Keep Punching

I saw a picture of myself from a couple years ago. 

I remember the moment it was taken, and I remember dreading how it would turn out because I body-shamed myself daily at the time.  When I saw it today, I thought, "Wow, I looked good in that picture."  I wasn't fat or wrinkled, I wasn't beautiful or stunning in it either.  I was just me.  Hidden behind my eyes was an insecure girl, of course, but anyone looking at it wouldn't see that, wouldn't imagine that I tortured myself daily with negative thoughts about myself. 

Not smart enough, not thin enough, not pretty enough, not young enough --- but worse because I used words like stupid, fat, ugly. . .

WTF?

Things change.  That's the beauty of life.

Things change and I don't even use negative words to describe how incredibly naive I was in my head, how much I didn't understand about life, how much I didn't recognize the difference between living and failing.

I'm done failing.  Maybe because I'm closer to fifty, closer to death, closer to looking back on a life filled with many pockets of regret.

I thought about my divorce a few days ago.  It's been 11 years or so since it happened.  It was my greatest shame and it was my greatest victory too.

The pain, the love, the hatred, the opportunity mixed in a big bag of remorse and courage, fear and excitement. . .

I am better than I was 10 years ago.  Hell, I'm better than I was 10 days ago.  I can take the mixed bags of emotions and look at them tenderly now, gingerly pulling each emotion out and studying it.  Yet, I cannot stay there.  I know that now.  I can only study the emotions long enough to learn something from them.  Any longer and I end up lost. 

My best friend Bruce has a line in one of his songs:  You can't shut off the risk and the pain without losing the love that remains.

Having written what I wrote above, I can now fully understand the line.  The risk and the pain -- the negative emotions -- they'll always be there.  Life cannot exist without the pain.  Gratitude and love cannot exist without the pain.

I am going to take a picture of myself today and I am going to put it away for a couple years and pull it out to study it.  Hidden behind my eyes will be a sparkle of joy.

I'm ever hopeful I will reflect the joy back when I see it.  I like to think that now that I've found it, now that I've been a victor over the pain, I won't be able to let it go. Now that I've captured the joy, it will remain. 

I tell myself things like this now, and I punch the negativity in the face every time it creeps forward.  It's a work out for sure.

Punching, punching, punching. . .

It's much better than hiding inside of it.