Holding fear and love at once is damn near impossible; it’s exhausting and heart-wrenching and it tears at your soul in the pre-dawn twilight. Things feel heavier than they are, and the weight becomes unbearable, but so does the laying down of burdens. Worry offers that false sense of security, the illusion of control, a feigned preparedness for potential disaster. It feels safer without really preventing anything.

I’ve always excelled at holding on to love but routinely fail at letting go of fear, and so became a master at suffering beneath that crushing load of doubt.

This site was born five years ago last Saturday, and with it came the rebirth of my voice and my dreams, in all their beautiful, dangerous glory. I stand much closer to that girl’s vision than ever before, even though nearly every imaginable detail is different.

No one could have predicted all of the events that made up those years. Hindsight makes it tempting to wonder if at least some of them weren’t answering my subconscious call, if this very exercise wasn’t an unwitting message in a bottle to the universe.

The last five years slowly eroded every part of my life that didn’t serve my true self, whether I was ready to admit it or not at the time. They provided me with quite the education. Of all the lessons I’ve managed to learn, letting go of fear is by far the most challenging.

It’s also the only way to success.

Laying aside the pain of ancient wounds to hold on to new trust. Gracefully retreating in battle to secure a larger-scale victory. Surrendering to the chaos of change and transition in order to pursue big dreams. Leaving bitterness and its rabbit-fever comfort of confinement in search of freedom and betterment. Deciding to admit hurt by letting go of righteousness. Laying down self-criticism and judgment of others to make more room for compassion. Trading fear of failure in for hope and faith.

Choosing love over fear again and again and again is how we become the people we are truly meant to be. Including and especially: loving yourself too damn much to suffer the weight of carrying both on tender, human shoulders.

The key to my personal cage was discovering how to honor my emotional intensity without being swallowed whole: elevating the personal to the universal. I stumbled upon it in an attempt to write honestly about my feelings without revealing details that had the potential to embarrass or hurt unnecessarily.

Much later on, I realized on an emotional level that there isn’t a problem, feeling, victory, defeat, idea or experience that hasn’t been had long before I inhabited this good earth and won’t live on long after I’ve left it. Reminding myself of this truth eases that fear and self-loathing in a way nothing else can, even if it still takes me a few days to turn the ship around.

We are never truly alone in our suffering, even when that isolation seeps bone-deep and makes every waking breath an ache behind one’s rib cage.

For me, that alienation is a good indicator that I’m pulled into an old pattern of tragedy. Coming home to universal truth soothes those deeply personal wounds and makes it possible to transcend all of that fear and shame. From that higher perch, my perspective is more objective.

That’s how I learn to let go. Again and again and again.

there was a dream
and one day i could see it
like a bird in a cage
i broke in and demanded that somebody free it
and there was a kid
with a head full of doubt
so i’ll scream till i die
or the last of those bad thoughts
are finally out

- the avett brothers “head full of doubt/road full of promise”

One would think my skill in recognizing the rabbit hole of angst and shame would be razor-sharp by now, but I still didn’t make the connection between my sudden and surprising loss of compassion and the battle flag running up the pole. A talented female friend posted a link in a closed network, asking for support from the members for one her projects. The first sentence of her message was an apology. It was no less than the fifth self-promotion apology I’ve seen from a female friend in the last seven days.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, really?! Why do we apologize for requesting support and attention in our professional/creative/athletic endeavors?

I should be posting my links and asking for referrals, but I don’t, because I don’t want to look like a stuck-up bitch, but I also refuse to apologize, and fuck if I know how to construct a marketing message that strikes that delicate balance.

Somehow I still managed to be surprised when I woke up this morning and served myself a steaming mug of doubt, failure, and shame. Purchasing new batteries for my mouse without outside financing is a major, orchestrated event right now, and my financial worth is facing a sharp decrease before I can even fathom another upswing in income.

Much of that is no one’s fault. The economy is improving at an excruciatingly slow pace. Start-ups, solopreneurs, service providers and small businesses- my market- are struggling to pay their own rent. They don’t have a need for the recurring accounting work that I anticipated would sustain me while I developed my client base; there’s no money to count, much less to pay for the counting.

