like that bamboo shoot she keeps growing.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

as i stride through life and move forward, i cannot help but reflect on the past. whats new right. i have been in purge mode as we prepare for our move to Indy and i have sifted through boxes of old school papers, old art, chandler learning to write and arielle learning math i can't do. pictures tucked in boxes. art poked in between my bed and compuer desk. little girls growing up.

i look back to where i've been, to fully appreciate where i'm going. it has been almost a year since rodney came into my life. or rather, i came into his. without knowing i was coming into his life. an innocent myspace friend request. at a time where i was not ready to trust a man. i was not prepared to love or be loved. i think being ready to BE loved is harder than being ready to love.

i was not ready. i was so scared about life. i was so not knowing where i was going to go with my future. i was starting a new job and that meant putting college on the back burner yet again. i had a hospital scare in august and by october, was in full on party mode, trying to drink away the pain and the fear.

i remember opening my door that first night for rodney and instantly thinking i was not going to be his kind. he was too quiet and i was too trashy. or so i would believe. too many skeletons. too little to offer. nothing but a bunch of baggage from other guys that had hurt me in my past.

who knew that i was not too trashy and he was no where near as quiet as he led me to believe that first date. who knew he was quietly interrogating me. who knew he had the cop thing going on.

it took me like 2 seconds to fall in love with this man, and many months to let him love me. it was AFTER our wedding before i started to trust him and believe i might actually be as good a wife as he said i would be. all i knew was that i failed before. i surely was just not the marrying kind.

it has taken me many months to believe in our future, and trust that it is there for the taking, and to see that light at the end of the road. but i see it. and each day it becomes more real. each day i love him more just because he loves me just how i am. he not just gives me a life i couldn't have on my own, but he gives me a sense of myself. which as someone who identified herself only by her marriage and measures her self worth by what her spouse thought of her the first time around, i know that that is dangerous thinking. but yet, he allows me to stay an individual as well as be a part of this team we have.

we are a team. our family succeeds because we work together. someone i hadn't seen in a while asked me how my kids were recently and it felt sooooo good to say "great" and genuinely mean it. i measure my self worth more on how my kids are because if i'm not happy, they aren't happy, and believe me, a year ago this was true.

watching my 10 year old sprout right up and become more secure with herself tells me she IS secure with her life. she can focus on her own things instead of worrying about tomorrow.

a year ago i was given a bamboo shoot in the hospital and it was the best gift because i'm a serial plant killer. with bamboo, you just water it about once a week and let it be. no extra attention needed. it has almost doubled its size which at this point, i'm amazed it's even alive. hell, i still wiggle the turtles to see if they are among the living because besides my children, i just don't keep things alive.

but that bamboo sits on my kitchen bar and serves as a daily reminder. a daily reminder of those terrifying few days in the hospital where they didn't know if i would live or die, the months following where i myself have doubled in size. a reminder that giving yourself a little attention each week goes a long way. paying attention to those little areas in life. those moments where you stop what you are doing and hug your child. where you eat chocolate for dinner just for the hell of it. the little things.

to this day my favorite quote is from the movie vanilla sky, "every passing moment is a chance to turn it all around." i had no idea that one year ago my simple message on myspace was going to turn it all around.