safety nets

i love being a person.

this simple dorky thought of gratitude has been on my mind quite a bit lately-- it's so beautiful to me the experiences we all get to experience, good and bad, and we are all experiencing them, beautiful and ugly, together in our own way.  like a pulsing, breathing, undulating blanket of ants. an enormous web of tiny insignificant people with relatively insignificant experiences, in the grand scheme of things, but oh how profound our experiences seem in our own minds.

I always thought that I would be married with babies by now, but I am increasingly grateful that I am not!  I found myself getting down and feeling kinda like a lost cause.. comparing my life to the lives of my friends, those pretty instagrammers with like three thousand followers, or bloggers with seemingly perfect husbands and children and houses. and they all spend a lot of time trying to convince the haters that their lives aren't perfect. but i still would feel like i couldn't measure up. like somewhere along the lines I made some mistake and ruined the chance for me to have a life like them.  I'm still a kid with a party bug and a little taste for rebellion.

I try to remind myself often, especially lately, that comparison is the thief of joy.  I have seriously had the most amazing life, with plenty of heartbreak and embarrassing mistakes, but so many countless beautiful skies, so many lovely humans I have the honor of knowing, and a thousand stories i have that are worth telling.  Yeah, I've done some pretty horrible things in my day, but I've found that pain and consequences and shame teach you more about yourself than simple pleasure ever will.

I know I wouldn't be the person I am now without all of these experiences, and I know what I do and do not want for the rest of my life.  I feel like now I will be so much more better equipped to live a happy life, and guide happy children.

about a month ago, I finally let go of a safety net that I have been clinging on to for the better half of a decade.  that's a long time to selfishly chain yourself to something which is negative for both of you.

I dug myself into a really comfortable hole with this safety net.  despite all the pretty pictures we hung on the walls of all the cool things we did, and all the comfy throw blankets and pillows we laid on the dirt ground, and even though we drank and ate and were merry, we were still in a big fat hole in the ground.  I will always adore that safety net, and appreciate the experiences we had, but I feel like I had been waiting my entire life for the drive away and wave goodbye that felt like the last one-- and this last time it really did. 

i drove down the street, and choked back tears so hard i couldn't breathe.  but then i turned back up that canyon i know so well, opened all my windows so the wind would drown out the noise, and just kept going.  Pretty Woman, wrapped up in my grandma's quilt, and a glass of wine later,  i fell asleep, woke up in the morning, and I realized that I was still okay. just like that.  i had never left before because i worried how my safety net would survive without me.  but my safety net did exactly what i did; just kept going. we are so resilient, us humans. i think it's beautiful.

sometimes, by the time you've grown up enough to stand on your own two feet, you're standing there alone.  I might be alone, but I have proven to myself that I can take on the world, with a smile on my face.  I'm okay, and oh so happy to be alive.