Much of it is my own fault. I’m an accountant, I’m a writer, I’m a business owner. Things I am not: extroverted, a salesperson, a marketer, a business development manager. The learning curve, the dues-paying, the crippling lack of familiarity or comfort- it paralyzes me. I know who I am, and I know I’m skilled and talented in both of my fields, but you probably don’t, and that’s my fault.

It’s your fault, too.

When I declared my freedom from the whims of old, fat, balding white men that can no longer tell you what a gallon of milk costs or remember the sickening nausea of floating a check before payday, you cheered me on, and I was grateful and emboldened.

Where are you now?

I live in an entrepreneurial community, which as far as I can tell, means that financially secure baby boomers and aimless trustafarians spout platitudes and retweet each other endlessly. There are no referrals, there is no real encouragement or collaboration, there are cliques and cliches and pet projects. My local encouragement and support, ironically, comes from those who’ve relegated themselves to salaries and cubicials, not from the business leaders of Asheville. Most of those leaders aren’t interested in mentoring me because there’s no immediate payoff for them, like the real estate mogel who informed me that he does business with people who use his services first. He owns several properties and a business services firm. I own an iPad and a ten-key.

If you’ve ever inquired, “why don’t you have a publisher? why don’t you get paid to write?”, the answer is simple. You haven’t liked this page on Facebook, you don’t retweet my posts, you don’t comment here and share these words with your networks. A few of you fall over yourselves praising my talent, but can’t be bothered to answer questions via email to help me understand what’s marketable about my writing. Oh, except for the guy who answered immediately to shame me for not wanting to sell a book about my failed marriage or stormy childhood. Maybe some of you prefer me small and cold, I guess.

Perhaps you know me on a deeper, more intimate level, and you’ve helped to the point of resentment. Maybe you know that your approval matters to me, and you’ve wielded that sacred trust to talk to me about looking for work, or getting a job, or you’ve referred to my very real corporation as a hobby, or little project. Bonus points if you’ve availed yourself of my extra time when business is slow. Since you’re available….

Those are solidly half of the reasons why women apologize for self-promoting, and why I’ve cried all damn day.

I’m working on the other half.

Daily living all too easily takes on the feeling of a extended intermission before the elusive third act. We seek, we strive, we taste victory and defeat, but at three in the morning we wonder when we’ll finally be able to rest, when we’ll finally see the plot resolution unfold before us. Uncertainty about the future is responsible for more insomnia than all the coffee beans in Columbia.

No one knows what the garden will look like this year, and we’re all frantic to see what’s been percolating beneath the ground while we’ve been stewing beneath the blankets. But the soil is still cold, and so is the wind, and it’s way too early to imagine exactly what we’ll be watering in our flip flops this summer.

It’s so easy to forget that winter and spring have been around ages before us and will last long after we’ve done our time. We worry and wonder and wring our hands, and the garden comes back every year, and it’s never quite as we imagined it, but it’s almost always better in some way we never thought to wish for.

Perhaps we just need a reminder. A warm breeze carrying the smell of sweetened soil, an afternoon that finds your sweater cast aside, the first new leaves beginning their eternal lime green march up the ridges. An ancient cellular call stirred by light, warmth and dogwood blossoms.

Hope springs eternal, my darlings, and spring is coming.

This recurring theme began springing up from all corners well before Valentine’s Day, and for the first time in quite some time, it swelled and deepened so quickly and intensely that I couldn’t pin it to the page. I found myself unable to set it aside and write about anything else; the mental and emotional space it occupies blots out easier subjects.

Faced with a less than enthusiastic reception from an acquaintance and a seeming inability to shrug off the perceived denial of acceptance or approval, it occurred to me that it wasn’t a lack of affection that concerned me, as I first thought, but a lack of respect. The nagging irritation could have been (and eventually was) resolved with a little regard and consideration.

The intensity of my anger and focus were more bothersome than the specific circumstances, so like a child with a new toy, I checked this revelation against other sources of rage that I’d been unable to shake in spite of having rather incredible things blooming.

Which, of course, led me directly to this.

My high school principal often said (in regard to bullying) “everyone has the right to be left alone”, and those words landed hard in my heart as a girl who has endured her fair share of bullying.

That inability to “refrain from intruding upon or interfering with” is exactly how an intelligent and insightful man who claims to be a good person that cares deeply for the people in his life manages to take a girl that loved him home from the bar for his own personal satisfaction, without regard or concern for her mental and emotional well-being. It is also how he finds himself excusing his behavior by denigrating her person and feigning ignorance of her nature, despite having done thorough research on both for some months before ever setting eyes on her.

