I am happy... My first thought with waking today

I don't know where to start. The retreat was Heaven. I returned and we had to lower the price of the house, but then immediately had five showings.

My closing will be July 29th. All the inspections are done. All the 'i's are dotted. Everything is now a matter of waiting for that date. I will live in limbo for ten days because I cannot get into my apartment until August 6th.

Did I take a huge loss? Yes. Will I be okay for more than a year? Absolutely. I did not need a cosigner and my credit rating was super. And I have complete financial security for at least three years. How many people in this economy know that, even if there is an emergency, I'll be okay. I have insurance. I have a buffer. I HAVE SOME TIME!!

I have the luxury of the next year, to focus on learning how to work and to move AROUND this back of mine. I have the luxury of focusing on how to make some money again, without having to make home owner decisions, without having to consider the ramifications for ANYONE but myself.

I woke up this morning, refreshed and happy. Actively happy. I think for the last ten days I have slept most of the day away. At first I felt scared, then frustrated with that sense that I was drugged and could NOT do anything but sleep. Then I realized that this was probably just my body's reaction to having withstood two years of almost unremitting stress. It simply shut down.

This morning it woke up when I woke up.

I do not know where to start. I do not know what to write about first, or even what to say about a retreat in a place where a waterfall poured its music not a hundred feet from my window. Or what to say about the fact that my home will be a haven for children who were abused and abandoned. Children who have been in the system, but should not be in an institutional settin with children with severe behavioral and emotional issues. Children who need to be in a home setting, even if foster parents have not been there for them.

My home will shelter children who are lost. What better use could this place I have called home and shelter be put to? The woman who came for the first viewing said, "This front yard is like a meditation garden! This whole place feels like peace."

What better compliment to my home could I ask for? And the garden she talks about is the fruition of twenty years of planning, digging, planting, and nourishing. It came out exactly as I had planned and hoped. the front yard in front of the longest part of my home is a place where you can sit and no one can see you from the street. You look toward the house and see my perennial gardens and the walk to the main front door. It is quiet. It is five degrees cooler than any place else on the street. A high canopy of green and Japanese maple red above the bench. No undergrowth and the smell of evergreen mulch. And across the yard, the cacophony of a cottage garden of daisies, wild roses, lilies and hostas.

And today I woke up and realized that, for the first time in my life, I will be living in a place where my decisions need not take in anyone's needs but my own. Even in PA, I still owned this home with my sister and when anything went wrong, I had to make the final decisions and advise whom to call and what to do. I lived with others until I was married.

I am free and alone. But I have security for now, and I am focusing on that. I am lucky and know it. I cannot worry about down the road. I have NEVER made a long-term plan that did not need to be changed within two years. So I will keep myself in the present. I have a lot to do before I move, but that's okay.

I will be able to LEAVE my work on the table and return to it each day. No more putting up and taking down. I can leave out up to three paintings at a time, and be able to work twenty minutes and simply move to a couch to rest a time. I will have my studio again!  I will be in the town where I began adulthood and where I raised my children. The building that once housed the theater group I joined my first year out of college will be a brand new arts center next year! It is only two miles from where I'll be living. I will come full circle. This is where I met   the pivotal men of my life, where I met the friend whose children were my future children's best friends! This place held my future then. Perhaps it holds my future now, once again!

But I am finally truly living on my own. Scary as that may sound at times, for now? For now it holds both adventure and peace. It is temporaray, this living alone, but that's fine too. I have it NOW. A new chapter is unfolding and I am allowing the excitement and happiness to take over.

This is why I've been absent. ONLY for good reasons! No depression. No catastrophes. Just the NORMAL chaos of selling a home, and the stuff of trying to settle a contract. Now, it will be the packing. This has been home or home base for twenty-one years. That is long enough. I will be fifty-nine this weekend. My sixtieth year will be one of NEWNESS.

How wonderful is that? More whenever I can, even in snippets.