Waiting

I used to drive to Vancouver Airport and stand on a grassy field just outside the perimeters of the runway and watch the jets take off and land. The rush of metal and jet fuel would max out my senses, driving out any unwanted feelings that might have been trying to take over. Just when I would feel wild and uncontrollable, I would stand there, face up, chest open and arms wide, and let the forces of the plane dominate my body and press me to the ground in one giant roar of authority.

There have been times in my life where I’d stand there and wait, feeling wild and uncontrollable, and no plane would fly overhead. I’d scour the sky, desperate for a higher power and yet there was none. Sometimes it seemed like I stood alone in that one spot for an eternity, watching the seasons change, hoping for a sign of Life for when I stood alone in that anxious state, I was never really living.

Sometimes the isolation and hopelessness would be too much to bear and I’d take matters into my own hands, exchanging anything I could offer for some sort of salve to stop the bleeding. Whether we like to admit it or not, we all find our own escapes from pain. Some of us drink or eat or run. Or maybe we have children to fill the void. Or we treat sex one-dimensionally and spread it on the surface of our skin like the desert sun hits the outermost layer of sand; we feel its burning presence but it leaves our deepest layers untouched and cold.

I know that the healing happens in the waiting. That we have two choices: to exchange our souls for the first thing that crosses our path, risking contamination, or, we can wait for the fuel that will ultimately satisfy our longing and satiate our bellies.

It’s part of our growing process. It’s cocooning. It’s the pregnant silence carrying the whisper of what’s to come. And when our promise flies overhead, we will know the roar of its omnipotence so intimately that we will tremble with relief.

Big Hairy Deal

I appreciate my hair, I do. Just as the chanting of a snake charmer raises the cobra from its coiled, dormant state, so does my hair draw out my reticent femininity. Also, it's comfy like a blanket. When I feel disarmed and wild, the heaviness of my hair shushes me back down to earth.

You know what I can't stand, though? Is that my hair picks up smells faster than a tourist picks up E. Coli from raw meat in Mexico. It's like, one second my hair smells like perfumey splendor and then the next second it's all Starbucksy ass munch. Or bacon. Or the cigarette smoke blown all over me by the lady I'm standing next to with the messy boobs and chin hair.

Twice in my lifetime, I've chopped my hair all off.  The first time I was in grade nine and it was right before my sister's wedding. I played about 18 different sports back then and so I looked like a 10 year old boy. It took me forever to grow it out and then again, I chopped it all off right after Jake was born. It's interesting to note that both times I cut my hair, I was having a bit of an identity crisis. Maybe I'm looking too much into it but I believe that in many ways, my hair is a metaphor for my Self. I'm lovely and feminine yet sometimes wild and unruly. My life can be messy and overwhelming and completely uncontrollable, but it's beautiful because it makes me Suzy. The more I attempt to manipulate it, the uglier it gets. I just need to let go and let it be.

Crash Course

I went to bed with a scratchy throat last night and woke up with a head funk. There have been some nasty bugs going around lately and so far we've been able to escape most of them although it seems that it's more of an ongoing fight rather than a clean escape. For some insane reason I thought that the best way to cure the chill of the cold brought on by Jake's soccer game would be to order 20 pieces of breaded, boneless hot wings. Unfortunately the kick in the wings wasn't quite strong enough to drive out the chills and instead left me slouched over in my chair, nearly comatose and drooling with my eye stinging with wing sauce.

Let's just say that tonight wouldn't be a great night for this head cold to morph into the stomach flu. I threw up carrots once, which was a tough one. Pieces of semi-digested carrot got stuck in the snorty part at the back of my throat and nose. I've heard popcorn can be rough as well. And oh wow wouldn't you know it, all of a sudden I feel nauseous.

My posts about grace and hope and faith and hippie love are looking pretty good right about now, eh?

I haven't been able to run in like, forever (today is day two) and I'm feeling antsy. We had a staff meeting last night and my co-workers were laughing at how uptight I was, checking and re-checking everything a million times a minute. It's alright though because I had a couple of creaky spots that need some rest and a few days off should do the trick. I really want to race a half marathon next month but I'm worried that I won't be able to run it like I did last year.

We have a patient that comes into our clinic who was an avid road cyclist, and a few years ago he was hit by a car and needless to say, has had to set a "new normal" for his life since the accident. He asks me about my running and racing and I told him about my stupid fear of not running at the same caliber as I did last year. I knew as soon as I said it that it sounded so trivial and of course he reminded me that not only am I not guaranteed a personal best time at the race, but that I (we) am not guaranteed anything. I could wake up in a hospital bed, like he did, and be forever changed. Or, I could not wake up at all.

