If I Choose

“There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad, and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don't. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.”  ~Jose N. Harris

I heard Samuel L. Jackson's wife once answered a question about the secret to the success of her forty year marriage with "amnesia." Apparently she got a lot of flack for her frankness. Personally, I think she's brilliant. So right on the money I had to tell my husband of thirteen years. We laughed, and wholeheartedly agreed with Mrs. Jackson. Of course other elements must be present for a long-term relationship to sustain, such as love, compatibility, respect and a desire to be there. But sometimes you just gotta forget the past. It won't ever change, and is so flippin' awful if the past must remain the present, a person can't endure. That is where this Monday finds me.     

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. It has to be. The utter futility of spending one more moment embroiled in the bitter past consumes me with such fervor I just can't do it anymore. I'm so sick of crying the same tired anthems! The same struggles over the same issues involving the same people and everyone's tried-and-true same behavior dysfunctions, most pointedly mine. Well stop the world, I want to get off. Every moment of the past thirty-eight years has brought me to right now. A state of complete rejection of what is. Not for acceptances sake, but for future sake. I can't take what is into tomorrow. Hell, I can't even take it into this afternoon! I must be free from the past that burdens itself upon me.

Every darn action I subconsciously take comes from a broken and battered soul. My reactions, capabilities, coping skills, efforts and intentions are all tinged by the hurt from the past. Every breath I take floods lungs reeking of fear and trepidation with the stale air of a present that won't ever change. But it can change, in this moment, if I choose. I can be free from the woman who came before me, the one who allowed anger and unfairness to rule the roost. If I choose. I can allow the snakeskin of contention to shed itself from my slithery underbelly. I can respond to life with gratitude and compassion. I can allow revolution to rage inside me, a lotus to bloom where my clenched heart used to reside. I've been blessed with many gifts in this life, some the result of intense hardship. What I do next is what I choose.

Thanks for joining,
Leah