Rolling With The Top Down

Letting go of financial insecurity.

I am allowed to drive across the Bay Bridge with the top down on the convertible and the seat warmer on high and the music on loud.

I am allowed.

I was half way to talking myself out of not using the car to drive into the city tomorrow.  Parking is expensive.  I dropped $22 on the garage today.  Then I thought, screw that.  I am fortunate to have a car, and I do not know for how long I will get it and use it, don’t be afraid of gas money and parking money.

Be ok with it.

It is a gift.

I was driving back to Oakland, headed to the freeway on ramp via Bryant Street after getting to say good-bye to a wonderful group of my friends.  I shed a few tears tonight.  It is challenging to get up in front of people who you love and say I love you and you have been there for me and without you I would be nothing and nowhere.

I did it.

It was hard to say and so good.

So good.

I am so amazingly blessed with the people who I have gotten to know in San Francisco.  Just seeing a few of them tonight really brought it home.

San Francisco is my home.

I am leaving on a wonderful note, Giants in the World Series, the city experiencing strong economic growth, and all the places that I have gotten to go, all the people whose lives have touched mine and mine perhaps there’s.

I was writing this morning before work and I was really struck by the depth of growth that I have experienced here and the quality and diversity of people I have met.

It really is astounding when I took a moment.

I wrote a few of those names down in my journal, just the barest fraction of people who have been a part of this leg of the journey, and I was blown away by gratitude and I shed a few tears before I even got out the door.

I was suffused with love.

I brought soup to my GM and figs to a co-worker and I said thank you to another co-worker and gave him a stupendous hug today.  I wanted to grab  the builder and squeeze his cheeks, I called people who had a new bicycle waiting for them and the day passed by in a blur.

I bought a few inner tubes to pack up with my bike and talked to the GM about doing an exit interview.

I have never done one.  I think it’s important.  I feel like I could benefit from it and I can impart a few things too.  I will say it is gratifying to see how much work I put into my job and how well that has helped shaped where the business is at.

I got to be a part of some ones dream.

The owners did not know what they had going when they started.  And I got to be a part of that journey for a little while.

How freaking cool.

I also mused today about my lover and the man I am also seeing here and there when the time permits.

I was struck, very suddenly, with the realization that had this happened before I bought my ticket that I may not have bought my ticket.  And had I not bought my ticket I would probably not have gotten to have either experience in the dating world.

That was amazing.

First to see that I often toss aside what I want for some one else or just the idea of some one else.

Second that I got the hell out-of-the-way and my I don’t really care attitude actually helped in going out with both of them.

I still am not used to the idea of romantically dating one person and sleeping with another man.  One of them knows of the other and that too is strange, but really, come on, it’s funny too.

Or fun.

Or weird.

Or just another experience and I bet I am not the first person who has had this experience.  Nope, I am not terminally unique.

And I am not sitting with mismatched flip-flops on the side of the road at the intersection of Bryant and Division waiting for life to end.  A moment of gratitude so intense spilled over me.

As I have been sitting on the curb side smoking a cigarette scraped up from god only knows where wondering where the hell I would be going next and in envy of the woman at the stop sign in the convertible with the wind in her hair and the top down and the music splashing over the top of the doors and into my lap.

An ocean of sound and experience and love that washed over me and threaten to swallow me and wring my heart dry in its hot dusty pain, then it was gone, the car, and I was left in the back wash of desire and envy and pain.

Pain I caused myself out of fear.  Out of lack.  Out of constant want.

Want what you have, love what you have, love who you are, and let go of the fear.

I told myself, so what that it is going to be a cost to fill the tank on the car and so what if I pay another twenty spot to park tomorrow.  I am not going to spoil the moment by worrying about not having enough.

I have enough.

I have food.

I have a place to lay my head.

I have a ticket to ride.

I pulled the car over and dropped the roof down.  I cranked up the heat.  I turned up the stereo and I sailed over the Bay Bridge with the moon shining down on me, I sang my song at the top of my lungs and I smiled until it almost hurt my face, almost.

When I hit the High Street exit, High on Crack St., I did turn the channel on the radio, and hit a big old patch of gangsta rap and said, why not, when in Rome, or East Oakland, and blew it up, rolling down International, white girl with a big grin on her face and some loud music, top down, bumping it back home.

Here’s one for all the girls sitting on the corner with mismatched hearts and thin sole shoes.  I feel the thinness of those sandals in the balls of my feet and I acknowledge the pain that came from that, but I am done paying, I have paid my dues.

I am rolling a different way now.

And I am not afraid the cost.

I am enjoying the ride.

I fucking earned it.

 

Tags: bay bridge, crack, dating, gas money, love, postaday, San Francisco