It also gives me super crazy dreams.

My dreams have always been very vivid, and have never made much sense (when held to the standards, of say, viable fiction or the waking world), but this is getting… ridiculous.

Thursday night, I had a dream that I woke up and there was a cheetah in my living room. It had baby kitten cheetahs. My house cats were carrying baby cheetahs around in their mouths. I was the only one who was bewildered- they were all “yeah, we have a cheetah now, and it has babies. get with it, already.” I fed the house cats, and the cheetah wandered into the kitchen and started head-butting me in the thigh, so I pulled a steak out of the fridge (I don’t generally *keep* steak on hand, but I had one in my dream), and hand-fed her. She rubbed her big cat cheetah muzzle against my hand, and I was worried about what might happen if she served up a love bite, the way the house cats do when they’re being snuzzled on. Before I could find out, I woke up.

Last night? Last night takes the cake.

My Dad stole a baby for me.

I was in bed, fast asleep, when my Dad let himself into my house. He put a baby in my bed, and I tried to question him, and he said we would discuss it when he’d had some sleep. I moved some pillows around, moved to the middle of the bed, and went back to sleep. Holding a baby.

When we woke up in the morning, I asked Daddy if he had anything to feed the baby, and he jumped up.

“Yeah, I stole the diaper bag too. I know about babies. There’s some formula in there.”

“Okay, Dad? Why did you steal me a baby?”

“You said that I couldn’t give you babies, but I figured out how. It’s gonna be great- the Mom looks a lot like you.”

“But, Dad, what I said was that you can’t be the only man I need because I would like to have a family someday. Someday, Dad, with a husband. What the hell am I going to do with a baby? Do you know how hard it’s going to be to raise a baby on my own? And this is going to make dating awkward, to say the very least…”

“Well, you can’t return a stolen baby.”

“Dad, how am I going to afford this kid? Babies need stuff. Tons and tons of stuff, and I have to work, and I can’t take a baby to work.”

“I’ll give you some money, but you can’t return a stolen baby.”

Then I realized the the formula he was talking about had been premixed and sat out in the car all night, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t good anymore. My father then suggested that if I tried hard enough to nurse the baby that “nature would take its course”.

I woke up in a cold sweat.

Part of me wants to stop drinking the tea, and the other part can’t wait to find out what weirdo dream it will give me next.

** there is not even the slightest possibility that I am pregnant. this was suggested to me by a coworker, who now sports a bruise on his shin. **

The Parkway is one of my favorite places in the world. So simple, so beautiful- in a world of double-tandem semi-trucks and seventy miles per hour speed limits, the Parkway is a haven, a refuge. My parents don’t call me their “little ridge-runner” for no reason.

I regretted my route once; when I found myself behind a car with Iowa plates on a steep decent with more than a few descending decreasing radius curves- a fancy engineering term for a bitch of a curve. A descending radius curve is where the road changes elevation in the curve- you’re not just turning, you’re also going downhill. A decreasing radius curve is where the turn gets harder as you go through it.  So, of course, a declining decreasing radius curve is one that combines a drop in elevation with a tightening of the curve once you’re in it.

What makes these curves so treacherous? The grade of the decent causes your car to accelerate, which makes you want to hit your brakes to slow back down, but that makes it almost impossible to steer into the apex of the curve. You pick up speed when it is the last thing you need.

After you’ve driven in the mountains for awhile, you get the hang of these nasty little curves. You learn to start into them slower than you would a level turn. The car sets itself a line as you start the curve and pick up speed, and your job is to interfere as little as possible with that natural line, steering only as much as necessary, and only braking very lightly just before the apex if absolutely necessary.

People from Iowa are perhaps not familiar with this technique. So they fight the line. They ride their brakes or hit their brakes hard in the apex, which makes steering much harder. I feel for them- they’re scared, they’re getting a lesson in vehicle physics that isn’t had in Iowa, they are white-knuckled and full of fear. (Not to mention that they’re melting their brake pads and running the risk of losing braking power altogether). It’s frustrating and irritating for me to ride behind them; they ruin my line when they fight their own, but I’m irritated while they are scared for their lives.

I wish I could tell them not to fight the line. To slow down a little more coming in, if they’re nervous, but once the curve starts, take your foot off the pedals and just steer. Fighting the line is actually more dangerous.

