christmas spirit.

okay.

i've been horrible this year.

i've lost perspective, lost a great job, lost sight of how to be kind in the face of cruelty, lost money intended for virtue to the hands of vice.

i've been ineffective.

i've been weak.

...

so today, i sent an apology.  probably for the tiniest of all my crimes, but it was the clearest first step. if i were to go back to each and every person i bristled with this past year and attempt to un-burn bridges, i don't think it would be the best use of my, or their, time.  Sometimes you burn a bridge and the freedom of being an island heals you.  Sometimes being an island also isolates you though, and for how much i fight, i keep coming up shorter and shorter of balance between the freedom and the isolation.

i keep describing myself as straddling this line between divorce and making it work with my baby's dad.  i'm kicking myself for setting up this abysmal reality for myself that ensures I'm barely surviving within the very emotional limits that keep me stranded in indecision.  on the one hand, i feel propelled towards building a new life with my little one, one that is simple, controlled, safe, and yes, i realize it will be hard.  hard to make enough money, build enough security, create a life that is fully lived on a poverty wage.

but not emotionally hard, like it is now.  i think about my husband, this person whom i entrusted my whole heart to, that i willingly surrendered every guarded part of myself to, and i'm still in love with him.  which breaks my heart each and every time i interact with him.  the truth is that i'm terrified to let go of him.  i'm afraid that our love has most definitely run its course, yet i still love him.  even after everything that has gone so very wrong, imagining my life without him seems wretched, even a tiny bit horrible.

so i'm avoiding it.

which means i've been horrible.  i've been the fastest to point out the flaws and failings of others, the quickest to the mean girls' table.  i've flippantly dismissed other people that are most definitely wounded already by life and offered zero empathy, no acknowledgement of their humanity.  i reasoned that this is how they've treated me, they don't care so why should i?

but i do know better.  i know better than to revert to an eye for an eye.

i know better, and lazily, i did it anyways.

so i'm starting over.

again.

rebuild my trust in myself.  rebuild my world.  be brave enough to let go when i need to let go.  be kind to myself when i just keep holding on for too long.