Dare I say that outright disrespect for someone one “loves to death” must be symptomatic of a deep self-respect deficiency?

Oops. Anyway.

In the last month, my love life has come to resemble something from the middle chapters of cheesy romance novel. On the professional front, I’m actually starting to believe that I might not end up living out of a washing machine box under the I-240 overpass. The advantages to both of these developments are deep and plentiful, but they come with a most unpleasant side effect.

The people in my life who love me more in weakness than strength are revealing themselves, and lo, it is heartbreaking.

Obviously, this is a function of their own insecurities and deficiencies. While my compassion for that mindset is plentiful and borne of experience, my tendency to internalize the negativity of others leaves me in an awkward and difficult position.

I can’t have folks pissing in the garden; my very survival and future depends heavily on that sweetened soil. Both love and entrepreneurship require a faith that leaves no room for playing small to preserve relationships.

In order to hold myself in esteem and honor, I must require it from those permitted to enter my life and heart. The reverse is more often spoken of- a healthy dose of self-respect improves the quality of people one attracts, but that only lasts as long as the standard is upheld.

When I started this post some three weeks ago, it was a preachy, bitter tome about the perils of allowing disrespectful behavior and a righteous, angry call to rise up against those who would make us feel small.

It took me that long to remember that we make ourselves too big or too small; the world only makes that chore easier or harder.

Instead, I’ll just ask you to do the whole world a favor:

Respect yourself.

Only pollen with enough genetic variety to produce healthy offspring will result in reproduction, which is why most plants require cross-pollination. Fruit borne of their own pollen alone would produce weak stock, vulnerable to blight and sterility, so a molecular defense exists to encourage only successful genetic combinations.

At breakfast the other morning, Wendy pointed out a forsythia bush on the edge of the parking lot. It was covered in half-open blossoms, spent before they could unfurl. I wept for it later, the poor sweet thing, doing its humble best to send fairy dust into the world, expending all that effort and energy desperately pushing flowers into a dormant, barren landscape. Tricked by unseasonably warm temperatures into performing for empty rows of hard metal seats, with nary a honeybee to carry its whisper, and only silence on its carpels.

Nature, for all her exquisite wisdom, delivers such cruelly objective consequences for her creatures’ timing errors. When the blooms open at just the right time, a pollinator that favors that plant and its best genetic crosses will visit just long enough to dance the timeless waltz of creation on its petals, leaving dreams and carrying wishes away on their furry legs and antennae.

The promise of fruit is made that very moment; if the plant is given enough sunshine, water and fresh air but is left otherwise undisturbed, the next generation will push forth from the stems, sent from deep within the all roots and veins, cell by cell, to make new life in the soil below.

The forsythia will most surely find itself frostbitten, frozen over, flowers encased in a coat of icy shards that will cut them to shreds upon thawing, leaving a pile of rotted mush to seep into its roots, inevitably restarting the cycle of life, birth and hope under the ground. Another chance to get it right.

My heart ached to impart some comfort, to reassure it that the secret workings of the universe are as impersonal as gravity: when the season and conditions are right the magical becomes the inevitable, the soil is richened for its failed effort, time and wisdom produce fruit sweetened by experience and patience. Gratitude for its timely reminder seeped from the marrow of my stiff and tired hips: buds and berries set on their own time, in their own way, thriving on a lack of human interference in the magic of nature.

It will have learn on its own the difference between January and March, and the futility of blooming at the first signs of warmth instead of having enough faith to wait for spring, that opening is just a start. In its struggle, it will discover that the beauty of its blossoms are just a vessel for its essence, which lays in wait for that familiar ancient whisper to awaken it to fruition.

I smiled as I wiped the tears from my cheeks, though, because I know the joy of mastering those lessons: an entire existence dripping with life and sustenance from every stem and branch, with roots enough to anchor and nourish, and wishes given flight on the wings of bees.

Sure, she had a smart mouth, broke the occasional rule, and was prone to emotional outbursts and displays of temper. She sometimes suffered an inability to accept a perceived injustice, and working so hard at being a good girl gave her a sense of entitlement. She had her resentment squirreled away in a savings account, to be retained as righteous indignation when she had her heart set on something that never materialized. Cath could be quite a handful in those moments, and her Mama likened her to a girl from a nursery rhyme:

There once was a girl with a curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.

