Eleven years.
But holy shit.
It happened.
I finally felt comfortable in the room.
There’s a room I found myself in about eleven years and 10 days ago.
I was profoundly uncomfortable.
I am not sure how the hell I stayed the whole hour.
I did, though.
And I kept coming back.
Even when my ass was falling off.
Even when I looked like hell.
Even when my best friend was dying in a hospital just down the road.
I laughed there.
I smoked a lot of cigarettes there, at least for a few months, the smoking ceased, the going there did not.
I felt not enough too often to recount.
I felt less then just about as often.
I was never a cool kid, I was never going to be a cool kid.
I don’t know that I was a cool kid tonight.
I’m too old to be a cool kid, but I tell you what, I felt fine.
I felt good.
I felt even and at peace and nothing was lacking or wrong in my life.
I was finally comfortable in that folding chair, underneath those ceiling fans.
I saw men I had crushes on.
Men who I had asked out on dates and was told no, thanks, or worse.
No response at all.
I saw a man I had made out with the night the Giants won the last world series.
I saw women I hadn’t seen in years.
I got hugs and gave hugs.
I felt good to be the exact person I am today, strong, happy, secure, loved.
I laughed with a friend on the way home.
And marveled at my life.
I mean, I truly marveled.
I have come so far, so fucking far, it constantly blows my mind and when I think, “think,” things are not going my way or it could, should, or ought to be better, when I think, “I’ll be happy when…”
I know I am on the wrong track, off on the wrong foot, going in the wrong direction on the one way street.
I was riding my bicycle earlier today, heading into work, swooping along the paths on the Pan Handle and I was thinking about New York.
I was thinking about Paris.
I was thinking about what I want.
I was thinking about me.
I was telling God how it should be.
I was telling God how I wanted it to go down next.
Then I laughed the fuck out loud.
Who the hell was I to tell God what to do?
Who was I to complain that I wasn’t being loved the way that I thought I should be?
Hahahahaha.
Oh my God.
What a fool I am.
I made the decision right then and there to love and not be loved, as it says in this nice little prayer I read every morning, that I say, that I try to carry out the door with me into the wide world.
Although.
As it can be seen as evidenced above, I only made it a few miles down the road before I was telling God specifically what kind of love I deserved.
“Carmen, I love you, will you marry me,” my little five year old charge said to me tonight.
“You’re a little young for me,” I said and smiled.
“What if I was 51?” He said, dipping his buttered toast into a bowl of warm broccoli soup I had made.
“Can I have another bowl of soup?” He asked, mopping up the last of the bowl with the crust of bread.
“Of course,” I said and swooped in, picking up his bowl, kissing his head, ruffling the hair there.
“Well? What if I was 51?” He asked me again as I set a fresh bowl of soup in front of him.
I already had the next piece of bread toasting in the oven.
“51 might be a little too old,” I said with a smile, and sipped my tea.
“What if I was your age!” He said, bright eyed, then, he smiled, “and a little taller?”
I laughed out loud.
“Why then of course! Yes, love, I would marry you.”
“Will we have kids?”
Oh my.
Ha.
I am loved.
Over and above and beyond what I deserve.
Love.
Everywhere.
A friend texting me to give me a lift home.
A friend texting to ask me out to a movie.
A hug.
A kiss.
A three year old, “Carmen, CARMEN, CARMEN!”
“Yes?”
“I love you!” Sotto voce.
Oh, my darling, I love you too.
I have so much love.
I prayed from my knees the other night.
(every night, every morning)
By my bedside and thanked my God for knowing the depth of love that I have gotten to know.
To find beauty and grace and above, gratitude, for a difficult situation and to realize that the experience has lead me to a greater depth of love, to know more love, to have a bigger bandwidth for love, that it does not matter that it was hard to go through, look at the amount of love I got to know by going through it.
Astounding.
And I don’t know if I loved as hard as I could today.
(I love pretty hard)
And I don’t know if I could have done it better or differently.
I feel like I did a pretty good job.
And I don’t know if I would have done any of it any other way but the way that I did it today.
I do know this.
I feel good.
I feel centered.
I feel enough.
I am loved.
I am lovable.
I am worthy of love.
The hubris of having humility is that I cannot say I have humility, I don’t, let’s be real, but I can recognize that I did not feel less than tonight.
I felt equal.
I felt apart of.
I felt like I belonged and.
Best of all.
I didn’t feel like I needed to change to make anyone happy.
I was.
I am.
Perfectly content.
To be the exact version of Carmen I am today.
I rock.
Let’s be frank.
Haha.
Nah.
I am not a rock star.
But I am a star in my own little way, a bit of old light from a source so far outside myself that I cannot fathom the power of it, a reflection of a love so big and grand and in-exhaustive that I know, without a doubt, that I am just exactly where I am supposed to be.
Raw.
Vulnerable.
Open.
And when I think I need it some other way, I just get to remind myself.
“Love, rather than be loved.”
Love.
Love.
Just.
Love.
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