Time to exhale

  You know, every time I think I have found my bearings, some new emotion creeps to the surface that I am unprepared for. I have worked through the majority of the anger phase, though it crept in here and there for far longer than I thought it would. A great deal of my time lately is spent feeling a sort of pity for someone who has destroyed their relationship with others and who is still completely clueless as to how any of it could possibly even the slightest bit their fault. I generally experience short but extremely intense bouts of worry and fear, but I think that's too be expected given the situation. Some mild loneliness slithers through from time to time, exceedingly rare though.
  It's like looking back on the you of a decade ago and all you thought you knew. You realize how much you've learned and grown and have to give a chuckle at just how developed you believed yourself to be at the time. As happens with most major life events, I can chart these changes over a matter of months rather than decades. Hard to believe that only a year ago things started to unravel rapidly. Hard to believe I was such a hollow, beaten woman then. Harder still to believe that the majority of my emotional battery came from within, the punishment I administered to myself in response to perceived failures and the criticisms of other.
  For the most part, I am beyond that. Light years beyond actually, and any moments of self-flagellation are nothing but ghosts of days long passed. I think these shades are familiar and comfortable in their own weird way, but as soon as I try to wrap them around me my better sense kicks in and hurries them away towards an eventual final departure.
  I have long roads yet to travel. Really, look at all the life left before me. I have managed to kick my leg over the top of that wall after a long dirty struggle upwards, I pulled myself over the edge, dropped back to earth, and I'm moving on towards the horizon. Sometimes I find myself at mile markers I hadn't realized were in front of me, and they give me pause long enough to turn around and see that me that was standing in front of that wall a year ago.
  Today, after a not disastrous trip to the fair (your shock mirrors mine), I was mowing my incredibly shaggy lawn. My friend was visiting, and my children were surveying the plum tree in the side yard. I took a short break from my much needed workout (fair food, seriously, tons of it went in my belly today) and looked to where my children played. There, mostly hidden by the branches of the tree, stood my friend. He was lifting a bowl towards my boys, perched in the tree, collecting the plums as they plucked them from the branches. My daughter stood at his side, pulling plums of her own from the lower branches she could reach. The breeze brought me bits of their chatter and laughter flowed freely.
  Suddenly I realized I had let out the breath I wasn't aware I was holding. We'll be okay. Maybe not right now, and I'm sure there's tough stuff yet to come, but we'll be okay. I can still preserve my children's happiness and security, I can still make sure they know they are loved and safe. Life goes on. I am not the woman I was a year ago. And for that I am thankful...she'd have never made it through all this