I’ve been stressed, scared, frustrated, angry and unsure of myself. The life I dream of is on the horizon, and the life I once cherished is ending slowly but surely, like the passing of mileposts. I cannot see what the road looks like from where I’m at to where I’m surely headed, and that element of uncertainty is what makes me crazy. I drive myself crazy trying to plan and plot and scheme and prepare for every possible outcome or pitfall or obstacle, drafting plans A through ZZ in a attempt to find some security in life-changing situations that are well beyond my control.

I’ve been fighting the line. I’ve been braking and freaking out and over-steering like a flatlander. I’m making things much, much harder than they have to be, and more dangerous too, in the sense that my health and emotional stability have suffered, are suffering, and that means that I’m not bringing my best self to anything I’m involved in.

Time to take my foot off the brake, loosen my grip on the wheel and trust the road.

“Feel the wind
And set yourself the bolder course
Keep your heart
As open as a shrine
You’ll sail the perfect line..”

-bob seger “in your time”

When I was five years old, my Mom got pregnant.

On October 25th, 1985, during morning recess, I noticed our next door neighbor walking pointedly towards me.

She told me that the baby was coming, that Mom and Dad were at the hospital. I wanted her to take me there. She explained that there was a problem, Mom was okay, the baby was okay, but I couldn’t go. Because there was a problem.

I found out later that they thought she had spinal meningitis. She was born three weeks early. My sister spent the first few days of her life in an incubator.

When they brought her home, I instantly fell in love.

If she cried in the wee hours of the morning, my Mom would inevitably find me over her bassinet in the living room.

Like any young love affair, mine was short lived.

If memory serves, she was two years old when we started fighting.

Mom would ask me “What do you want me to do, lock her in the basement?”, and at some point I worked up the nerve to give her an honest answer. “Yes. Put her in the storm shelter. I’ll slip pancakes under the door. We can give her a water dish, like the dog.”

(Apparently I cannot blame my sometimes heartless nature on the influence of a hardened world. )

It was around this same time that my parents left us alone together all day over the summer. Sometimes my Dad would be sleeping soundly after working a midnight shift. Sometimes they paid a worthless babysitter to watch me feed her and change her diapers. Sometimes, though, it was just her and I.

On one of those occasions, the neighbors invited me across the street to swim in their pool. She was too young, though, they said. So I found the carrier we used to take our Labrador/German Shepherd mix to the vet. I gave her a water dish and some sticks to play with, crated her ass and parked the carrier under the shade tree in the side yard.

My Mom got home from work before I got home from the pool, and her head exploded. (and rightfully so, but I still wonder if the neighbors knew I was responsible for my two year old sister when they invited me but not her.)

For the next fifteen years, my sister and I waged war against each other. Truces were called for the handling of schoolyard bullies, joining forces against our parents to run a mutually beneficial agenda, or if one of us was sad, sick, or hurt enough to garner the other’s temporary sympathy.

She stabbed me in the shin with a steak knife under the dinner table (I still have a scar). I tied her to an arm chair. She threw a roller skate at my head. I locked her in the pantry. She would hit me and then tell Mom I hit her. I would ask her to play hide and go seek, and then not look for her. She hid fake snakes in my bedroom, or left them outside my door.

Still, when Mom made a habit of working late and calling me after dark in the dead of winter to go get my sister from daycare, I started picking her up on my way home from school. We both hated walking the two blocks in the dark, in the cold, in what felt to us like the wee hours of the night. So I got off the bus in front of her school and took her home with me.

She took care of me too, in her own way. She killed bees, and committed other countless acts of bravery so that I didn’t have to. She was the best and most reliable member of my wedding party, the greatest maid of honor I could ask for, even though Mom pushed me into giving her that title, and we had a huge fight about my refusal to allow her to wear a tiara. When my sweet orange tabby got stuck in a tree, I pulled Dad’s truck underneath that tree and propped a ten foot ladder against its trunk. The lowest branch was a good five feet from the top of the ladder. I was working up the nerve when she came out of the house. She climbed the ladder, pulled herself up onto that branch, shimmied up a little further and sweet talked the cat into her arms. I should note here that the cat always hated her before that- he would hiss and spit if she looked at him the wrong way.

That same year we got into a violent screaming match over a pot of macaroni and cheese.

Some months later, she was in trouble with Dad. They were arguing in the hallway outside of our room. The wasbund and I sat in silence while I listened to my father’s rage build. When that rage hit its tipping point, when I started to squirm in my chair, anticipating the beating she would receive, the wasbund silently stood up, opened the bedroom door and walked out into that hallway, standing between them. He stared my Dad down, and without a word or a movement, forced his retreat.