We stood across from each other in that room in silence for a bit. His eyes were filled with the trauma of the accident and cloudy memories of who he was before it happened. He taught me something in there more potent than any famous quote or verse ever has: to live thankfully in this moment because it's a gift, not an entitlement. We've all read and heard that stuff a million times before but seeing it lived out like that, feeling the energy of the wind in his face while he rode, the assault of metal and concrete on bone and flesh and the frustration of being stuck inside a body that is not his own anymore, all combined into one surge of tangible, moving silence... it spoke to me.

I want to live thankfully in this moment because it's a gift, not an entitlement. There's no guarantee that I will run that race as well as I did last year just as much as there's no guarantee that I will wake up tomorrow, or that I won't throw up buffalo hot wings all night tonight. But I'm thankful right now that I'm awake, that my body is functional, and that my wings are down. Oh, yes, that the wings are down. Amen.

Little Things

I haven’t been inspired to write lately and when I do sit down to punch the keys, I end up plunging myself into an abyss of analytical brain sludge. Borrrrr-ingggg. I figured I would take a lighter approach and just go for it, and whatever comes out, comes out.

I’m sitting at Wendel’s in Fort Langley waiting for my chicken avocado wrap. I don’t know what it is but the familiarity of this place cradles me like a solid sports bra. Wildly bouncing around or hanging in surrendered desolation, I take comfort in knowing that I can be me here, just as I am.

I’m staring over at the patch of grass by the train tracks, remembering when I convinced one of my friends to pee beside the sign that showed a picture of a dog squatting with a line through it. Okay, so I was the one who peed by the sign. Whatever. Or when a bunch of us met here to hoop in the grass only to have the lady who lives in the old train house come out and yell at us to be quiet (about 30 seconds before a train ripped through).

I remember driving around one night in a blind fury of emotions, feeling pulled to this place like a baby to breast, parking my van and without even getting out, I bawled my eyes out until my insides felt empty again. And then I pulled my computer onto my lap and wrote out my most gut-wrenching journal entry that even now, 3 years later, I can barely get through.

In the spring, I like to sit outside with a salad and a Stella and let the sun pour the warmth back into me where winter left me empty and cold.

One snowy night in December last year, somebody close to me (I won’t name names!) threw up a Fort Pub cheeseburger in behind the hedge here.

This is where I brought Jake in April to talk about huge life stuff while we destroyed a piece of chocolate cake. We sat at an inside table and while we ate, he let me know the darkest parts of his heart and mind and he let himself fall into the safety of my unconditional love.

Well, I just finished my avocado wrap (a perfect balance of healthy fat and bacon and vegetable wholesomeness) and despite a couple of smudges of salad dressing on the keys, I think that once again, this visit has been successful. Sometimes it’s the little things in life that keep us going. I’ll take ‘em all, with a latte and a peanut butter bar. 

Grace

This is an excerpt from my journal on August 9th, 2010 (during my dreadlocks/raw food phase):

I am in grace and grace is in me. It's not something I need to work for or earn, it's just there like air and water and blood and sweat. Whether or not I acknowledge it doesn't make it exist or not but where my choice lies is if I will actually live it, breathe it, sweat it, taste it and share it. Grace is a gift, something I need to surrender to, like water. If I'm in an ocean I can struggle and fight but I'll sink. If I surrender, I'll float. Surrendering in an ocean is freaky because we have to splay out our arms and legs in this hugely vulnerable position with our head up, necks exposed, where the targets are hard to miss and easily fatal. But surrendering keeps us alive whereas fighting it will sink us, and fast.

I love the grace as water analogy because it's not human nature, necessarily, to be comfortable in water. Walking around on dry land comes naturally to humans. It's no great feat and certainly not very character-building.

I have had several people comment on how robotic or unhappy I seem lately. At first it really bugged me. It shook me up a bit! But then I think I realize that it's okay that I am a bit blah to them right now. It's just a season of my life: growing pains. I planted my spinach, peas and bean seeds and I love watching them grow. It was pretty damn dull at the beginning. I had to mix a pile of cow shit and dirt together, stuff it into a cup, then jam a little brown seed deep into the middle of it and water them every day. It sucked. Nothing happened. But then one day I saw little green shoots come up and the kids and I rushed outside and peered into the little containers and oooohed and ahhhed at them like they were the most exciting things on the planet.

