remember if the hard work is done?) That was today's lesson. I was finished with it all and hadn't realized until the wound was reopened and I felt it was better to leave it alone than to dig around anymore. It was DONE, FINISHED, OVER AND OUT.

I forgive you. For everything.

So amazingly freeing. Saying it out loud loosened my tongue in the best way possible. I could enter the conversation with gusto! Only all my sentences began with, "I'm sorry, too..." Because if I forgive you I forgive me.

Yes. I caught the forgiveness bug and it caused me to smile and accept my own part in my humanity and fallibility. And instead of feeling sad - I felt great. Light. Happy. Free. Once I said I was sorry and ergo forgiven myself a fabulous, warm and almost spiritual lightness began to seep into my gray. And in the midst of this most humble of humanity it dawned on me. My life is one big country song...

It could be called..."If You Give It A Minute It'll Happen To Me Again" or "I'm Just A Black and White Girl Living In A World Of Gray"...

But I think the Country Music Award for best description of where I am today is: "Don't Bother Serving That Up Again Cuz' I'm DONE, FINISHED, OVER AND OUT"

You know you love me - Candi