Don't worry... I fixed the panel myself

 I am the necessary interference…

The harmonic anomaly…

Tonight, as I sit to write, I think about all of my NOW moments.
I think back to sitting here one year ago, three years ago, five years ago, ten years ago… shall I keep going?

The woman I was ten years ago was so confused. I was definitely on autopilot. I pushed myself hard to get a grip. I was exactly where I thought I wanted to be, but something was off. So off the electric company could have been paying me—the switch was tripped.

What do you do when the lights go down?

I waited. Patiently.
I could always feel in my soul that something big was happening. I just didn’t know what that something was. I was thankful for what I had and I made the most of it.

The woman I was five years ago was terrified.
Just a year prior, I had married the man who consumed every part of me... from conversations with people who didn’t give a shit to daydreams and aspirations. I lived and breathed nothing but him.

I should have been standing in an ocean of elation.
Instead, I realized that saying I do changed nothing.

He would stare at the ring on his finger and mutter about how special he felt that someone would choose him. I had always chosen him. He didn’t always choose me. He still fought to win, not to understand. He still stomped around like a toddler who didn’t get his way. He still said some of the cruelest things to the person he claimed to love.

Nothing had changed.
And I was afraid I had made a terrible mistake.

But I waited.
Some of the best wines get better with age. A wing and a prayer…

The breaker wouldn’t stay on.

Three years ago, the woman staring back at me in the mirror finally said, You deserve to be happy.

So I went looking for the things that made me happy. I realized I had placed all of my eggs in the basket of him... of us. I stumbled into an opportunity to hang my art in a gallery and worked for months preparing for it.

On the day of the opening, he stole that too.

I sat on my deck, smoking a cigarette, about to leave early. My parents were taking the kids so I could participate in my own life. He showed up just before I finished... armed with excuses, explaining why I shouldn’t be mad.

He made it.

I listened to him manipulate the truth, and this time my eyes were wide open. Every other time this had happened flashed before me. He had been spinning stories like this for eons.

I felt gullible. Foolish.
How did I not see this before?

The circuit was fried.

Still, I waited. I assumed it was me. Maybe motherhood. Maybe I couldn’t focus. Maybe I couldn’t communicate clearly.

I pulled my energy way back... not because I wanted to. I wasn’t built for that. When I love you, I love the f*ck out of you. I often restrain myself, afraid I’m too much.

My dad has a saying: “The worst kind of alcoholic is the one with a head full of AA and a belly full of booze.”
That was me. A head full of understanding and a blown panel of fuses.

The woman I was a year ago wasn’t surprised.

If I’m honest... even with all the hurtful things he did and said at the end... I know it had to happen that way. He had to be the disrupter. The one who caused the system I had been operating under for 27 years to revolt.

And I was grateful.

I was scared.
But I was free.

Today, as I write to whoever reads these words, I understand this: everything is frequency. Everything is a symphony. When all chords... even the ones that sound like nails on a chalkboard... are played long enough, they find other chords and create harmony.

And when harmonies meet somewhere out in the universe, they create the most beautiful symphony you’ve ever heard.

Nothing is a mistake.
Nothing is right or wrong.
Every possibility is a strike of the string of life, aiming to become part of the whole.

And I understand now:

I am the exact dissonance this symphony was missing.

Every avenue, wave, frequency, chord would have brought me exactly here... just as I will ride out of here in whatever shape or fashion comes next.

There is no right or wrong.
Just chords bumping into each other.
Chords tethering. Tying.

Chords freeing and releasing...

My lights are on.
I fixed the panel myself.

           Poem 1246

“The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.

They're in each other all along.”

—Rumi