by Teresa Antoinette

Created on: November 30, 2009

Patience.

Trusting the Goodness that is never-ending. It is hard because I am accustomed to thinking the worst but life requires more from me than that. I am stronger now, and need to act like it. I like this person I am becoming. This person that was tucked away in the corner of my heart beneath layers and layers of my yesterdays. Slowly, piece by piece I was uncovered.

I will always choose Love, Peace, Acceptance, Gratitude, Happiness, Creativity, Enthusiasm. Even when it is hard. Life is SO good when I remember all that I have. When i focus too much on what I want, what I have to do, what is missing...I feel a lack. It is important for me to remember to pause and take stock of all that is around me. The grace and goodness that tends to go overlooked. If I am sounding too serious right now, it's because I am. This is my life and I am unapologetic for my romantic dispositions.

I am glad for my pain and my sorrow. They have watered the soil beneath my feet, helping me to remember what it is I stand for. What it is I find intolerable. What I really want and what I really did not want at all. In a way, my sorrow has been like a mirror showing me my life in reverse. Showing me who I was becoming through the hardships, and allowing me to see clearly when it was time to change paths. This yellow-brick road has been bumpy. Only recently have I understood why. But, life is not understanding, life is loving. Contemplation and reflection is admirable, even necessary but too much time in the head is not the way to live. At least not for me.

I need to be doing, acting, living...all those verbs, I need them. I sometimes wonder what my life would look like had my father stayed, or if I never left LA, or...if anything on my path had shown up as something else altogether...things would be different of course. I probably would not be me, or I'd be some conservative version of myself perhaps. The horror...

The Truth is this, and it will remain within me, unchanged: I love the person that I am. All of my complexities and struggles, both unspoken and shared, and my blatant imperfections. They are pieces of the puzzle.

My story is long from over. I will live many years, I can feel that I will be an elderly lady probably still baking rainbow cupcakes in her yellow apron. Probably still playing air-piano to her favorite songs (though by this time I will no doubt have my grand piano). Probably still in love with The Wizard of Oz - I will have met and loved all my Tin Mans, and Scarecrows, and Cowardly Lions. I will have conquered all my Wicked Witches and thanked all my Glinda's. And just like Dorothy, I will realize that the magic was beating within my own self all along.

But here is a secret, another shared Truth: I feel the magic everyday more and more right here, right now.

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