Cath’s parents were trying to teach her that life isn’t fair. They wanted her to learn to accept defeat gracefully, and to treat others well. She had to learn that one does the right thing for their own satisfaction, and not to gain favor or reward.

Somewhere, most likely at the intersection of life isn’t fair and you reap what you sow in the world, she misinterpreted the meaning behind the message.

Being a good girl means meeting others’ expectations, but you have no right to your own expectations. If you get what you want, it’s because you’re a good girl, and if you don’t get what you want, too bad- good girls are grateful for what they have.

Aren’t you grateful for everything we’ve given you?

For the next thirteen years of my life, I was a bad girl. Cat started drinking, sneaking cigarettes, doing drugs, going out with older guys, skipping school, speeding and generally doing whatever she wanted, fuck allwhat you thought of it. Her Daddy cured her of that her sixteenth year- he taught her that appearing to be a good girl was what counted, and that she could be as bad as she wanted if she didn’t get caught. He showed her that following the little rules made it easier to break the big ones.

Cat picked that up quickly, and she excelled at acting like a good girl and being a bad girl when no one was looking. She met a man who prided himself on that very same thing, and they fell in love. They were very happy most of the time; save his occasional failure to meet her expectations.

When she threw a fit, he gently explained to her that she wanted too much from him, more than anyone deserved, probably because her Daddy hit her and her Mama was closer to her sister. It was okay, though, because he loved her even though she was bad for being angry when he was cold or disrespectful.

Would I be here if I didn’t really love you? You’re just crazy. The way you depend on me is bad; I can’t be your everything. You need a life of your own.

She knew he was right, she was always bad that way, wanting more than she deserved, not merely gracefully accepting what she was given in exchange for being a good girl. He was right, she was bad, and she was so very grateful that he loved her anyway. So what if he was bad sometimes too, if he made her feel bad, it was her fault, for not just loving him anyway, for putting up with her. She loved him too well to expect the same in return.

Ever so slowly, she built a life of her own. Cat snagged an incredible professional opportunity, she made friends, she even started college. They bought a cute little house in the middle of nowhere, and she started to believe that her life might turn out better than she ever dreamed.

Once again, she had a great deal of responsibility for her age. At twenty-six, she was a wife, a homeowner, the Controller of a multi-million dollar company, and a student. All of these roles required suppressing that bad little girl. She was constantly belittled and criticized for her passion, intensity, honesty, and the clumsy new way she stood up for herself.

That’s when I became a verybadcat. The blog was first; verybadcat needed a place safe from criticism to start writing again, to tell the stories no one wanted told, a container for her badness. All those pieces and parts of her that were not honored and accepted off the page. Her deepest fears, darkest secrets, secret dreams and wishes. She was astounded to find that she developed a following, that people who didn’t know the good girl loved verybadcat. Twitter allowed her to communicate with those folks in real time.

Her life was finally full and fruitful, she gained confidence, which was just what the wasbund always said he wanted. Unfortunately, what seemed ideal in theory lost luster in practice; the career, the social life, the night classes and homework, and all of that fucking around on the Internet took time and attention away from him. She wasn’t content to sit on the shelf till he was inclined to take her down and dust her off. At that same time, his full and fruitful life began the agonizing process of unraveling.

The addition of financial stress and marital discord to her already demanding life left her with no room to move. Anything she wanted for herself: time, energy, recognition, space, respect, and especially love or money, she had to steal from the life she built. The guilt of resenting all of the pressure was crushing. Everything was a secret.

Her precarious financial position was a secret from her employer, because admitting that you are cold and hungry at night isn’t a good idea when you hold a key financial position in an organization. Her professional success threatened and intimidated her chronically unemployed husband. Her friends almost knew how bad things were, but she alternated venting between wholly separate social circles to keep the depth and breadth of misery a secret too. Most everything was a secret from her family.

She was two people then. Catherine did the payroll, and verybadcat kited personal checks to get to work the week before payday. Catherine made good grades and enjoyed being back at school, but sometimes verybadcat just let everyone think she was in class, so she could have her brain to herself for a few hours. Catherine felt badly about leaving her husband home alone with no food or heat for decadent business dinners, but verybadcat snickered over it after a few cocktails.

