Red.

My hair looks nice today. I’m wearing a sweater that looks good on me. My jeans fit. Black cowboy boots change my step just enough that my body carriage feels good. I have nothing to complain about. I have taken care of my own needs.

If yesterday was about feeling empty, today is about feeling full. There is so much in my life for which I am grateful, and I am leaning in to those things more and more as I realize just how much I’ve changed for the better. I am not walking around with a cloud above my head that threatens to storm when I least expect it. I have taken back my power, and doing so has given me some control over my thoughts that wasn’t there before.

I can choose to stop the spinning. I can choose to stop the negative thoughts. I can choose life. I always could, but I didn’t know it. I mean, I knew it, in that way that you know things logically but can’t put them into practice emotionally. Now everything is starting to snap together so that I don’t feel held hostage by grief and pain.

I can concentrate on Clarence (the toad that lives under our house) and Skippy (the squirrel in one of our backyard trees). I can concentrate on remembering to check Jake’s**** backpack for his school work (that little bastard didn’t tell me he had a Thanksgiving luncheon coming up). I am amazed by the wonder in the world, and the bright sun that seems to follow me whether or not it is raining.

****For the uninitiated, Jake is our fake child. It’s a long story, but basically an elementary school automated system kept calling me about a child being absent because they were trying to reach the owner of the phone before me.