Turning
Accepting what is…again and again and again
The leaves are beginning to turn here. The leaves turn primarily for two reasons: because the days are getting shorter and because the temperatures are dropping.
But also because they have done their job. They have served their purpose. The trees collected all the nutrients as they could from the leaves and now it’s time for them to fall. To return to the earth. To decompose on the ground and to cycle.
The trees don’t pretend the days aren’t getting shorter, or colder. They adjust. They accept what is. And they don’t drop all their leaves one day. The turning leaves are the most natural response, a preparation for what is about to come.
An acknowledgment that the time has come.
Nature is complicated, but also simple like that.
An acceptance of what is.
Just as the trees do, I have to accept what is.
And it is a lesson I learn over and over and over again.
Some days I want to just scream, for god’s sake, enough. I am fucking trying to accept what is. Trying to move with what is.
“FFS,” we joke that the baby says, watching us make it through our days.
Other days, I see it so clearly.
I am exactly where I am supposed to be, doing exactly what I have agreed to do, exactly as I am meant to do it: being who I am meant to be for the people I love and showing up for myself and my family and my kids.
It has to do with my recovery, I say all the time. It just does.
The day that I finally learned that I can’t drink like a normal person, the day I finally stopped fighting what is, and that I said, this is not a good choice for me, I have come to see that day as a happy day. Freedom.
My favorite joke: I used to think I was good at drinking, but it turned out I’m really bad.
Definitely an amateur, a friend jokes with me.
The reason it is so good for me to say, “Kristen, alcoholic,” is so I don’t forget.
I don’t forget that I can never drink like a normal person, but also that I have no control over that, and that the only thing I can control is my response, and that if I want to live a life I’m proud of, I had better find a way to accept and work with what is, what actually fucking is, not what I wish or hope or want for.
In the fall, I have historically raked the leaves into a pile in the front yard.
This year we have more decorations out front, the result of my kind, loving husband.
When we went through his fall decor, there were signs that say, “It’s fall, y’all.”
This is the South, I thought, fuck it.
I used to hate that shit. I kind of still do.
But then, again, I think, what am I so afraid of? Being happy?
I think what I find most off-putting about these, Live Laugh Love or "It’s Fall, Y’all” type things is that it is inauthentic — the actions don’t match the words.
I was always one for “dirty realism,” or K-Mart realism. Grit. Raymond Carver. All that.
But really what I wanted was authenticity.
An honest life. And here we are, making it happen, Fall Y’all signs and all.
I’ll have to rake the pile a little off to the side this year, I think. We have more than just “Mr. Bat,” the only inflatable decor I had. We have a cluster of ghosts and a giant dragon. We have bales of hay and scarecrows. We have a dog skeleton that howls, we have fake pumpkins and real pumpkins and orange lights.
My husband put all the decor out in late September, and when he was done, he called the kids out, and they all lit up and went, “Ooooh!”
Seeing their faces light up like that. Seeing my husband’s face light up that their faces lit up.
When I sat down to write this, the baby started crying.
Jesus Christ, I thought. I just want to put my earbuds in.
When is the last time she ate, my husband asks. We look at the clock. She pulls herself up at the gate of her new play area, staring at us. He’s right. It’s a hungry cry. I close my computer.
My exclusively breastfed baby. My daughter.
I have to remember: this is what I’ve always wanted, what I’ve always wished for.
We have a piece of art that we haven’t yet found a home for. So it’s been sitting in the hallway. Someone put it up on a vacant nail on the wall.
It reads, If you want to know how much I love you, count the waves in the sea.
What does that mean, Llew asked this morning, since it was just sitting on the floor of the hallway, outside the upstairs bathroom.
We were at the ocean yesterday. In the water, I lay back and moved with the waves.
The waves are endless, I said to Llew. You can’t count it.
Oh, he says. Now I get it.
On the daily, I learn to move in the season of life I’m in. I sweep the floor 15 times a day and 7 different children need baggies of goldfish.
It is learning and learning and learning again.
How to care for myself. How to identify my needs. How to meet my needs without using a drink to hide from what is.
It’s learning that over and over and over again.
This is it: this is the stuff of life.
The particulars will be different, but the stories are all the same.
This is living.
Learning and learning and learning over again.
Your question, "What am I so afraid of. Being happy?" is really powerful.