I was walking through Walgreens, picking out lavender lotion for my sweet Auntie. I was hitting up the store for a bottle of wine and a small gift for her, and then I was meeting her and my father for dinner. The three of us would be sharing a meal in my dad's kitchen. My father was cooking. My aunt was making a salad, and the wine was mine to bring.
I had watched her through the years, growing up as a niece. She had an energy about her that I always admired. I knew part of her story, probably not much...but enough to know that she was just like everyone else in that she'd experienced joy and pain, beauty and hardship, love and loss. Yet, she was somehow infinitely different. Her face glowed. She had a contagious laugh. Joy always entered the room before her. People around her were drawn into her energy.
I came alone. We poured the wine. She smelled like patchouli. I got lost in her face, her smile. I let go of inhibition, and just for a few hours was completely present and in the moment, and entirely myself...unedited. We ate. We laughed. Music played. A few tears of joy shimmered up in each of our eyes, and vanished before spilling over. For just a few hours in my life, I was transported. I forgot about the dread I would feel later that night when I would pull into the driveway to find a dark room filled with depression and anger. At one point, my aunt looked at me and said..."You just look amazing. You must be so happy right now..." I thought to myself, "If you only knew..."
Somehow, that dinner with those two people flipped a switch in me. I thought to myself that I need to find a way to steal her energy and make it mine...joy independent of my circumstances. I need to take that joy with me, to carry it in my heart so it can light my way. Then, I realized...I don't have to steal it. I have my own supply.
"Fuck it," I thought. I'm gonna be happy.
I don't care about the dark house with the blacked out curtains. I don't care about the difficult days and nights ahead of me balancing studying and working and mothering and enabling. I don't care if I leave nursing school with the same GPA I entered with. I don't care if my marriage lives or dies, if my broken heart heals, if my checking account says $5 million or 5 cents, if my credit ever rebounds. I don't care about all of the bad decisions I've made that got me to this place, the earned and unearned shame I've experienced as I've chosen to dig my hole and then own it. I'm going to stop trying to control shit I cannot control, and I am just going to be happy.
Life can change in one moment. We can look at the same situation with different eyes. From that dinner on, something was different. It was like joy became viscous, and seeped into all of the cracks in my life, covering everything. School became fun. Coming home became fun. Studying became fun...working, mothering...all became fun. If something wasn't fun, I didn't try to make it fun....I just accepted that it wasn't fun, and I looked for the fun elsewhere and followed it the way a dog sniffs out food and goes after it without inhibition. I became happier. My children became happier. Work became happier. Studying became happier. My relationships started healing. It was like every person, every crack, and every surface of my life became bathed in the liquid love that my aunt taught me to channel and pour out.
I once heard Kyle Cease say something along the lines of..."Wouldn't it just be amazing if we all just are who we are...instead of trying to be what everyone else wants us to be...because if we are who we are and others reject us, they just leave. People and things that are like us stay, people and things that are unlike us leave, and they do us a favor by going..."
I stopped editing myself and I just started speaking my truth. I stopped being afraid of being me. I accepted me, all of me...even the parts I don't like. I stopped caring about failing, and I stopped caring about being successful. I stopped worrying about the outcome, and just completely became absorbed and present in the process. And, the joy flowed. The people in my life started changing, slowly. Some rejected me, and that was okay. Some rejected the joy, and that was okay too. There are some who I still piss off, and I don't even know how. But, I don't care so much anymore, because I cannot waste another minute of my short life trying to make someone else happy. I have no cures for insecurity, not in others...not even my own. I ask the love to come each day and cover everything, heal everything, seep into every aspect of everything I do. I ask for the courage to speak my truth, to accept me for me....and then I leave the outcome to someone else.
I see my children act uninhibited sometimes, and then I watch them as they pull back and edit themselves. I'll tell them how its just so important to be who they are, to do what they are meant to do...to give themselves permission to be happy, to be joyful, to be different, to not care about what everyone else thinks...or being liked...or being popular. I'll tell them that they will be judged, either way. They will be disliked by some no matter what...It's okay. Some people will leave. That's not theirs. They are incapable of saving anyone from their pain. Theirs is to speak their truth, to let love flow like liquid, to channel the good vibes, to have fun, to do what they were created to do and not worry about the outcome.
I hope I can teach them what it took a lot of years, a ton of pain, and one amazing night with my sweet Auntie for me to learn.