Dear concerned friends:

 

Every once in a while, I will share my life, my journey, my thoughts and fears and shit with someone on a personal level who has known me for some time. Maybe for years in the Leather / BDSM community. Perhaps from outside of the community. Or a friend I’ve known since long before sobriety was even a consideration.

 

I’ll tell them about my life, abut what is happening for me, and they’ll hear it all and home in on one or two aspects that they find troubling.

 

You probably know how this goes.

 

I had occasion to catch up with a long-time confidant with whom I’ve not spoken for a bit. Laid out what was going on for me, told them about my shit as I’m sitting and watching the sun set beyond the beaches of Aruba…

 

And of course the concern started kicking in.

 

Worried about my relationship, concerned for my choices, side-eyeing my thoughts on re-arranging my life.

 

Let me say this, for those “worried” about me?

 

Stop.

 

Your worries aren’t about me, really. Your concerns about my emotional safety? Your sincere hope that I’m not compromising unnecessarily or dangerously or whatever in the steps I’m taking in my life are probably not even about my wacky-ass life.

 

They probably have to do with your own fears of doing what looks crazy.

 

I’ve survived a dire round with alcoholism. I’ve survived heartbreak, loss of friends. I’ve survived loved ones pushing me out of their lives because my behaviours were unacceptable. I’ve lived though very difficult relationships, and I’m still here. I’m-a Gloria Gaynor the fuck out of this life, see if I don’t.

 

SO, when you furrow your brow and worry that I’m not being responsible? That I’m contemplating moves, situations, relationships, commitments that are nutso, ipso-facto?

 

Take a look at your life. Are you safe? Comfortable? Happy? Did you get that way by doing the “right thing,” the sensible thing, every time?

 

And if you aren’t…aren’t happy, that is? Look at me and listen carefully.

 

I am.

 

 

Even in the midst of what *seems crazy to me,* I am standing in a river of joy that threatens to pull me along with it, even though I sometimes desperately cling to fear’s jagged rocks. Even as I struggle and doubt and breathe and fucking LIVE, I’m happy. Even when I am staring, pie-eyed, into a terrifying abyss of confusion? I’m in ecstasy of how beautiful that terror is.

 

I feel it because I’m fucking alive, and I am striving.

 

SO relax. Congratulate me. Support me. I do all of the self-eroding shit quitewell on my own, TYVM, and with FAR more efficiency that you can ever hope to achieve ;-)

 

And if I fall on my face?

 

I’ll get the fuck up, dust myself off, have a cupcake, and keep rolling.

 

Thanks!

 

Your Friend

 

Mollena