Fear (without the loathing)

According to the moving company, my belongings will arrive tomorrow.

I should be very excited.

But you see, I grew up in a situation where any time anything good happened, anytime I got anything I wanted, anything at all, something, very swiftly, swooped in and took something even more important away.

It started with my Grandmother and carried on from there. My family seems to have lived that way too because they have encoded it into their idea of what it means to be alive.

My mother takes great care to remind me, every chance she gets, that things could go sour at any moment. She always has, and fear of her being right made that a self-fulfilling prophecy at least half the time. (At least, it did in the past.)

So today, the day before my things arrive and my whole life is finally in one place with the man I love more than any words or colors or light or air itself, my finally happy and whole life - I am scared.

I turned on the radio and there was a show about "mixed status families" and how, very often, the government pulls them apart and sends the immigrant partner back to their country of origin.

And I cried. I cried a whole lot  because that made me even more scared.

When I first wrote about Steven in this blog his sister found it and told him I was too serious about him. Then an old girlfriend who was still a friend of his found it and brought it up to him. I can't hold things back, in my writing, I never really wanted to. Being transparent is meaningful to me.

But because I was afraid it would hurt the relationship, I took that post down and more or less stopped writing here.

Tonight, it is slowly dawning on me, that fear is the worst reason to do anything.

Fear seldom helps.

And in this case, in my case, fear is not justified.

So for once, I am not giving this life, not this day, not this love, not any part of it - to fear. I am not going to buy into the idea that I must pay for every good thing in my life with something so awful that it beggars the imagination - the death of my Grandmother, my parents divorce, the many moves, far away as a helpless child from anyone who loved or cared for me, the adoption of my only son. I have paid and paid and paid. I have paid more for my life than most people ever endure. I am done paying.

Everyone deserves happiness. Everyone deserves a great love, a home, a marriage to make a family from, whatever that family might look like to each of us, we all deserve one.

And I am not going to be silenced by fear anymore.

I am here. I live here. And I am going to celebrate it, revel in it and love it every single day. I will take every opportunity to sing about it. Because that's what I do. That's who I am.

And I don't owe anyone a single thing for that.