I'm a Wild Thing!

It’s an eerily beautiful evening. The sun has gone down, a nice breeze is blowing and the air is coming in through the window. I can see the trees waving through the picture window in my living room. I’m so fortunate to have been born where I was, to the parents that I had, to live where I live… nothing is ideal, but I’ve had choices and I’ve made choices. It’s true that I live a relatively stable life and I actually long for some exciting change, and I feel like I’m on the cusp of big, juicy change that will hopefully yield a more satisfying life for me and for my daughter. That kind of change can’t come quick enough. I’m restless for it. I want it. Then there are the changes I can’t control. The kind that I don’t want, the kind that I’m not prepared for, that I’m impatient to endure. My daughter was not feeling well today; she was fine yesterday. She griped about her pain and I alternately soothed and nurtured her and felt impatient to endure staying in the apartment all day, which had not been my plan today. So many times things don’t go as planned and/or unexpected changes pop up in a heartbeat. You went to sleep with one body, woke up with another (what, more gray hair?! What’s that line across my forehead? Why is that pimple there? I didn’t even know I could get a pimple *there*… you get the picture). A love that you thought would last forever falls apart. School comes to an end and the job you expected to get is still not forthcoming. You move somewhere and it’s not at all what you expected. You expect to find lasting fulfillment in that new gadget and then the new love wears off and becomes emptiness and boredom. Again.

I recognize that I always have a choice. Even when the outer situation can’t change. I can choose to feel frustrated or I can choose to get the lesson and expect miracles. I expect miracles. I expect to reveal my vulnerability and for it to be taken as the strength that it is. I expect life’s situations to line up… for the space that was always there to be open to me when I choose to take it.

Note: this writing was inspired while watching the movie, “Where the Wild Things Are.”  And by my PMS.  In the movie, Max (and the Wild Things by extension) struggle to accept change.