Carpe Diem.

Sitting in the dark, the tears I fought all day trailed slowly down my cheeks.

I didn’t see today coming, and I suspect I would have made missteps and mistakes even if I had. It began easily enough – a rare chance to run in the quiet dawn as my thoughts raced across the hopes and dreams and new beginnings that fill my mind and my heart. But from that moment on it unraveled and like a roller coaster off its rails I couldn’t quite seem to get it back on track.

First the phone call. And then the words on the screen.

And then the deep sadness that permeated the day.

A year ago this week, I closed the final door on a painful past. But in closing that door I was forced to relive every moment of what had brought us there. In a cruel twist of irony, what I needed most in those moments was love to protect me as I fought to protect the memory of love long gone. I did not want to relive those moments any more than I wanted to admit my weakness in being afraid of them.

Closing that door removed the weight of the past. Like a foal new born I rushed forward, stumbling over myself over and over as I chased happiness. And I have struggled with my frustration that while I am ready to rush forward, my heady weightlessness is fettered by simple realities and practical matters that require patience. Time and time again, I have erred and I know that it is simply unbridled joy and desire that is my undoing. If I could only reign myself in, perhaps I would stumble less.

But it is those mistakes that perhaps I should embrace because they show me at my most human, most passionate and most fragile. I love too fiercely and hurt too easily.

And therein lies my problem.

Replaying the day in my mind like a silent reel, I watch the little girl on the screen rage that the wrong parent died and the day’s weight and the fears that I fight rise up and spill over, washing the mistakes of the day away. I love too fiercely and hurt too easily. 

And therein lies my beauty.