So, sure... I may not exactly be a barrel of laughs right now. I may wear boring hemp skirts a little too often and my hair might look like a rats' nest. But really, is that a window to my soul? Could it be that I'm just a little brown seed trying to fight my way through a pile of manure? And could people give me a little water and sunshine already instead of kicking sand over me? Sometimes I wonder if people need me to be happy for me, or for them.

I love living authentically, it's such a freeing feeling. I certainly don't want to come across as haughty or uncaring but I owe it to myself to be able to look fully into the faces of the people around me without apologizing for my existence.

It's time for me to live that grace out and it's not going to happen if I'm trying to hold myself together all the time. It's time that I let go and let Suzy be Suzy and let God be God. It's such a freeing, peaceful feeling. My sprouts will come, just a little more water.

Dance

It seems to be that being able to find purpose for our pain makes it somehow tolerable. Growing pains exist because we are being stretched beyond our physical capabilities. The inner parts of ourselves are forcing us outward and upward and although painful, we wake up the next day and look in the mirror and see growth. My sister Lori has been asked before, "how do you do it?" and she replies, "you just do it; you think you can't but you can." Adversity drops us onto a pathway of hot coals and by reflex, our feet begin to dance.

I guess it's all about perspective that if we let ourselves get stuck in the grief then we won't grow. Grieving is good and healthy. Rolling around in pain, reaching for hot pads, comforting words, reassuring hugs, ice packs and medication is not only appropriate but necessary. Depending on the situation, this grief could play out for years. And maybe, just maybe, the more intense that the pain is, the richer the growth will be when we wake up and look in the mirror. But that's the kicker right there, that at some point we need to wake up, drag our sorry asses to the bathroom and look at ourselves in the mirror.

It's easy to get stuck rolling around in our pain. I did that when I went through my dreadlocks phase, and I'd be a big fat liar if I said that I still don't do it from time to time. In fact, I'm probably doing it right now by writing eight hundred posts about the damn subject. But the difference, and this is what I want to hold onto, is my perspective. When I think about the term "growing pains" I choose to focus on the word "growing" and not "pains." I will feel the pain, ohhhh I will feel it, but I will let my inner parts of myself force me outward and upward so that when I wake up out of the fog and stumble to the bathroom mirror I'll be able to see a stronger Suzy filled to the brim with strength and grace framed by some seriously huge bed head hair.

Produce and Product

There's this saying that a lot of Christians say and it goes like this: "God will never give you what you can't handle." This is my interpretation of it: "God gave you a dysfunctional childhood/bad acne/three nipples to toughen you up for the shit that you're going through now as an adult."

I hate that saying. It's totally meaningless! Like, what is even the purpose of saying it? To make the sad and angry person feel better? Like, oooooooh they can "handle" it so they must be super "special." Do you think while they're going through a crisis like the death of a loved one/divorce/sick child that they care at all if they're special? No. Or do they thank the Lord above that they're "strong enough" to handle all of this? NO! At that seemingly God-forsaken moment they want to all of a sudden be not special or strong. They want to be NORMAL. They want their biggest problem of the day to be that they can't find the fucking cucumber on the self-checkout computer screen at Walmart and they could care less if God thinks they're weak because some idiot didn't organize the technological produce section properly.

I have a thought. I have a few, actually, but some have slipped through the cracks of my irrational anger toward the ever-growing problem of finding produce on the self checkout screens. I believe that shit happens just because we are alive. It's not because we're anything special, or that we're stronger than the next guy. There's no reason. It just is.

Everyone needs a reason or a label so that we can fit our pain into a box, put it in a category and file it somewhere. If we have some sort of control over it then we can beat the pain and we win. But maybe pain doesn't need to be conquered. Maybe it needs to be felt.

There's a verse in the Bible (somewhere in the book of Romans) that I have appreciated over the years when I've felt the sting of life and it goes like this: "...we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." I like this verse because it brings me out of the middle of my pain and helps me to see the big picture. If I allow myself to feel the pain I'm in, I'm going to eventually come out the other side as a much better person than when I started.

It's not because I'm strong or special that I was dealt the pain card in the first place but I am willing to let myself feel it. It's not going to be pretty, but there's a finish line in every marathon. I may be bloody and bruised and have stress fractures in my feet but I'll come through the finish with my head held high.

