There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people find their walls. So never apologize for your enthusiasm. Never. Ever. Never.
Ryan Adams
I read this first thing this morning, pre-breakfast, and thought, yes. I was reading Amy's blog.
It was a quiet yes.
One of the things I have most consistently done through time ... and it's dancing for shadows really, is defend the way I live my life.
My ex-father-in-law was an outrageous monster sometimes ... one who made everyone laugh. He assured me that the more he mocked the more love there was. Eyes twinkling, he pointed out how much he must care about me. He could be charming at times.
I can still see him there in the kitchen of 40 Tyne Street in Mosgiel. He's gone now, that man who was planning on spending his retirement near some beach where he could fish everyday. But his most serious and real accusation was always his ... have you been off gallivanting AGAIN?
The men I grew amongst were men who believed that a woman's place was there in the home, next to their husbands. They also believed that a husband's place was right there next to their wives. Kind of chained together. And that was a problem for me because I've always wandered.
My first husband gifted me an entire month off interviewing climbers and mountaineers for a book I was writing. If the authority figures in my young world were telling me I must stay at home, then my husbands have always told me to ignore them and wander anyway. But maybe they knew that I had to.
'Never apologize for your enthusiasm' was timely. I have tempered my enthusiasm over time. It is less evident although still explodes out of me on occasions but the need for flight ... there are no apologies in me. If anything, I'm becoming more convinced about the beauty and the need for flight.
There is the goodbye and hello of it all. You never stop appreciating a partner when you have a little distance sometimes. But more than that, filled with a compulsion to fix things for people, it's better to give myself a little people-less time. To live on toast and red wine and stand on the edge of societies I'm not part of ... there's something healing about that.
I do worry that things will collapse while I'm gone but it's so good realise that it's not all about me and that the world does go on when I wander off. I knew it as the small child who wandered. Perhaps I was my entire universe back then. I didn't care so much as the teenager who disappeared with her dog and dreamed dreams that she doesn't recall now. And I needed it on becoming a wife and a mother.
Negative people find their walls. So never apologize ... I'll run with that I think.
