Make believe

I had a great day today. I didn’t do things as a reaction to him. I didn’t long for him and what we had, could’ve had, or should’ve had. I didn’t hate him for what he never gave me. When I talked about him --if I talked about him -- I discussed him as an entity separate from myself. I spoke, I think, objectively, not void of emotion, but without emotional affect. I spoke of him in the past without possibility or hope for a future. He was something that happened to me, no longer something that defined me. Last night and today I had conversations with people who fed the intellectual cravings I’d desired for so long. I got to share my philosophy impart my ideologies, and feel the way I felt without fear of judgment or abuse. I hadn’t had that for quite some time.

Today was growth. I sat in my favorite chair journaling with my dog at my side recalling a conversation that had just occurred and feeling my growth but incapable of acknowledging its need for a name. I felt more satisfied than I had before because satisfaction was born from a moment and not a search. Over the past few months I’ve been searching for happiness, for satisfaction, for peace, for me. But those things are lost in the seeking. They lie quietly in the moments of serenity. They are the spawn of acceptance -- not complacency -- acceptance in the purest form: “the fact of being accepted: approval” I approved of myself today. I stamped a red rubber stamp, sans the bureaucracy, on my flesh. To say that I loved myself would be doing an injustice to what transgressed. I have always “loved myself.” Yet did not approve, at least, as I should have. To approve of oneself, one’s history, reality and response to the preceding is the greatest peace. That was gift to myself.

Thinking of the joy that I hear in Emily’s voice when she speaks of her wife is ecstasy. To think that someone who went through so much has found what they have desired is exhilarating. Not because I hope to find that someday, but because someone already has. I hear in her voice the love that I dreamt existed before I met him,  felt as I loved him, and began to forget and as he ignored his love for me. Hearing that truth, that clarity in her voice was a soothing relief to a heart that lay singed and wizened from pain. I’m glad that she has found what she has, because now I know that what I craved as a little girl doesn’t only exist in the land of make believe.