Don't Just Chew Anything

Sometimes we have such a gaping hole in our emotional well-being that we become so starved for whatever it is that needs to fill the hole that we would pick up the emotional equivalent of chewed gum off the sidewalk in hopes that it would satiate our desperate hunger. I mean, this is obvious when we look around at people who have addictions to harmful substances and behaviours and hey, I'll be honest and I've admitted it before that when I'm stressed my running mileage goes up in some pathetic attempt to gain an upper hand on the emotional dial.

I have an incredible example of what the human psyche is capable of when it comes to protecting itself: A few months ago a ten year-old girl came into a physio clinic with a sprained knee from falling of a piece of playground equipment. Despite repeated treatments her injuries were not getting better but worse. Her slight limp developed into an exaggerated almost leg-drag. She is developing osteoporosis in one of her hips and her muscles and ligaments in one of her legs are getting shortened and causing even more problems. Upon some investigation it has been revealed that her father has always favoured her brothers more than her and since injuring herself, she and her dad have had to spend a certain amount of time every day together for her rehabilitation. It seems that her psyche is so starved for father-love that it is essentially "telling" her body to get worse so as to hold onto her father's attention.

Incredible.

I guess it's an extreme example of how an attention-starved child will gladly misbehave and receive discipline, as any attention is good attention. But in this case it blows me away that her emotional needs are so great that her emotional health would chuck her physical health under the bus for mere survival. Drug and food addicts can relate. But how do we fill a hungry void? How do we soothe a screaming silence?

Recognizing that we live in an imperfect world and being aware of our needs is the first step. Knowledge is power. We smarten ourselves up with whatever we need to know about where we might be hungriest and then figure out what we might be most vulnerable to and by the empowerment of this self-awareness we are then able to make healthy choices. Boom. Easy as that. Right? Ha.

When we lived in California I used to peel the previously chewed sun-warmed gum off the sidewalks and pop it into my mouth. So, I'm not gonna judge.

Choose Trust

Lora came over today to run eleven miles with me and although leaving my house was the last possible thing that I could ever imagine doing today, I did it because she forced me to. That's what friends do. With about a mile left with the sun shining in our faces, the winter wind feeling up our shirts, I told her that I needed that run more than a 40 year-old virgin needs to get laid. Sometimes I don't know what's best for me until it smacks me in the face.

Post-run rewards of Fort Pub nachos and beer fueled our regular analytical conversations about life and love. We lamented the fact that as divorced women (ohpleasekillmenow) we have huge issues with love and trust. We're standing at the crossroads with our loves, so badly wanting to move forward and live fully but that fear, that debilitating fear of impending pain looms over us like the shadow of an axe in a cheesy horror movie right before it slices the protagonist in half. And if we're honest with ourselves (and Fort Pub beer and nachos almost always guarantees incriminating amounts of honesty) we would admit that sometimes the fear of getting hurt is so intense that we almost wish that axe would just come down and slice us to bits already.

As we sat upstairs on my bed and talked, we didn't really come up with any sort of answer. No profound conclusion, no "aha" moment. No. But what we did agree on is that trust is a choice, and we'd rather choose trust and let love in than push trust away and lose out on the greatest gift invented.

My dear friend Jane brought her son to the hospital this weekend for a burst appendix. She watched the doctors wheel half of herself into the operating room with the trust that he would be healed. I leave the house every morning choosing to trust that when I drive through the green light that the person to my left will stay still. We give our love in trust that it will be cherished and respected. If we didn't do any of this, then Jane's son wouldn't be alive, I wouldn't leave the house, and the world would be without love.

Although it seems like a tough choice to make, trusting really is a no-brainer. Trust is a choice, and its rewards are plenty.

Big Picture

One of my favourite childhood memories is when I turned ten, my Uncle Phil took me up in one of the little airplanes he used to fly. I was beyond nervous having absolutely no idea what to expect, sitting there in the passenger seat while we sat on the runway, clenching and unclenching my little fists. I vividly remember looking up at him sideways while he looked down at me with his gentle eyes and reassuring smile and asked me if I was ready.

I wasn't.

I actually had a full-on panic attack and I was convinced that I was going to throw-up. Yet uncle Phil sat patiently with me until my anxiety somewhat subsided and then once we were up in the air all of my fear was left behind me like forgotten luggage.

