After a Lot of Sleep...

There is such a thing as counting chickens before they hatch.  Or before the eggs have even been laid.  Or before you even buy the setting hens.

There is such a thing as building fortresses so strong and protective that you forget to put in doors to let yourself out.  It's true you're very safe that way, I guess, but you also starve to death very slowly, comfortable in the righteousness of your safety....

This is not D. again.  No matter whatever else it ever does or does not come to be, no situation will ever be exactly that again.  The person in question is not him.  Once the panic has passed, I can see that.  The similarities are there, but they are superficial.   I can't keep judging everybody by that yardstick, assuming everybody plays by his rules..  If I do, then...well...I suppose the past always wins.

The other side of the equation is not the me that I was in those days, either.  I don't know that this is a good thing all the way through, but I think for the most part it is.  I know myself more thoroughly than ever I did then, what I want, what I will and will not endure, what I need and what I can offer.  I regret some of what is gone, some of the sweetness I think I probably used to have, some of the trust that is never coming back.

In any case, I have to start allowing whatever amount I have left to be the thing with which I lead.  I have to stop looking for demons in the dark before I have seen positive signs of the cloven hoof.  While everything inside me is screaming that this is going to get me slammed through the floor, is begging to run back inside and brick up all the remaining doors and windows, I'm tired of living this way, and the air in there is stale and dead.

So.

(God help me.)

Maybe I will try to choose to start to trust somebody after all.

Maybe.

(did I leave enough wiggle room in that? ...yeah...)