When my Dad and the wasbund had their fight, the fight that found me kicked out of my own parents’ house, my Dad roared at my sister in a fit of anger that it was her fault. All her fault. When he wasn’t around, I assured her that it was not her fault, not one bit, and that I didn’t blame her for it.

She and her boyfriend helped the wasbund and I move to Asheville. There was nothing to fight about anymore. No more competing for resources and attention. No more jealousies and resentments. It was then that our friendship blossomed. They were here when we closed on our house. We took a vacation together. We spent holidays together, the four of us.

Then, last spring, “we” became the three of us. The summer was in full swing when “we” became the just the two of us, again.

I picked her up from the airport Tuesday afternoon. She was here for thirty six hours. I bought dinner. She built shelves. I showed her around. She had coffee ready when I got home from work. We shared a bottle of Riesling and ate ice cream straight out of the carton, side by side on the couch, with two spoons.

She said it felt like home. Before the leaves turn, it will be her home.

I haven’t told her yet that for the first time in years, it felt like home to me, too.

On the 5th of every month, bloggers from around the world are open to write about rights and issues concerning women. First started by Shine and Marie, we’re hoping to bring a variety of women’s issues to the forefront to make people aware of what’s going on. For the month of August, we’ve chosen to write about Physical and Mental Abuse. Please join us in telling us your stories, thoughts, and ideas on a monthly basis.

I was in the break room, pouring my first cup of coffee when she opened the door. Behind a thick layer of well applied make up, a rail thin girl looked back at me with two black eyes. I asked her what happened to her, even though I already knew the answer. She told me that she ran into a door. The silence between us was thick and heavy, until I locked eyes with her.

“Just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s good for you.”

The door hardly closed behind me before I choked back my own tears.

Because I couldn’t take my own advice.

As horrible as physical abuse is, it’s easier in a way. You can see a black eye. You can see the flinch that comes with a quick movement, a raised hand. There is no question about physical abuse- lay hands on me in anger, and that’s an easy problem to identify and solve. I swore a long time ago that I would never tolerate being hit ever again. I thought I broke the cycle.

I was so very wrong.

Mental and emotional abuse is a gray area. It’s fluid. Easier to take the blame for. I have a temper and a sharp tongue of my own. I can’t say I’m not sometimes cruel or ugly. I’m difficult. Demanding. Pushy. Impatient.

It wasn’t until I got out that I let myself realize how bad it was.

I still hear those words when I look in the mirror. When I get stood up for a date. When I have a bad day.

“At least I don’t beat you like your father did…”

“You repulse me.”

“You’re crazy. You’re fucking insane.”

“If you weren’t so needy…”

“You’re just being melodramatic and hypersensitive.”

Of course, there were good times. He was very charming and loving when he wanted to be. Manipulators always are. That was what he did. He whittled away at my self esteem, at my judgment. He kept me so busy worrying about and struggling to earn his affection, attention and approval that I didn’t often take the time to consider whether or not he was worthy of my affection, attention and approval. When I did take the time and he fell short, it was always my fault. I didn’t inspire him to treat me well. I expected too much. I was too needy. I put too much pressure on him to make me happy. I needed a life of my own.

So I got one. I made friends. I started writing. I caught a huge break in my career. I started college.

Things got worse and not better. Now I loved my friends, my “screwing around on the internet”, my “corporate jet set lifestyle” and my schoolwork more than I loved him. He was suffering from neglect because of this life he asked me to build. My outside interests were proof that I didn’t care about him.

I was the selfish one. I was the foolish one. We couldn’t pay our bills because he couldn’t keep a job, but I was selfish and foolish for spending $30 at Planned Parenthood on my birth control patches instead of $5 pills. The fight that ensued was horrific, and he said something that broke my heart, something so horrible and cruel and ugly that I cannot and will not make it public.

It was my fault he wasn’t attracted to me. I was unattractive, repulsive. I didn’t take care of myself. Never mind that I stopped taking care of myself because he quit paying any attention to my appearance, because I was exhausted, because there was no time, money or energy for makeup and cute outfits while I was struggling to support both of us.

That’s all behind me now, and I’ve linked to an article that I’ve memorized to keep it from ever happening again.

If your boyfriend or husband makes you feel worse about yourself, if you find yourself walking on eggshells, if you find yourself lying (even by omission, which was my specialty) to the other people who love you, you are being abused.

Love doesn’t have to hurt.

A conversation with my Mom (who has nearly reached her pre-chemo insanity levels, if you were wondering) this weekend revolved around my cousin’s reaction to my sister’s impending arrival in my home.

