Letting Go. A little.

It Has been just under a year since I Last blogged. I've been telling myself its because I can't pin down what I want to blog about. It just occurred to me that I know exactly what to blog about, that was never the problem. The problem has been that I was afraid to blog about what I was thinking and that is unfortunate because I started this blog under the disclaimer that you, the reader, may not love what I'm saying but I'm going to say it all the same. So, read it or leave it but I'm blogging for me. Anything beyond that is useless and a waste of all our time. If you've read my blog from its inception you know I'm not always 100%on top of my game. But I am honest. And I am not ashamed of who I am. Read back if you must because I'm not going to rehash old news. I have struggled with an eating disorder for all of the time I should have been building who I would like to be. Just today after Ava told me one of her classmates kissed another classmate, I told Ava, "do NOT be concerned with things like that yet. Your job right now is to decide who you want to be and then be that person. Ask questions if you need. But today, tomorrow, a year from now be the person you decided to be; not the person you ended up being." And the great thing about my 7 year old? She understands. She knows she needs to respect herself. She knows that while right now she is Catholic, someday she may not be. It may not fit her. There was a point in time when I was so consumed by the pain of hating my own self, I turned it outward and hated God, my friends, my family. I was that person you pass in Target and turn to your friend or spouse and say, "how does one person get that angry"? And then one day, after being on suicide watch, after almost losing my marriage, after giving up on my future, and choosing to disappear one way or another, I found hope. I found a picture in a book. It was a picture of a butterfly and underneath the caption read "in Buddhism, butterflies represent the rebirth of life after death" and I thought a religion that gives you one of God's greatest, most mysterious creations as a symbol of survival can't be bad. So, in a way, I started over. I read about Budhhism, I talked to other people who studied Buddhism. This isn't a movie about how the down and out girl discovers her life saving miracle and travels to other worlds to pursue it, because in real life that takes money and there was not so much of that in MY real life. But I worked to learn what I could second hand. And I started not to hate so much. I got a tattoo of a large, beautiful butterfly custom designed for me by an amazing artist. That physical pain was cathartic on a level I didn't know existed. And I was left with a permanent reminder that I survived. I continued to study Buddhism and as I did something strange happened. I found myself more and more everyday feeling a little bit closer to my God, my roots. I found that I could live through Buddhism with it as my guide of how to treat myself and how to treat the people around me. But at my core I finally once again believed in God and Heaven and that I was a good person with a framework built of peace, kindness, and gentleness that was secured together by way of my faith in God. So, if someday, one of my girls comes to me and says, I think I need to look somewhere else, I'll be okay with that. I think ultimately, she'll come back. And ultimately, you can't force someone to believe something. You want them to get there of their own free will. Ava has always been lightyears ahead of where she should be and so much of the time that scares the shit out of me! When she was 18 months old, we took her to her pediatrician who diagnosed her as "speech delayed". I felt like I'd been hit on the back of the head with a concrete block. The doctor told us it wasn't necessarily a problem yet, but I saw a future of tutors and linguist professionals. It was about 1 week later that she started talking and she hasn't stopped yet. She aces her spelling tests, she compliments people on how wonderful or divine or stylish their home/dogs/casseroles are. She hears way more than she should and she understands almost as much as any adult I know. So, naturally, she wants to be older. I want so badly for her to slow down and be 7. Maybe forever. But, there again, she'd be the person she ended up being, not the girl everyone already knows her to be. Thank God Sophia is still mostly just interested in bugs and being naked (a blog for another time).