just because i'm losing it doesn't mean i've lost

('cause if I've learned anything in my life, it's how to show myself a good time.)

June is the perfect month to have a birthday. It breaks the year neatly in half, so I can pause on this bright winter day and look at my hands, take inventory of my grey hairs and the lines around my eyes, and test the ground I'm standing on.

I hesitate to say it, because saying such a thing does nothing but invite the world to take notice and take steps to rectify the situation, but to hell with paranoid consequences, I shall say it, I will say it, I am saying that I am fine.

Dare I say great?

I fucking dare.

Last year, there was no ground to stand on. There was nothing in my life that had not been shaken by the earthquakes, mind and heartquakes, lifequakes. These things storming through my Mondays all the way to Sunday were out of my control, and stayed out of my control, and I have never been so powerless in all my life.

What has happened since then? Nothing. The passage of time. Enough time relax into the fall.

I'm not standing on any ground. I haven't stood on solid ground for some time. Don't even know where it is, and now, perhaps, after all this time, I am no longer looking for it.

I'm in an interesting job that may be extended, or, may not.
I have a regular sleeping pattern and I never knew how much I needed it.
I feel like a sane person.
Hell, never mind sane, I feel like an actual person, instead of a loose swarm of neuroses.
I live in a battered, drafty, crusty and freezing flat, and I call it home, the first home I have ever made for myself.
I have glorious friends the likes of which I don't think I've ever had before.
My family is not in danger, and we are no longer waiting for the all clear; we have it.
My dog is scruffmuffin.
The secrets I'm keeping are bright and sunny little things.
I have not one, not two, but three overseas expeditions booked and paid for and creeping closer day by day.
I am not heartsore.
I still haven't written a book, but it grows and I am giddy with the growth, and I have a swath of short stories to show for the delay.

There are still earthquakes, but I think I've learned to roll with them, like sailors on the sea.

And I don't know who I am. Some sense of presence or identity was lost in all the apocalypses last year, and I haven't felt a desire to get it back. I don't need it.

For the first time in years, I can say that I trust me with myself. It feels wonderful. No, that's too small a word. Euphoric. Triumphant. See me, I can move molehills, I'm a 5'3" giant. What else is there to be done with such a state of heart, other than create some mayhem on which to test it? I'm like a kid at Christmas, and yes, I will see how much this new toy can take before it breaks. (And then I'll cry. Oh well.)

All this is transient, fleeting. It will end, some unanticipated poison will return to my life, and all will be rotten with doubt and fear again. It will end, and some spectacular joy will return to my life, and all will be big skies and mad leaps again. And so it goes.

I'm still in orbit, somewhere, forever falling over the horizon without ever landing. It's no longer an out of control tumble. I'm not burning up in the atmosphere. I'll crack the clouds, smash your windows, set the sky on fire and wave as I'm going by.

From here, I can see forever.
And that's where I'm going.

(Actually, I'm not. I'm going out to dinner with my family. But that doesn't sound nearly so dramatic, even if there will be Malaysian-cooked crab involved. You just can't write a waffly Hallmark-saturated post and then end on crab. Have to keep with the mood created.)

(But I have a history of undercutting everything I say. I wrote all this, then thought to myself, all I really want is to stand on the field of victory, one foot on my own bloody hacked up carcass, wave my fists in the air and scream VENI VIDI VICI BITCHEZ!.)

PS: June 5th is also World Environment Day. If you do nothing else to Save! The! World! today, take a moment to look at the sky, look at some leaves, look at the birds. Find something that exists despite us, something worth loving.