“I heard the girls are moving in together.”

“Yes, they are… <blah, blah, I will spare you because this would probably add 200 words to my post length>”

“Good luck with that.”

I think Mom brought it up because she couldn’t decide whether or not to be offended.

I wasn’t. In the first few months we dated, the wasbund once found it necessary to break up one of our sister fights; pulling me off of her as we both screamed and cried and I beat the tar shit out of her with a tube sock filled with tangerines. In my own defense, I cannot even publish what she said to me to earn that beating. You know if even I won’t put it out there, she got what she deserved.

Anyway. I can’t remember the last time I saw my cousin, but I believe she’s been married twice since then, so since she doesn’t really know either of us as adults, it’s hard to get my feathers ruffled.

What did I take away from this conversation, other than a splitting headache and the urge to cram my Mom in a shoebox and ship her to some third world country?

I think maybe “good luck with that” is the snottiest phrase ever. I know that I employ it frequently when I’m being snarky.

This has been the summer of inescapable wretched mind numbing madness causing heat. The things I’m sure of aren’t happening fast enough, and the uncertainties I’m facing are probably all going to resolve in the same two week span. As a result, I’m crabby.

It’s too hot to eat, too hot to sleep, and there is too much to think about.

So since I feel all crabby and snotty, I figured I’d tell some people “good luck with that“.

Thinking that women with any reasonable amount of self esteem and relationship experience will tolerate your douchebag antics?

Good luck with that.

Screwing with me in terms of my most basic requirements for well being?

Good luck with that.

Acting like you’re kind of a big deal when the only thing you’ve really got is a grandiose sense of self-importance?

Good luck with that.

Continually marrying men even though you know you’re more frigid than a case of Popsicles in a deep freeze?

Good luck with that.

Trying to bully me into solving a problem for you that creates a problem for me?

Good luck with that.

Keeping me in the dark as to your intentions so as to keep me motivated?

Good luck with that.

Bratting the hell out for no good reason and thinking you’re going to escape the requisite calling out I will undoubtedly deliver at the first opportunity?

Good luck with that.

Attempting to capture my attention with the lamest excuse for charm I’ve seen in the past year?

Good luck with that.

Underestimating either of my father’s daughters individually, or unthinkably, both of them united in a common agenda with said father’s backing?

Good luck with that!

I understand where they’re coming from, but I can’t escape the feeling that they don’t quite understand where I’m coming from. That it confuses and probably irritates my former mother in law is amusing at worst and delicious at best, but I wish my own family were less confused and irritated.

I would be lying if I tried to say that it has nothing to do with my maiden name being hard to pronounce and spell, because that definitely counts for a part of my decision, but it’s so much more than that.

My name is a part of my identity.

I haven’t been verybadcat maidenname since I was twenty years old. Verybadcat maidenname did not know how to cook. She didn’t understand the force and nature of her own power in this world. She worried more about earning your approval than whether you were worthy of hers. She believed in fairy tales and happily ever afters, and was blissfully ignorant as to exactly how much force of will and hard work they require from all involved parties. She was a great girl, but she was incredibly innocent and naive.

Taking back my maiden name feels like regression. It feels like an attempt to erase the past decade of my life. It feels like being stripped of my identity. It also feels like a big fat pain in the ass.

Verybadcat married name owns a house. She’s enrolled in college. She has a decent career. She knows how to cook, she can run a woodburner like no one’s business. She’s been through hell and back. Walked through fire, and seemingly, on water when she’s had to.  She’s loved and lost and picked the pieces up off the floor, dusted them off, and glued herself back together. She’s done things she never thought she could or would, and even the things that are not worthy of pride and praise have helped make her who she is.  She wants to make sure that you’re worth it before she concerns herself with your opinion of her. She’s realized the full worth of herself and her love. She knows better.

Sure, the wasbund gave me his name when we married. Over the past ten years, though, I’ve made it my own.

Ten years ago, I would have changed my name to please my father. I would have changed my name to avoid any conflict or misunderstanding with the wasbund, his family, and a second wife someday. I would have filed a bazillion pieces of paper with a bazillion businesses and agencies and changed my work email and my personal email. I would have resented it and felt humiliated, overwhelmed and victimized.

Verybadcat marriedname will roll her eyes when she gets a piece of mail from her family without a last name on it, and remind herself how much they love her. She told the wasbund just not to marry another Catherine if he was that concerned about it. She’s keeping her name and her identity intact because it’s what she wants to do and what she thinks is best for her.