One year ago today, Andrew took me up in an airplane for my birthday. I sat in the passenger seat beside the pilot while Andrew sat behind me. This time I wasn't afraid because I knew what to expect but also because the earth below me held luggage that I couldn't afford to carry that day; I had no problem at all leaving it behind.

It's amazing what a little perspective can bring to our emotional outlook on life. When we're in the thick of things we can't see the forest through the trees. The big picture loses its focus and all of our visions and goals seem to disappear into the fog while we clamor around in crazy desperation to somehow gain back the control we feel we lost. We clench and unclench our little fists to no avail.

But someone comes along with gentle eyes and guides us up out of the mire, through the cloud and fog and into the clear where we can see our luggage for what it is: small and unimportant in the big picture. When we get back down to the earth we don't need to forget the view, for the sky became a part of us and we, if we allow it to, will always have that sky-view perspective on where we are on the ground. We rose up before, we can rise up again.

The Puke

I have a phobia of throwing up. Actually, I used to have this phobia; it's lessened in intensity over the years. The more I talked about it the more I noticed that it's not uncommon to be totally freaked out about getting the stomach flu. My good friend Jen calls it "The Puke." If someone so much as walks by her in the mall with a nauseous look on their face, she hits her medicine cabinet and swallows truckfulls of anti-puke medication in anticipation of The Puke. And really? I don't blame her.

There's just something about getting the stomach flu that turns my world upside down. I've thought about it many times and tried to analyze it (my name is Suzy, and I am an analyzoholic) and the best explanation I could come up with is that when we throw up, it's a complete loss of control. As humans we are control freaks, some of us more than others, but at the end of the day we need to know that we have some sort of grip on our decisions and their outcomes. But when we get The Puke, there is no amount of self-control and cheek-biting that will stifle the spaghetti purge.

This is gross.

There's some funky virus going around right now that is giving everyone the worst form of The Puke since Norwalk, 2003 (been there, puked that). Kids at school are dropping like flies. The party people I work with are phoning in sick, and the rest of us are all hanging onto our health by our fingertips. Andrew and I saw a girl in one of the food courts at the mall yesterday wearing a mask and do you think we wanted to eat there? No. So we starved.

Whether we carry it as a phobia or as a mere discomfort, nobody wants to lose control and have our insides come out. It's embarrassing. It hurts. It smells, and it's out of our control. But when we finally let go, isn't it such a huge relief? The fear of letting it out can make us feel sicker than we need to feel but once we let go of that vice grip, we can purge ourselves of our sickness and start over with renewed health. This is why I don't fear The Puke anymore because my life will play out the way it's supposed to play out whether or not I feel in control. A feeling is a feeling, not truth. The sooner we let go, the healthier we will be.

Relentless

Although Andrew and I woke up on Monday morning to freezing torrential rain and wind kicking the crap out of the windowpanes, we each had two totally different perspectives: I was whining about how many layers of clothes I'd have to pile on for my five-miler while he was smiling smugly with his hands folded behind his head knowing he'd be doing his workout inside with his Muay Thai trainer, Jesse. But then because I have been off of running for an eternity (it had been a long five days) I was able to muscle through my lack of motivation and remember that I craved the wind in my face enough to take it up the bum if need be--as long as I could get outside and run my little heart out.

It took just as much effort to stifle my giggle when Andrew phoned to let me know Jesse was sick and needed to postpone the workout and that he'd come running outside with me instead. See, Andrew doesn't like running on the best of days and then in wind and rain and freezing temps? That's love, folks. He came home, threw on some shorts and a long-sleeve tee and out we went.

It started out okay but once we turned onto the long stretch of road that runs parallel to the freeway it was nearly unbearable. I kept looking over at him and his cheeks were red from the wind whipping the hail in his face and there was rain dripping off his nose and chin. But I had a moment out there, like I almost always do. It's hard to not take it personally when we run against wind and freezing rain like that but that's what life dishes out sometimes, you know? Sometimes life just slaps the fuck out of our faces and it's everything we can do to not curl up into a ball and die. And yet... we run on.

That long stretch of road felt like it went forever but it eventually ended. We started it together, we went through it together, and we finished together.

Vroom

There is no doubt that I have annoyed everyone who knows me with repeated quotes from the movie "Tommy Boy" starring my favourite actor of all time: Chris Farley. At one point he is trying to sell brake pads to a dealership and the guy who might buy them keeps hesitating because the box that contains the brake pads aren't stamped with a guarantee of some sort. Farley makes a point that a guarantee is nothing but that: a stamp. He says to the man, "If you'd like, I can take a shit in a box and stamp a guarantee on it but at the end of the day all it would be is a guaranteed box of shit."

