Hey Brandy,

You got it spot on!

There is a path but it’s not quite clear. The first step on the journey needs me to be brave and will incur loss and right now, I don’t know if I want to lose what I’m going to lose. I’m going to hurt someone- really badly, but without doing that, I know I will never have what I want and need. I know myself well enough to know what the future looks like for me without taking this fearful step- I know it because I feel it today and the unbearable guilt I suffer is because of it. When I take the step, that’s not the end of it. I know that I will journey through a grief cycle for the person I hurt and in that, I know that, in time, that will fade. There is risk in the choice I need to take. Financial risk, work risk, risk of loneliness, risk of more guilt, risk that I’m getting it completely wrong. How is it that we can feel the deepest pain and yet when we take ourself to the edge of the cliff of the  solution, we can rationalise the pain enough to talk ourselves out of jumping. I’m going through that right now- talking myself out of jumping when I know that to close my eyes and gently fall forward until stepping back again is gravitationally impossible and just going with the free fall of my choice is the fear I have to overcome. Is it my pain or someone else’s I care more about? Am I doing this for me and in doing so ruining more lives? Should I just accept that I’ve made so many mistakes and bad choices now that I should sacrifice my happiness for the rest of my life so that others should not have to suffer. Guilt for selfishness now! 

Jeez this is hard. I can’t breathe or get any respite from this at all. Did you ever feel so trapped you just wanted someone, anyone, to take the choice away and just make it for you? Have you ever been that stuck?

San Francisco sounds amazing and it looks like I was right to make it a dream. Running, views, wine…….perfect ?.

I didn’t know I wrote well? But Thankyou. I guess when you write, you talk to the page and don’t really have a feel for how the reader receives it. I don’t know what your mood is, your interpretation or any variable that could change the meaning or emphasis of a single word. So I guess I just talk- openly, honestly, vulnerably and from the heart and hope that it’s enough. N