I just had a thought.

Actually…that’s like the dumbest phrase I’ve ever heard of. I have zillions of thoughts everyday, every minute. So I didn’t JUST have a thought. But I think something finally just clicked in my head. It may have taken like a month and a half, but hey. Better late than never. Which, by the way, is also a stupid phrase. There are so many things I’d rather experience never than later. Food poisoning, for example. But in all honesty, something finally just made sense to me when it hadn’t before. I’ve spent the last month or so feeling powerless. I didn’t actively feel powerless, I didn’t even realize I felt powerless. I didn’t realize I felt powerless until I actually felt powerful. Funny how that works, huh? I’ve been experiencing tons of new things and making changes that I’ve wanted to make and enjoying the beauty and travesty of life a lot recently, but all the while feeling like I wasn’t really the one making certain choices. I felt like part of the way I was feeling, part of the sadness, was being directed by someone else. I’d spent almost two months playing the waiting game, believing there was only one person that could actually take away that left over bit of sorrow that tagged along like a shadow. 

But then there I was, driving alone in my car, when all of a sudden it came to me. Who is that person to decide if I’m happy? Who is that person to have my joy completely dependent on them? I’d spent weeks thinking that all I had to do was just make it through until they came back, and everything would be fine. All I had to do was wait it out. But then I got it. That person isn’t bigger or more powerful or stronger or smarter or more right than I am. NO ONE gets to rob me of my joy. No one gets to decide, directly or in this case indirectly, when I get to be happy. So I made a choice (I’ve been doing that a lot, you know). From now on, nobody has power over me. Nobody makes me feel sad or happy unless I say so…nobody.

And it took me a good couple of weeks to really believe that. No, wait. I spent a good couple of weeks NOT believing that. It only took one epiphany, one second, to believe it. And I can breathe again.