I don’t know what it is about these days of late…..I wake up excited about starting my day for no other reason than I’m living my life by doing what I want to do. Since leaving my full time career by means of a lay off I can’t say that I have missed one day since leaving that office or that friendship or that house or that relationship.

My life now includes brand new people, places and things. Maybe the freshness that I feel is a Spring Breeze!

I am now focusing on writing and I recently launched a consulting business that caters to small businesses. I live near my best friend and not only are we constant companions she’s also a business partner in another venture.

Will I be successful at any of this…who knows?

But what I do know is that at one point in my life I was happy to bop into a corporate office to confront the pile of work on my desk that collected since the less than several hours since I’d left the exact same desk . I lived at work and I didn’t mind. I welcomed the structure to my life since I had no relationship to speak of and as a single mother I worked days, evening and weekend gladly, as it afforded me the ability to provide my daughter a lifestyle that I would not have been able to offer her otherwise since her wack ass father disappeared out of her life nearly fourteen years ago (<–story alert!).

I enjoy accomplishing tasks and I was ALWAYS generously compensated for the burden of doing so and then things changed in the legal field. I had already been in, up and through two other industries prior to legal and this was a well thought out career path and I expected to remain doing what I did for a long while. All I had to do was to get through my hurdles which I call a life.

So many things changed.

I graduated from college and was then forced to become this educated, savvy and career oriented person. And I did. I loved putting on my ‘business clothes’ and moving through the broken and cold concrete to my skyscraper of potential future mobility.

I liked Starbucks Coffee and shopping at the Gap. I liked leaving big tips and solving problems with money. I liked taking on new responsibilities and projects. Where others merely showed up to do as little as possible for their check where as I would seek out additional stress, deadlines and headaches. I revel in a hurricane. I feared no work load, no project and no bloated juris doctorate ego.

And then..I graduated from school.

I continued on with my career.

My child became an adult somewhere along the way.

I met my family due to an email I wrote over ten years ago.

I started writing again. I’m so fucking excited…why not tell the world..and so I did.

I had some personal issues I needed to deal with.

I had to give up my suburban lifestyle.

I got laid off and when I did I danced the Conga on the way out the door of my former law firm.

A friend who hasn’t felt like a friend for a long time went bananas and like with the layoff…I felt relief rather than sadness at the loss. I felt suffocated, strange and totally out of my element. I realized that friends should make me feel like they’re blowing helium in my hair and not like their sticking a stun gun to my temple without me seeing them do it.

I, suddenly, am an entirely different person now than I was before.

I was sad before.

Scared before.

Depressed before.

But not now. I can’t even have a proper Facebook tantrum without an auntie or a friend yelling at me to call them. I’ve noticed that my online mood is directly related to the calls that come in immediately after posting when I’m feeling angry or mad (bi-polar). It makes me smile.

I’m trying to be mad and y’all are interrupting!!

I’m grateful for each and everything that has happened in my life.

I don’t fear much because I KNOW that I am strong. I’ve faced winds that would make a grown man weep and I fling my curls and overcome my challenges.

Don’t get me fucked up like I wake up in the morning and click my heels because I don’t. However if there is something in my life that I don’t like or if something is in my life that isn’t serving me a purpose I have no problem in severing ties and changing direction.

I now live in a big house with noise, a family dog, teenage spats over house phone usage that go on between two floors and involve much door slamming. There are conversations, yelling, laughter and family dinners. Theres a trail of even more teenagers coming through to now call me “Auntie Tracy”. I have walking trips to the Post Office and time to prepare special meals for the family. I love to cook and have a beautiful large kitchen that contains nearly any appliance I could ever hope to have at my disposal.

I see sunlight. It’s like the sun went missing for a span of time. I sure did miss that sunlight.

I have a yard to pick leaves out of and patches of green ground to plant flowers in. Several small buds have grown into flowers. I have laundry to do and fresh towels to supply to hungry linen closets.

I no longer feel alone as I have great friends who support me and surround me when I’m down. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to spend time with people I would not have ordinarily spent time with had I not fallen on a slight patch of instability. How often do you get to spend the night at a friend’s house. Or be the house guest of someone whose conversation you adore. The opportunity to spend TIME with another person. Temporarily, pleasant and passive time. I’m grateful for the invitations and for the hospitality of others. I’m grateful for the security and safety I’ve been shown from people that I never gave a chance to before.

I’ve slept on a floor again after years of providing myself with my own luxury bed contained in my own apartment after having pulled my way up out of that life years ago.

And you know what? I don’t feel no type of way about it.

I’ve been shopping in thrift stores which reminds me of my child hood. I’ve been touching art and creating things with my hands. I draw and I paint and I write when I want because now I can sit and type when I am in the mood to do so and now working around ‘the man’s schedule’ .

I do what I want when I want, most days I sleep late and I wake up early. I’ve had dates that I didn’t have to cut short because of work the next day. I’ve partied with people whose names you’ve heard of. I’ve walked out of clubs and have breakfast with ‘party clothes’ on. These are all parts of me that went missing; I used to be daring and dynamic. I used to have adventures and stories and would meet the greatest people. I used to live on having deep and meaningful conversations with strangers, exploration of streets and sounds and things that I didn’t know. Stepping out of the ordinary used to be my manna from heaven and I stopped eating somewhere along the way.

I’ve made love and watched the sun rise and then went back to bed. I cuddle with my lover until starvation forces one of us to retrieve further nourishment than merely flesh. I had a lover who is perfectly great but who may also simply always be a lover. I’ve decided that I don’t need a label or a title or even permanence to love another human. I never did; I simply need for the love to be true and for the love’s heart to beat in time with my own.

I don’t run through my life anymore. My daughter and I live separate these days and it’s finally settled in my heart. I hop in bed and snooze quickly now because I’m used to (and confident in) her having her own space elsewhere. I don’t feel afraid before I fall into a deep sleep and my heart no longer halts momentarily each morning as I open my eyes. I’m not suffering from anxiety and I’m not suffering with depression. Aside from the occasional ’crunk’ feeling I get every four weeks or so I had to really think hard to recall the last time I was righteously fucked up emotionally. I’m grateful.

My business is almost up and running. I have projects that are coming from the left and from the right and center.

I’m grateful.

I’m blessed; my life is a delicious mess.