Edges

I’ve been waiting for time to write. There are so many words locked up from years of being too pissed to let it all out.

And I’m not there anymore, but I’ve shifted far enough back into the sunlight I can see one thought against another and know these are meant to come out. I’m not sure where yet, but they are coming.

I clung to an image in my head, or my heart, I can’t decide.

In this vision  I’m standing on a cliff overlooking the valley and river below. Not just standing, but teetering, with half my foot hanging off, leaning back on my heel. 

Just to feel alive.

But in this vision, I just want to jump.

Not even just fall. I want to throw myself off with such gusto, that I feel that dead lump in my heart be replaced by the gasping of sheer exhilaration as the cold air rushes past my skin and I blink the tears back, taking with me the last time I’ll feel alive…and the only time In years.

But it’s just a recurring vision.

I’m changing though and the vision isn’t any more jumping off a cliff.

It’s walking barefoot in the water with my baby strapped to me.

It’s falling in love again with the man I made my life with.

It’s breathing deep the air that Gd created that seeps from the evergreens along the riverbank.

It’s watching long stretches of open road through mountains and deserts listening to the people I love move around me.

 It’s all the living I was made to do.

I am laying everything else down.

I quit a pursuit of “should have” for my degree with only one semester left.

I did that so I could hold my baby.

And help my kids with their homework

And take this one last shot at motherhood before it’s all gone.

I want to see my kids chase chickens while it’s still a wonder. Instead of picking them up from school.

I want to finger-paint with them while they want to finger paint with me.

And make food together.

And I might be old and odd and never enough.

But I will have loved with all my heart and all my choices and I will know I have asked forgiveness and offered it too and I will be able to let them go and they will want to come home to me with theirs because I will have cultivated love not things.

 I will have lived my values at the expense of my ego.

 I will have lived my faith in an everlasting Gd.