perfect.

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”

~Gilda Radner


If you asked me 20, or 10, or 5 years ago where I'd be in 2010, you'd get a starkly different answer than what my life is about today. Thank god (ok - GOD, goddess...dog?) for that.

Without even being fully aware of this creepy fact, I've been striving for perfect -at least my own version of perfect- for a very long time. I had ideas about how this would play out. I didn't want anyone else's idea of the good life. I wanted my own. It meant getting married and having a baby before 30. It meant buying a house, painting a nursery, making great meals and sitting at the dinner table together, warm and happy and content. It meant having a job that satisfied my needs, intellectually and financially. I didn't want to be rich, just comfortable and secure. I would *muscle*, mold, shape my life to be just what I wanted. Like a piece of playdough. Why? Because I believed! Personal empowerment! This lovely ideal.

But what I've learned, and what I keep learning, is how much I have *NO* control over. Control! Ha, I laugh at thee now! As Gilda said so eloquently, some poems just don't rhyme. We try to jam the puzzle pieces together, and they don't fit. I thought I could "make it happen"; I was wrong.

What I found in my quest for perfect was utterly imperfect. I've found sadness, darkness, bleakness. I've found days where I didn't know how I was going to get out of bed and do it all. I've woken up sick with a sick baby and work and bills piled at my feet, with busy friends and far away family. And who hasn't had those dark moments? But what I've found is a real, amazing, imperfect life, in all of it's darkness and light. I've found laughter, and good*loving*real friends, and the silver lining. I've learned how to truly live right here, right now - today. Not yesterday. Certainly not tomorrow. And I've learned how to LET GO. That's where my perfect lies. In knowing this to be true: we cannot know light unless we've known dark. It is a bright light. And I thank Dog for that every day.

xo. k.a.m.