That difference is precisely why I’m keeping my name.

I dare someone to tell me I haven’t earned it.

“It’s not supposed to be hard. It’s not supposed to be like banging your head into a brick wall.”

She goes to retrieve something from the printer, and I notice her wedding photos, the pictures of her kids, the digital frame in the window that rotates through her family camping pictures.

We talk about life insurance. I ask her opinion about an aspect of coverage, she rattles something off- a stock answer. So I stop her, make eye contact.

“No, I mean what if I died tomorrow.”

She’s horrified. I’m confused at her horror.

“It isn’t likely, but it could happen. Tomorrow. And I need to know what would happen here.”

Now she’s confused, and I’m wondering if I let too much intensity come through. I explain to her that I’ve bore witness to young and tragic death, and she seems to understand.

We finish all of the paperwork, and I realize it’s after five. We’re the only ones left in the office. She unlocks the door to let me out before she gets ready to leave. As I walk past her out the door, she smiles.

“Everything will work out for you, you’ll see. You just have to have faith.”

Her words cut me deeply enough that I won’t think of the irony of an optimistic insurance agent until I’m halfway home.

The air is cool through my car windows.

The road winds next to the river. I watch the water rush through, over the rocks, against the banks, north into Tennessee. The Pigeon is one of the few rivers in the world that runs north;  the elevation here is 2400′ and gravity leaves the river no choice. Six years ago, when the wasbund and I moved to Asheville from Atlanta, a string of hurricanes brought hundred year floods to the area. The course of the river changed in places, but it marched on, running to the sea in its own way, effortlessly taking a piece of I-40 right along with it.

I’m thinking about how long this river has been here, about how long it will remain after I leave this world. It runs tirelessly to the sea and no matter the course, it ends up where it belongs at the end of its journey.

We are all that river. There may be moments when we think we know our course, when we believe we have reached the sea, but those are all illusions. Nothing turns out quite the way we feared or hoped, because our imagination is limited by our past and current circumstances.

My sister has decided to move in with me, and I couldn’t be more thrilled at the thought of having her here.

Some of our own relatives will react to this development with stunned shock, as there was a time when you couldn’t get us to peacefully occupy the same space. We are a little shocked ourselves, but it seems overwhelmingly right. We are both operating with a calm, deep knowing- that in this moment in our lives, we belong together. There was no knowing before now- there couldn’t have been. No one could have predicted her earthquake or my flood- two events of biblical proportion that changed our courses forever, but we found our rivers joined in the aftermath.

Surely, they will separate again on their way to the sea. When and how this will happen is unknowable, but it is inevitable.

This inevitability might have kept either of us from making the arrangements we’re making, but it didn’t. All we know is that for now, we want and need to be together.

That’s all we can know, and so it is enough.

“Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. Can one say more about the practice of faith? Someone else might; if I were a poet or a preacher, I might try. But since I am not either of these, I cannot even try to say more about the practice of faith, but am sure that anyone who is really concerned can learn to have faith as a child learns to walk.”

- Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

Mama told me about a conversation the two of you had on Mother’s Day, in which she said that ya’ll were very lucky to have such wonderful daughters and you quickly corrected her- you both worked very hard to raise such wonderful daughters.

I know that you’ve been struggling with your own limitations lately. It cannot be easy for a man who is so proud of his physical fitness to accept that regardless of how well you’ve taken care of yourself, you can’t stop the arthritis in your hip. You’re ashamed of your limp, of your pain, of your reduced capability, and it saddens and frightens you that you are “becoming an old man”.

It scares the hell out of me too. I’ve spent the better part of thirty years denying the reality of your gray whiskers, refusing to think of you as anything but an invincible fixture in my life. I can’t do that anymore, and so we’re both quietly accepting some very troubling evidence here.

You told me on Valentine’s Day that you are the only man I need. That broke my heart, both because it is so sweet and loving and because it is completely and wholly untrue. I wrote the other day that I am my own protector now, and that isn’t so much the reality of the moment. Because you are still here, and you are still my protector, and I still feel the security and warmth of your love and protection. I also know that the Universe did not make it so that Dads would always be around for their daughters, and so I am trying to be my own protector while you’re still around to pick up the slack.

Whenever you taught me something, you reminded me that I wouldn’t always have you here to help. That someday I would live in this world without you. I am prepared for that in a literal sense- you’ve done well in teaching me how to take care of myself.

