The Bestest

Isn’t it strange how things happen one time that might have happened at any other time – only they didn’t? 

I feel like I have been riding along the edge all my life.  All around me was perfection and beauty and everything I ever wanted, but the jagged edge kept me from being able to really be part of it.

People and events came along and evened out the edge for a bit, but in the end there were just too much for anything to really do away with. 

Living on the edge has a meaning for me that is different than that of a thrill seeker.  Mine was a matter of survival.  A part of me has always seen past what is here.  A vision like a tether that kept me from slipping completely over into despair, but that same part dulled the beauty of perfection too.

I dangled between the dark and the light and no matter how many hands reached out to pull me back I walked the edge, rising and falling along its serrated sections, nothing ever worked for long.

As I settle into this new apartment and new lifestyle I realize that I have distanced myself from this edge.  I am far enough away from it to see it for the first time and I am amazed.  The clarity, the serenity, the simple beauty of living washes over me in ways I have never experienced before.

And I think it is because for the first time no one is pulling me back or hanging onto to me, but I am not alone either.  In that strange way that I cannot really explain there has been a shift, a shift that might not have worked for other people, but one that gives me an amazing amount of security.

Rumi called it The Friend.  I call it The Bestest.