There is very little in this life that is guaranteed and people who have lost much are the ones who will nod their heads most fiercely to this statement. In a split second we can go from plenty to pathetic. Married to divorced. Life to death. Paradise to devastation. Words are empty without the accompanying actions. The only way to know if our risks are worth it is by taking that step of faith and choosing to put the brake pads on, and hoping for the best. Have faith, choose love, put the brake pads on and drive. If we don't, we will be sitting cross-legged on the cold garage floor for all eternity holding a box filled with what we are convinced of is shit.

Imagine all of the things we would miss out on if we never left the garage floor.

"He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being." -Paul Tillich

Shhh...

I'm reading a book called "Walking on Water" by Madeleine L'Engle and in the first chapter she writes, "when I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening."

I remember when I was pregnant with my first child, I was sitting in one of those prenatal classes that we're supposed to take at the hospital and the nurse who was instructing the class was giving us lessons on how to breathe during contractions. All of us big girls were sitting around in a semicircle on chairs desperately trying to not look fat, doing our best to pay attention while pretending not to notice the wasp that was taking nonstop suicide dives into the light bulb above our heads. It was an exciting night.

Meanwhile, the nurse would walk around the room observing the way we would be breathing: in deeply through the nose, relaxing the belly out, tongue down off the roof of the mouth, ears relaxed, shoulders limp. As she marched around the semicircle and came closer to me, I felt even more tense, worried that I'd be doing it wrong and that I'd be the example of what not to do. Everyone else seemed to be at peace while I felt like I had a cat caught somewhere inside of my body, scratching at me to get out. She stopped in front of me, and I will never forget this moment for as long as I live, she told me, "Suzy... you need to practice letting go of your anxiety." And then she walked on.

I'm the type of person who runs constantly so as to not have a time for being, because when there is a time for being there is a time for listening. And do you think I would want to hear what my body and mind wanted to tell me? Not a chance.

It wasn't until I went through the dreadlock phase that I started being still and opening myself up to what silence had to teach me. I was petrified, but I got to the point where it hurt too much to stay stuck where I was. I'd fluff my hippie blanket out, light my incense and then I'd sit in the middle of my bed and close my eyes and let my thoughts come and go with as much ease as a morning breeze. Sometimes the sun would feel warm on my face and then just as suddenly as it came it was replaced by the sting of hail. I'd sit there, face open and willing to receive, bear, and birth. I'd rock each thought, fear and hurt and then, belly out, tongue down and off the roof of my mouth, ears relaxed and shoulders limp, I'd let them go.

Moving Anger

What do you do with your anger? I grew up with the ideology that righteous anger is "godly" and that we are allowed to be angry as long as we communicate it to God and then trust in Him to deal with it justly. The last time I checked, the G to the Oh Dee didn't look too kindly upon malicious payback involving back-alley ninja moves and ex-lax brownies. So I guess what He would want us to do is prrrrretty much nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean, we have to let go of our anger somehow in the hopes that something bigger than ourselves will make Karma our bitch, and we can just sit back and watch the curtain rise.

I can see where that idea might work for some people and maybe it IS part of the equation but I'm not too fond of the passive approach to anything; I'd much rather be proactive, bouncing around in my cheer-leading outfit, simultaneously ticking things off my to-do list and eating chocolate-covered coffee beans. So when it comes to feeling angry, my goal is to let go of it without unhealthily stuffing it. Shoving down unwanted thoughts and feelings only serves to feed a monster, and that monster, let me tell you, isn't the Sesame Street kind.

We all have choices. We all have our "fork in the road" moments, don't we? Some of them are life-defining and some of them are small but we can't neglect the fact that we are in charge of our lives. We feel angry, and we lament in anguished voices, "It's NOT FAIR!" and then what? Do we call those people out who hurt us? Or do we let God or Karma deal? For so long I have believed that taking the high road involves silence, but what about when someone breaks the law? Does authority let Karma deal with thieves and murderers or do they beat their asses to an unrecognizable pulp?

I'm not saying that violence or diarrhea brownies are the answer, and neither do I actually have an answer. All I know for sure is that sometimes life isn't fair and most of the time people hurt people and always, always, we need to deal because if we don't then it grows into something self-destructive. It's just how to deal, is what I struggle with.

Brownies are a good start, though.