This arrangement worked beautifully until both girls went alone for a secret long weekend in Ohio to mourn her last living grandparent, followed shortly by a week in Atlanta to help her baby sister bury her first love and witness with abject horror the effects of chemotherapy on her previously strong and healthy mother. All of that mortality shattered the illusion that there was room in one life for two girls- because she had felt the precious fleeting nature of this life, and because it occurred to her that the collision of all of those secrets would have made her own funeral apocalyptic.

They both decided that Catherine would stay and verybadcat had to go, since Catherine was a good girl and verybadcat was selfish and shameful.

It didn’t work out that way. One after another, the expectations Catherine had to meet fell away, and more people came to know both girls. Suddenly, verybadcat found herself single and starting a business. Catherine couldn’t let go. She needed more than ever to prove she was a good girl, but for the first time in her entire life, there was no one there to define what that meant.

Picking up where her experience left off, she made a list that included just about anything that made her too happy. Surely she didn’t deserve those things; every mistake, every failure, every rejection, every missed opportunity was proof that she was just a broken piece of trash that snuck her way into a place in the world far beyond her worth. Catherine ran behind verybadcat with a clipboard, counting up demerits and doling out punishments in the form of deprivation. She labored tirelessly to atone for verybadcat’s constant self-indulgence.

On Friday morning, Catherine filled a page with evidence of unworthiness easily before noon. She couldn’t get to the punishment, though, because verybadcat was solving her problems by helping beloved friends solve their problems, who in turn made her own solutions better. Catherine tried to calculate the cost of the love and support she was receiving, and fretted about the total deprivation required to even it out.

She had almost finished cleaning out the kitchen cabinets Friday night when it hit her.

There are no more secrets. There are no more outside expectations. The people who love me the most are the people who know me the best. The world, this world, my world finally needs me in whole. There is no good girl, no bad girl, no Catherine, and certainly no verybadcat. There is just me, in all my flawed perfection, essential to the whole and lacking nothing essential.

Just like the integral cat.

Are you okay? I know this was a hard day for you, do you want to talk a little? I’d like to know how you’re doing.

We had just executed a mass-layoff in my office, including most of my staff, and my knowledge of this impending doom preceded theirs by a little over a month. I had cried at the prep meeting, while terminating my Payables clerk, and with some coworkers after they were handed their pink slips. I cried all damn day, and only worried a little about my professional reputation.

I’m okay. I meant what I said earlier- this is the right thing for the business, it’s the right thing for those of us who remain- but that doesn’t make it any easier. I know that I’ve been able to look back on my darkest days six weeks, six months, six years down the road and I’ve had the solace of realizing that if I hadn’t faced that hardship, I wouldn’t be right here, and that’s always been a source of comfort to me. To be able to say of the hardest things that they helped make the best things in my life. I’m sad tonight for the people we let go, but more than anything, I just hope that they can look back later on and see that this ending was the beginning of something better.

A relieved smile spread from his eyes to his cheeks, and we chatted for a few minutes before someone cut in and I excused myself.

A few days shy of my thirty-second birthday, I still believe that. I can’t defend it, I can barely explain it, the best hope I have is to point to nature and say it is evidence to me of a higher order that we have not yet grasped in our knowledge of the universe.

If faith is an innate knowing, then this is mine, and I understand it in my bones.

I don’t know why bad things happen to good people, and I don’t know why some lives end so early or so unexpectedly. I understand that people hurt people because they hurt, but I don’t understand the cosmic value in so much pain. Perhaps there isn’t any at all, and I only seek to ascribe it some value to make peace with it somehow.

Since my earliest years of awareness, I’ve been called an old soul. Certainly, I’ve had a few encounters with strangers that were more recognition than introduction, and have always read between the lines without really realizing it. What that means is beyond any of us to understand, and I won’t do it the injustice of pinning it down. Those kinds of things are still magical to those of us that want to see them, and I suppose my biggest question for my coincidence and science friends is, simply:

Why wouldn’t you want to think that things happen for a reason, even if we don’t understand how or why?

I’m incredibly suspicious of anyone who doesn’t believe in something, one thing, anything that they can’t see.

