There are a few boxes here and there, but mostly I am unpacked. 

All the furniture is placed. The dishes are in the cupbord. The pantry is stocked. 

On both sides of every street in my neighborhood are magnificent, well-kept sidewalks on which I now run every other morning. I like to head East, then North past the extra nice lawns. 

It feels like home. 

I’m where I would have been had the last 2 1/2 years not happened. Locality-wise, at least. 

And I’m better than I was 2 1/2 years ago. I’ve loved well and often. Horizons were expanded but I’m closer to centered than I’ve ever been. 

I’m grateful.

I’m grateful for the good and grateful for the bad. I’m practicing gratitude daily in my head and out loud for no other reason that it seems to be bringing me peace and joy. It’s wild… I’ve been told my entire life to practice good habits so that they become permanent. I always assumed that advice was intended for things like exercise or flossing, two things that I often fail at. But here I am, diligently practicing gratitude like I would practice Spanish or the guitar. 

However, I am not perfect. 

I get resentful of the mistakes of myself and the people I love(d). I stumble into a dwelling and I dwell. Music haunts me. Words haunt me.  It all pisses me off. Then that pisses me off, because I am donewithgriefalreadyholyshitenoughisenough.

I recall a glorious memory (or twenty) and am hit with the cannonball that they are and only ever will be memories. I try to neatly refold and place them gently back into their boxes. One day I know I’ll want to look at them again, the real ones and the ones in my heart. I don’t want to burn them or tear them or have them destroyed because they were good. At the time, I hadn’t the slightest idea they were in limited supply. I decided it makes them more precious to me now. I choose gratitude. When I’m all wrinkly and gray I’ll want to revisit those times and things, and be glad that they happened. I won’t be sad. I know this, because I already have older boxes on the shelf. They are way smaller, but still important. 

Inevitably, they will all be on a shelf with other boxes I’ve yet to fill. Boxes filled with love and joy and pain and loss. A lifetime of packing and unpacking. Moving. Changing. Learning.

It’s all horrifying and exhilarating.