I am safe here, in my comfortable home. This home that blesses me even as it surprises me, for I really had no idea where I would end up and what my life would become. It has taken years for me to get to this place and back to a mindset where I could write, must write, all that has happened and what has become of me.
Perhaps it is easier to start at the beginning for you to follow my story logically, but in truth I must start from where I am and understand it myself-even as I explain it to you. I am home. In my first home, in a manner of speaking-though I don't own it and I have rented many houses before but this, this one is different. From the beginning it was mine alone, completely and without a doubt. The decor, the mess, the labor of love that brought it into its current state.
I am safe. I am home. I have all I need. These are the things that I tell myself even as the world is in a state of unprecedented terror. A pandemic that no one really has completely wrapped their mind around. No one knows how this will all play out, but I am home and safe and very, very alone
Today the governor of Colorado had ordered everyone home....it's a frightening idea but in truth I stopped going out weeks ago. Forget social distancing, I chose isolation because I don't need any more illness and I dismiss the insanity that seemed to take over otherwise regular folks here in Colorado and across the nation, perhaps around the world-but I don't have reliable information about that so I won't speak of it here. I have enough of my own experience to fill my head in swirls and tangles. Waves of fear, anger, sadness, and grace hit me in turn. To return to myself, I remind me of who I am, where I am, and what is happening right here, right now. My world as I experience it. Not what the news says, not what the political parties or the fear mongers say, what I know to be true. I have a safe place to live. My refrigerator is full. My lawn is beginning to green. My bills are paid, for now, and I am no more or less broke than the last week of any month in recent memory.
I do not have a stockpile of anything, I bought what I always buy, a month's worth at the beginning of the month and it should last me because it always does. I am calmer now. These simple pieces of reality bring me back to myself. I am home, I am safe, and as far as I know, my family and friends are also safe and well. To be able to say that as the fear flies is a testament to true wealth, so I am also a wealthy woman. Ha! That certainly was not my impression as I began this post, but I choose this reality-for it is real.
It is always true that we choose our reality. None of us can absorb all of the facts that comprise any particular day or situation. We choose which ones to keep, which ones we share, and which ones we hide. I am convinced that we all do all of that, at the very least. How else could we process our days much less our lives? So, in this moment I choose to remind myself that I have all that I need for this moment and I draw comfort from knowing that when I wake up, I will drink my tea, let my animals out into the yard, and begin another day of choice. I will not trouble myself with what I do not have, nor the people I am missing so desperately, nor will I distress myself about things that are out of my control. I will start anew. I will clean and disinfect and I will finish arranging my back porch. I am expecting to spend a lot of time out there this Spring.
I hope that you, also, can comfort yourself with the realities of your life. Your riches that are so easily overlooked or taken for granted in these turbulent times. Choose to be at ease in your home. Choose to recognize how many of your needs are already met. Choose to tune out the distress, at least for a space large enough to catch your breath. Be well, stay well. Be safe, at home.