Last night, I sat in the kitchen nook. The steam from my soup kissed my cheeks, and the faint smell of woodsmoke sat in the back of my throat. My thoughts drifted to my upcoming birthday and the annual reconciling of reality against my visions and dreams.

As always, my life looks nothing like what I ever imagined for myself. The people and experiences that filled the gap between my dreams and my defeats are both precious and priceless in their own right, and I choose to believe that they put me right here, right now, with this particular perspective. Any variation on my history would not have produced this moment, with these people, and my capacity to appreciate them.

You can argue with that all you want to, and I would relish the discussion.

What you can’t argue with is the sense of recognition and belonging that strikes deep and true, past my neurotic brain and my poor schizophrenic heart, straight into the marrow. It produces a warm calmness that whispers above all the noise of doubt and fear.

You belong here.

On Friday night, I attended a house party with my faithful travel companion, his undeniably awesome college roommate, and an angel. Yes, an angel, with a halo of curly spun gold and kind, soulful eyes.

I slipped out and away from the crowd to admire the stars, and he came to me with his message, carefully cloaked in parable.

It appeared to be simply a meaningful conversation between two souls newly acquainted, until the anguish crept into his handsome face and he began to wring his hands.

“It isn’t that I don’t love her. I do love her. She’s a great girl. She’s beautiful and smart and wonderful. She deserves someone whose heart skips a beat when he sees her across the room, you know, she’s so worthy of that, and mine just doesn’t, it doesn’t, and I tried so hard, because I wanted it to be that way. But it isn’t. And she deserves that. I hate hurting her, I hate it, I do, and sometimes I miss her so badly, but I know that she won’t move on if I give her any reason not to, and I want her to be happy, even if I can’t be the one to give her that happiness.”

Everything in me wanted to pull his frame-  slender and tall, with an hauntingly familiar grace that one only recognizes by aching for and agonizing over every last inch- towards my own. I wanted to cover him in tears, rest my browbone on his collarbone and feel his strong but nimble hand in the small of my back.

I wanted to tell him that I loved him too, that I understood, but that I didn’t understand, really, that I never would understand why it wasn’t enough, what it was that was missing, how he could miss me so terribly and still think it wasn’t enough. My hand felt pulled like a magnet to the crown of his head, and the swell of my hip ached to sit just above his, and I wanted to smother him in kisses.

We were interrupted then, and to an outside observer, it seemed as if the two of us were having an incredibly intense and personal discussion. Only this angel and I could see the two other people with their hearts in their hands. I never did get to answer him, but I did insist on hugging him goodbye.

“Now as he was speaking with me, I was in a deep sleep on my face toward the ground: but he touched me, and set me upright.”

The next day, I noticed that my heart had stopped waiting. For so long, I feared that my hope would slip away with the aching, that letting go was a resignation. Instead I found that the canopy had opened up to let the light in at last, and hope began to cover the forest floor like a carpet and bloom like the entire month of April.

I tried to find him, so I could thank him, so I could tell him that I heard his message, so that I could answer him, but he was gone.

Early Sunday morning, I met a King. He kissed my hand and held court for me, he flaunted his riches and fame with unabashed pride, mentioning only one defeat in a lifetime of battle. When I wished him blessings as I made my leave, he grinned true and wide and assured me that he was already blessed.

Concerned onlookers saw a woman having an animated discussion with an old man wearing a field jacket with a bible in the front left pocket, and nothing in the other pockets.

I couldn’t hold the front off the shore after that, and I wept openly with despair and fear, yes, but more than those, gratitude for all the love and light that keeps me safely sheltered from the war this man fights within and in the world. For family and friends that care so deeply and give so freely that though my net worth is only a little bit higher than the King’s, I am kept in so much finery. Enough to both raise and answer the question of my worth, in dizzying proportion.

As I entered the outer edges of familiar territory, I encountered a powerful healer. He was surprised to see me, but I knew better, because he always shows up when my emotional sea is churning dark, just before the wind lays down and the sun breaks through.

I told him what I’d seen and done, how I felt, and the questions I still had. He took it all in, as he always does, and said with quiet measure:

“I really believe we find what we seek- if you look for doubt, you’ll find it. I try to look for love, instead.”

Unending hunger for proving myself beyond all expectation has served me very well. It’s how an agoraphobic high-school dropout with an algebra allergy, the oldest daughter of a middle-class family, came to hold a key financial position in a sizable organization and earn half a bachelor’s degree by her late twenties- in two inch heels and a wedding ring.

