Cut it out

If I were a surgeon I’d start at the base of my throat.  I’d cut a very thin, very straight line down the center of my chest to just above my belly button and start to gently ease back the skin on either side so as not to stretch it too far.  Then I’d go to work on the muscle.  A sharp scalpel could make quick work of the job, until I exposed my chest cavity.  Once there, I’d remove the dark masses that grow through the week.  They look like cancerous lumps only more square.  But instead of diseased organs they are the dark masses of Envy, Shame, Humiliation and Failure.  I’d remove them and put them on a white background in a Lucite box and display them in a well-lit space as though they were the best of Damien Hirst.  And I’d feel better.  

But I am not a surgeon.  I’m just a regular person.  And I cannot cut these things out of me and pretend they were never there.   They are always there and to what degree they get to direct the course of my day depends largely on so many factors but all of them point back to me.  Do I let these words, emphasized by capital letters, get the best of me or do I suppress them with a smile and a laugh?    

Home, work and love.  The great cliché says that you can only find joy in two out of three at any given moment.  And I hate to live a cliché.  But the older I get the more I am forced to accept that I am lucky to have even one go well, much less two or three.  Tonite, at the end of a long day, at the end of an even longer week, I am grateful for the deep, steady breathing that indicates a sleeping Sig Other next to me, the periodic grunts of the beasts on the couch across the room, and the quiet hum of stillness that resonates through my home.  Two of my three are in tact tonite. Whatever else may happen, whatever else seems to be falling to pieces around me, I am forced to remember how lucky I am to have great love in my life.  My love and my home are one and the same.  How lucky am I?