Something About Just Desserts...

Last night, our friends Jay and Marcy came over for dinner.

4 adults, 7 kids, 1 baby, and 1 wiener dog between us.

We started out with some veg and Mad's Fave Ranch Dip...

And after the evening ended too soon and the house was quiet once again, I realized that was the first time in 6 years, almost half of Joey's and Maddi's lifetimes ago, that I was able to open up my own home - to our friends and their family, with my entire family intact, happy and healthy, and in place - and enjoy it the way a home was meant to be enjoyed - with the sharing of laughter, fun, space, stories, things to eat and things to drink in the company of people we not only love, but whom we like and whose company truly enriches us and lifts our spirits.

...and really sweet blueberries that tasted like candy.

Five years after I signed those papers in which I chose to relinquish two houses and my right to freely access all of the material things I earned over thirteen years housed within them, my rights to support undeniably earned and deserved - specially in my incapacitated state at the time, and most painfully, the legal say so over my children, for whom I was the primary caretaker until the events that precipitated my divorce. Five years after I'd learned that I squandered my friendship on people who were all too eagerly waiting, and for a LONG fucking time, to first patronize, then kick me when I was down.

Some said it was too much to give up. That I was crazy not to fight harder for more.

Then we moved on to some Hoisin Roast Chicken...

But even in my mentally diminished state, or maybe to some degree because of it, I realized that I had to release myself from all my opponent would attach to in order to be free from the control he'd try to exert over me, the control legally afforded him by my temporary mental illness, through those attachments.

Because maybe that mental "illness" made me just crazy enough to believe that what was truly mine, Karma and Cosmos would return to me without me having to surrender my dignity in addition to everything else I'd given up in order to reclaim it, provided I kept my head, heart and hand in the right place.

...and assorted grilled meats in tubular form.

And what was mine to have, if I was willing to earn it, was a happy, healthy, whole family in a happy, healthy, loving home, with a meaningful network of good friends with whom to share our lives.

And one of the Monsters' favorite salads...

The ongoing work? Honest knowledge of self, constant vigilance over intentions, doing what I know is right for me and my family regardless of how others might perceive it, and the frequent balancing of my needs and wants to the needs and wants of those around me, the hardest task being the one in which you acknowledge and accept your own hand in your own misery. In which you recognize those things about who you are and the choices you've made that brought those people and events you'd rather not take credit for, into your life. In which you truly determine that you are not, and will not be, a victim.

Love it when all the food gets eaten, all the drinks
get drunk, and everyone goes (or stays) home
HAPPY. :)

I earned that perfect moment with my family and friends last night. But you know what? I earned that other thing too. The good news is that if it took me 13 years to earn, and learn from, that other thing, it took me less than half that time to get it (much, MUCH) righter. ;)

shinae