Well good, I now cry all the time

I’d like to tip my hat to my amazing counselor who helped me tear down the wall once and for all so that I can actually cry. Gee, thanks. HA! I now tear up and sometimes outright cry ALL. THE. TIME. This is, of course, a good thing. It’s also a little weird to get used to.

And it’s not like I have anything major to cry about. I’m only going into a milestone month, where my middle turns 18, and my baby turns 16, and that middle child is a senior in high school, and my eldest child will be entering the police academy in October, and there has been a ton of loss and stress over the last couple of months, and a friend had a beautiful baby boy (I cried when holding him), and people are coming and going (being born, dying), and on and on.

Me: Last night I had a dream that I was doing laundry. And it just wasn’t moving. It stayed the same no matter how much I washed. And as I sorted, I kept seeing the same clothes I had already washed.

Middle Son: Wow, that’s pretty traumatic. Are you ok?

Me: I’m hanging in there.

If you put any stock into what dreams mean, here is what DreamMoods.com says –

To dream that you are doing your laundry suggests that you are cleaning up your act or changing your image. Perhaps, you are too concerned about how you appear to others.

To dream that you are sorting the laundry indicates that you are trying to understand your own feelings and sort your attitudes.

Yeah, about that…

I’m absolutely sorting through my feelings and attitude. I’ve also realized (again, mind you) how often I run and hide from what I feel is important just because I’m afraid of offending one person. Every time I’m drawn to write again, it’s not always mushy-mush feel good stuff. In fact, it’s often the opposite, dragging ‘dem old bones back out of the temporary grave I continue to try to bury them in. All shallow graves, no proper burial because I know they haven’t served their purpose yet.

In the middle of all this growing up that my kids are doing, I’ve been growing up too. And growing into this woman I am today. A huge part of who I am now is made up of who I was then. Add to that the fact that I can now really feel things – and cry – means it’s time to march forward once and for all. Fear be gone.

Part of living life in full means being myself, warts and all. It means telling my story and not hiding from it when I’m afraid of what someone thinks about me. It means embracing where I’ve been so I can better acknowledge where I am. When the tears come, I’ll let them. But when the joy comes, I will ride it through the hard times we’ve been through, toward a better tomorrow.