What it all comes down to is this:

I LOVE my life.

I am in love with the fact that everyday I get to be myself, I get to struggle, to fight, to smile, to cry and laugh. I get to feel a full range of emotions and step in gum, fall off the last step of my spiral staircase when I'm late in the morning and yell at the lady who shoulder-checks me on the side walk. I love the stab of pure pain that I feel when a friend's kid tells me "It's time for you to come home...ok, that's fine, I think I can wait a month," and the rush of sheer delight that somebody misses me, somebody really cares that I am gone. All the more powerful that it's a five year old. I love that I can curse until my very lips turn blue over the fact that people who should know better, don't. Just the feeling of that ripe, juicy f**k squeezing itself from my upstanding vocabulary...bliss. It is the most amazingly beautiful confusion to have loved so hard, so fast and to still feel that love and have absolutely no idea what to do with it. And then to feel the hope and faith that I've known love, I know it's there, so I'm sure that I will find what I'm looking for again, or eventually. Whichever comes first. The sleepless nights that are caused by the terror over the state of the world, and the question of whether or not I will even get the chance to know the love that I'm looking for, that's meant to be in my life always, not just as a lesson. I get to taste the first bittersweet sip of coffee that is used to revive me from that night with no sleep. The exhilaration of busting my ass and and pausing long enough to see that I've done something. I love the assuredness in my soul that everything I do is for me and not them. I may have to nod and smile at the jackasses, but they can't have the script that I'm writing in my heart while I blind 'em with my grin. The first warmed honey feeling that slips through my veins when I can collect myself long enough to write, to relax, to sit down or wind up with my friends after that first cocktail and realize how wonderful things really are.

Everything. I love it. Just to feel. I love it. I can stand on my own two feet and breath, look around and be. A lot of it sucks. And damn if it isn't hard, everyday it get's harder. The lines blur just a little bit more. But even if it's bad, it means that I am HERE. Every moment that I am fully capable is a blessing.

By no means am I dropping the cynicism and getting all pollyanna-ish on you guys - two days from now I'm sure I'll have a proper rant over something worthless like how "people have no awareness of themselves in space, frikkin' A-MAZ-ING." But even those rants make life worth living.

UNFINISHED

I'm all ears
and I'm all doors
all open windows to my soul
with an invitation to
"come on in, love"
without even makin' you
wipe your feet on the threshold.
No worries. That's what I'm here for.