Resolutions

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions as they seem to me just one more thing that needs to be done, and I’ve enough that needs to be done without starting another list.

Of course there are things I’d like to change–eat more vegetables, preferably the dark leafy kind, give up my aspartame habit, work more fish into the weekly diet–but those are such little things compared to the resolutions I want to make.

Like accepting change.

Being flexible.

Adapting to life more gracefully.

The thing is, I do eventually change and adapt but the process isn’t pretty. I guess you could say I’m a fighter not a lover. Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s being an Aquarius or a small town girl with dreams bigger than she is, but it’d be easier for me to fly than to quietly yield to life.

I don’t do anything quietly or gracefully. I’ve been told my walk resembles that of a wrestler and I stumble in conversation, quick to flurries of passion and indignant emotion.

I’m trying to say that life baffles me. I baffle me. I might have gotten the smile-for-the-camera thing down, but on the inside, I’m still sorting out what’s what.

In January it’ll be three years since my husband and I separated and sometimes it seems like I’ve been divorced forever and other times I’m genuinely bemused, wondering where that other life went. I have a life in Hawaii but that life revolves around a surfer and a surfer’s job is in the ocean and even after years of dating a surfer and attempting to paddle out, I’m essentially still landbound and Hawaii still feels like a vacation not a home. Which makes me wonder, what makes a place home? Is it a person? Time? Friends?

Three years into my new life, I don’t fit in Bellevue the way I once did, but I can’t leave Bellevue as that’s where my kids go to school and play sports and that’s where my friends live.

Thus, if I made a 2007 resolution, my resolution would be to yield to change, work on accepting that which bewilders, and learning to be comfortable with uncomfortable emotions.

And once that happens, I should definitely be able to take up yoga and pilates.

And eat more fish.

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