For those of you attuned to the irony of my last post, I offer this: a balm.
This is what I've been asserting for last year; that the economic downturn would provide us opporunities like the dinner I enjoyed last night.
Some fancy restaurant? A concert? A cocktail party? A black-tie benefit?
No. A dinner at home, with the most perfect breaded chicken I've ever made, and friends dropping by to eat. Food and laughter and hustle and bustle and bed. All this after I'd been sitting at my therapist, dreading an impending feeling of loneliness and sadness.
Pride is this weekend. Another year gone. I think sometimes about the kid that sat in his room at 16 and cried, terrified of the future. Then, I was aware of a comforting presence, a suggestion that perhaps all was not lost. Now, I send love and healing back to that past-self. I am my own Ghost of Prides Future.
What would I tell him, I demanded of my shrink. Brace yourself for a long haul?
But that's not fair to either of us. Not fair to either the past or the present me.
I would still tell him what I told him then, and what I tell myself now: Be patient. Match your wants with your needs. Let the rest be unexpected joy. Love the journey. Try to be open, and try not to judge others or yourself so harshly.
And learn to make a damn good breaded chicken.
2 comments:
If I had the opportunity to give advice to my teen self as encouragement against the teen angst, I would have to decline. This is because the advice I would have to give would be, "It gets a lot harder." Granted, there have been some great times since then, and I wouldn't go back if I could, but it does get harder.
big kiss
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