Shit Eating Grin

Happy New Year:  a nice sentiment perhaps but this year has been a precarious balancing act for as skilled a tightrope walker as I may appear to be.  What do I mean by nice sentiment?  There is definitely a sarcastic tone to that thought after the year I’ve been through, hell after all the years I’ve been through.  Can I honestly still have hope?!  Yes, I can.  Call me Pollyanna or Little Miss Sunshine or whatever name you have coined to describe my pathetic plague of eternal hope but yes I am eternally hopeful and I know that life will not be all sunshine and happiness.  This last year alone has been plagued with betrayal, death, uncertainty and a smile still lifts both corners of my sneer because this past year has been one of the most blessed yet.

Chewy, my twenty-two year old cat, who has an oozing lesion on his belly should not, could not possibly still be alive and there he was circling my feet beneath my desk with his signature telltale meeowp reminding me that the dogs are scratching at the door demanding to be let in from the freezing new year night.  After all the sadness in my life, I’m still here too with my own infectious laugh.   My life has indeed changed and like Chewy I shouldn’t, couldn’t possibly still be here in this life with a shit-eating grin on my face.  I’ve learned some valuable lessons this year. 

A card laid is a card played is a saying my Uncle Hugo used on me when I wanted to take a playing card back up off the table when I realized I hadn’t made the right move.  I’ve laid some cards down this year that I wanted to pick up after they’d been played.  Regret some may call this but I have learned the lesson and have no regrets.  Betrayal has not kept me from leaning into life with my heart and I proudly wear a tattoo on my arm – heart on my sleeve – and live from this intention.  The friends I have in my life have weathered many storms by my side and I by theirs.  They have also basked in the bliss of some of my greatest triumphs – triumphs in intimately trusting another again, enjoying the simple beauty of the outdoors, being cared for by another, being vulnerable and scared and feeling safe enough to voice my own insecurities.  I’ve come a long way from the everything is perfect facade I wore on my masked face.  Life is not perfect.  Life is full of contrast – we learn from knowing what we don’t want just as much, more I believe, than we do from knowing what we do want. 

Death and life will both be constants in our lives.  The key I have learned is to be present in the moment to the experience of being alive.  Life is an experiment in mixing colors like a child.  Use all the colors of the rainbow – taste foods you’ve never tried, visit places you’ve always wondered about, make new friends …. Discover who you are each day.  A card laid is indeed a card played but each day the deck is shuffled and a new game is ready to be enJOYed.