It’s also what held me together through the darkness of that life’s unraveling and the emptiness it left behind.

As one would imagine, a desire for vindication is compelling motivation to survive divorce and a diverging of paths with a corporate conglomerate. My limited research reveals its endurance at roughly eighteen months, just in case you were curious.

The best and worst thing about both divorce and entrepreneurship, simply:

There is no one left to argue with.

Going out into the business or dating world in search of a worthy opponent is generally counterproductive, though it certainly is an all-too-popular approach to either endeavor. The alternative is to internalize the competition- every mistake or miscalculation becomes evidence against your worthiness and success is just the midpoint in a constant cycle of proving your worth again and again and again.

Others sense this preoccupation and rightfully withhold investments of value, lest they lose your attention and favor to some shiny object that promises redemption.

My first attempt to combat this weakness was self-control and lack of expression. I learned how to hide my desire, but the best I’ve ever managed is an vague seething that unseats people more than transparency.

Powerless against its force, I made it my scapegoat and tried to eliminate it. This is what led me to my fondness for the works of Buddhist monks; desire is suffering, and my suffering sure as hell felt proportional to my desire. I found untold comfort and wisdom in their logic, but the seeds of doubt and fear were sown in that soil.

If I ever manage to conquer my desire, who will I become?

Whether you love or hate it, my intensity is an integral part of who I am as a person, a woman, and a writer. Most of the time, I love my passion and drive. Except, you know, when it makes me miserable.

A dear friend and sage advised me not to “taste the carrot”. He was speaking of the tendency we have to place more importance on any particular goal than the effort of striving and the value of desire in the creative process. In contemplating that concept, an unrelated mention of the devil as a symbolic representation of ego fit perfectly as the last piece in the puzzle.

Ego tricks us into thinking we know the inner workings of the universe, that we are capable of divining which friendships will endure, the right place for us in the lives of others, or the role of others in our own lives, which business opportunities will seal our success, or even that we are meant to prevail in an endeavor.

Those failures touch that aching, ancient pain all of us carry in some measure- they prove our worst fears about ourselves. Victory carries its own danger, as I am beginning to understand. Walk on water a few times, and every damn fish pond starts to look like a dance floor.

When determination is fueled by a need to prove superiority in the face of rejection, one starts to see any trace of doubt as a direct challenge. Without consideration for what is healthy, realistic, or even possible; the more impossible it is, the more determined I am to make it happen.

Drive and intensity are my gifts, and they bear some of the sweetest fruit I’ve tasted. Love, success, joy, fulfillment, and contentment- these universal desires motivate us to pursue rich and full lives.

Misery only sets in when my ego attempts to dictate how I receive these things, creating objects of desire and perpetuating the illusion that those broad yearnings rely on any one outcome.

The devil really is in the details, y’all.

Admitting to the ache of a deficit in available resources shows weakness, hunger, and is guilty of consorting with entitlement or a lack of gratitude. We feel compelled to appear strong, satisfied and brimming with humility at all times, and when it takes great effort, we shame ourselves for falling short. Ironically, that pain merely increases the deficit’s emotional load to its failure point, leading to abject misery.

The whole thing is so damn silly.

If we were never consumed with desire for more, we would never be compelled to discover, create, learn and grow. The implication that discontent is rooted in a lack of gratitude is a common manipulation tactic that plays on our shame in hopes of silencing our drive to transcend the limitations others find convenient. It too operates from a place of scarcity rather than abundance, in assuming that whatever it is you ache for will infringe on their share of the resource.

The universe, in all its exquisite irony, rewards those who operate from a place of abundance. When we approach a resource with a sense of scarcity, we become insatiable. Instinctually, we are driven by fear, anger and doubt. This repels people and opportunity, which reinforces our perception of scarcity. Decisions made from perceived abundance are motivated in courage, love and faith, which is where all the magic hides

I wish I could tell you exactly how to transform an aching desire for something more and better into a sense of abundance. The letter I got from the universe yesterday, about not regretting love because it always fosters growth appears to be a clue. I’ve been thinking about time, money, love and regret all day.

As dawn approaches, it occurs to me that the regret is the only thing I cannot afford.

It’s a start.