falling face forward into fall

I’ve been a little down recently, as many of you kind people have noticed. I forget about who reads this thing until I bump into a neighbor who says, you’ve been having a hard time lately, Lisa. Huh? Oh, yes. You read the blog. Yeah, it’s been kind of a crummy summer.

Between my mom going through emergency surgery (twice), the death of a family friend (suicide), unfortunate health issues and some unexpected fall outs with a couple of dear friends, I'm ready to say so long, summer. I'll gratefully welcome you back next year but for now, I need a break.

Unfortunately, as we all know, once you admit to yourself that you’re unhappy or dissatisfied, it doesn’t go away. You can push it back for a few weeks- even a few months- and then all of a sudden, bam! It’s going to come back. And exponentially worse than ever before.

So today, I finally did what I should have done, weeks ago. I called my mom and told her everything. Well, almost everything. I don’t want to send her back to the hospital. Even though we talk all the time, we didn’t really talk until today. I’d been thinking a lot about her, and I’ve been in a truth-telling frame of mind for a week or so… it was time to go straight to the source, the real deal.

We talked for a while and she told me about a number of different odds and ends happening in my family that made me feel a little better about my situation. I guess the point was that a lot of other people have it worse than me. I know that. But it helps when my mom says it to me.

Also, she told me not to feel guilty about the delay in my move west. As long as I can make it out there by next year, I’m still in pretty good shape, apparently. That was a huge relief. There’s something just really satisfying about crying on the phone when the other person loves you unconditionally. You know, you just know, that there’s a bit of light peeping around the end of the tunnel. It helped. A lot.

And work-wise, things couldn’t be better. For everything else, we'll just have to see. But so far, I'm feeling good about fall; hayrides, football, haunted houses and pumpkin patches- it's always been my favorite time of year. I welcome today, the first day of fall, with open arms- excited about new beginnings, ready to leave old hurts behind. It feels good.