But Daddy, my heart just won’t ever be ready to live in this world without you. Ever.

I’m proud of you for gracefully accepting the limitations of an aging body. I wish I could tell you I’m doing as well accepting my end of things. It’s so silly, too, because it’s just a little arthritis, not a damn expiration date. I could still end up spoon-feeding you when you’re eighty.

You are not a perfect man, and by extension, you have not been a perfect father, but you have always, always been there for me. You taught me so much about the world, and because we are so much alike, you’ve taught me things about myself that I might not have ever really understood without you. You taught me how to love by loving me so much. You set my standard for loving, for being loved, and I swear to you that I will not compromise it ever again.

So, you are not the only man I need, but I know one thing for sure…

If I am ever lucky enough to find a man that takes care of me as well as you do and loves me as much as you do, I will have found what I’m looking for in this world. Thank you for being who you are, for helping to make me who I am, and being one hell of an example of what a man ought to be to his family.

Happy Birthday, Daddy. You may not live forever, but I will forever be a Daddy’s Girl.

Boys, you can break
You’ll find out how much they can take
Boys will be strong
And boys soldier on
But boys would be gone without the warmth from
A woman’s good, good heart

So fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers
So mothers, be good to your daughters too…

-john mayer “daughters”

Over the past year, my sister has stunned me with her grace, her wisdom, her capacity for coping with her worst nightmare come true. There are good days. There are bad days. There are good weeks and bad weeks. Overall, though, she is doing better than any of us could have hoped she would; she’s growing into an incredible woman.

I hate that in order to develop that grace and wisdom, she had to give up her innocence. I hate that I lost a friend, an almost-brother, a probable addition to our family. I hate that the lives of his brother and sister and nieces and nephew were changed forever.  I hate that none of us know how his story would have turned out.

What I hate most of all is that this all could have been avoided if someone would have bothered to slow down and take a second look.

I have made myself vulnerable, and I have been ridiculed. People have made bold statements of loyalty, of intention and affection. I chose to believe them. I chose to let their words and their past actions set my expectations for those relationships and their future behavior. In so doing, I chose to let them ridicule me; I allowed them space in my mind and heart, I gave them the power to humiliate, confuse and reject me. The consequences were crushing, to put it mildly.

In the warmth of the desert sun, in the safety of an no man’s land where I play the role of an extra and not a lead or supporting actress, I searched my soul for a solution. For some way to mitigate the pain and shame of being fooled and rejected without losing the light, love and joy of knowing, trusting and caring for my fellow human beings.

Turns out, there is none. Turns out that taking people at face value, that believing what they say, and trusting in their words is the risk we take in loving, or even entertaining the idea of love. It just so happens that you have to let someone in far enough to turn you into a monster of expectation, even if they are going to turn around and refuse to feed the monster they created without your prompting. To add insult to injury, they will hardly ever have the courage to entertain a mature discussion about the change in their intentions or affections; they will almost always leave you with a hungry monster and a painful mystery.

Some have advised me to trust less, to love less, to lower my expectations of people. Human nature certainly supports this course of action- we are all both good and evil, and we often hurt each other whether we intend to or  not, and we seldom have the courage to handle emotional situations with an ounce of grace, compassion and maturity. I have certainly created and neglected a few monsters of my own. There is wisdom in having lower expectations, in charging a higher price for real estate in my heart and mind.

That just isn’t who I am, though. Never has been. After all the heartache, after all the humiliation and wondering and waiting and hoping and crying and wishing for a simple explanation- thirty years worth- I find myself in the very same place. Heart wide open, with great expectations.

I’m sitting here, at my desk in the visitor’s cube in our sister office. Looking at the pretty purple flowers my friend surprised me with this morning. Giggling and lunching with the girls I went out with last night. Remembering the people I met on this trip, enjoying the people I know and love more and more with every visit. Missing a dear friend who recently left the desert for his true homeland. Looking forward to my morning flight from Atlanta to Asheville, to watching the Appalachians rise from the Piedmont and catching my first glimpse of home. Fielding instant messages, emails, calls and texts from the people I know I can truly count on in this world. Marveling at the contrast between people who make grand statements that almost always disappoint and the people who show their affection in beautiful tiny ways- with english muffins and pretty purple flowers, by making a phone call to see if I got home okay and simply saying “I care about you, you’re a great girl, you deserve a lot”.

It’s not a bad place to be, on the whole.

And yes, I do deserve a lot. Because I am a great girl. So maybe, just maybe, if I keep my heart wide open, I shall have it someday.