All my life I have fought change in what ever form it took. I suppose that it was because I was born pre-mature. I had a twin that died while in the womb with me. For about sixty years, I have felt like some part of me had been missing. Then I found out about the twin who died, and it all started making sense to me. Being pre-mature, I spent my first month in the hospital in an incubator  I came home to an environment that was unpredictable and full of constant changes. There was alcoholism and drug addiction as well as domestic violence. By the time I was twenty-one, I had lived in eleven different places. That does something to your sense of security. Nothing was predictable or stable. I  learned that nothing is forever, and out of that came the belief that one must act, love, be all you can be, now, for it can disappear like smoke on the wind.

At a very young age, I learned a lot about loss. My way of dealing with it was to cut off from my emotions. I was very good at putting my feelings in a foot locker and closing the padlock. What I didn’t know back then, I know now. The feelings never went away. They just became stock piled up inside and they waited for the time of their release. I have had a great many changes over the last two years. Most of them against my will that I had to be dragged kicking and screaming through. I hate change but it is a fact of life. It is always a part of our lives whether we like it or not.

I am going through a change now, one of my making. I don’t want to change but I know some part of me has to in order to help myself become a better person. I need skills I don’t have, skills that would benefit me greatly and others close to me. The feelings are different this time. There is anxiety about leaving and whether I made a good decision. There is anxiety about starting with someone new and whether or not an old dog can learn new tricks (me). Anxiety about whether I have burned the bridge back from where I came from. My soul says you must. My heart says some thing different. Only time will tell whether this decision was good or bad. In the mean time, all I can do is wait and try my best. I hope and pray good will come from it.

Yu/stan/kema