My life right now does not suck.

I’m still healing.  Physically, emotionally, psychologically… I’m not quite yet where I need to be.  Maybe I never shall be.

But right now, my life does not suck.

The energy in my life has taken a complete turn.  Where there was uncertainty, anxiety, mistrust, and pain now I have tolerance, Devotion, affection, and love.

My life is full of music and love.

Trust is at the core of my ability to be happy.

Fear has been driving my life for longer than I’d like to admit.

I made things worse by finding more and more sources of fear to add to the mix and when I didn’t have enough, I invented things to fear.

My proclivity is strongly to turtle when things hurt me.  I pull in, armor up, and tell the world to fuck off while I rally the troops for a sortie.

Love is so much more powerful than fear though.

I have amazing friends.  In some cases these are friends that have been hanging back in the shadows, waiting to serve me when I needed them – my own personal Batman corps.   In some cases these are new friends, people I’ve just met, but still want to help me heal.  In some cases, they’re friendships that have been with me all along, but now take on new significance and import.

The problem with love is that it requires trust.  When I open myself up to love, I’m opening the very heart of me, and the pain that I felt in the past weeks is more intense than anything I’ve gone through before, and I’ve gone through some seriously fucked up shit.

The very idea of making myself vulnerable like that, so soon, so wholly, is terrifying.  But it is also exactly what I need.

So I have begun again to love freely, trust freely, and have no expectations.

I am setting myself up to be crushed again, but now I know that I have my friends who will always be there to help me get back up again.

I am giving my trust and love to everyone right now, and it’s scary as hell, but so unbelievably rewarding that I literally do not have the words.

This past week I was at Bondage a Go Go and we all found out together that Chris Cornell had passed away.  It was a powerful moment for a lot of people.  I stood outside waiting for my car and saw a young woman crying but didn’t put two and two together just yet.  I asked her why she was upset and she evaded, saying that it was not a good reason to be standing on the street and crying, but I told her that I knew exactly what she was feeling and asked if I could give her a hug.   She agreed and so I did.  She wept and I held her for only a fleeting moment.  My car had arrived and I looked down on her and said, “my car is here, are you going to be okay?”  She looked me directly in the eyes and said, “I will be now, thank you.  Go.”  So I did.

It was an anonymous moment with a stranger in the streets of San Francisco, but it was powerful.  It was a moment where fear and pain turned into hope and love.

I don’t even know her name.

In the past, this soon after a tragedy like I’ve recently undergone, I would turtle.  I’d close up and close out the world and drink in the sweet poison of misery.  I’d sell out and join the world of the hopeless and haunted.  But I am fortunate and that is not my path this time.

This time, I’m doubling down on faith and love.

This time, I’m buying in and raising the stakes.

It will either liberate or destroy me.

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