During my first trip to NorCal in 1999, we attended one of my favorite weddings ever. An absolutely breathtaking event from start to finish, a highlight involved the bride's brother's band playing the first dance song. Brother was nervous, though, and totally flubbed the tune and the beat not even thirty seconds into the song. The bride, one of the constantly-happiest people I've ever met, threw her head back laughing and announced, "Do over! Do over!" -- and the song and the dance restarted. It was a moment so full of love, love between the married couple and love between the siblings. I bet that her brother never lived down that screw-up, but I also know that the bride didn't mind his mistake one bit. If anything, that scene made the moment and the dance to follow all the more fun, enjoyable and memorable. I've felt lucky for over eleven years to have shared that occasion, and that do-over, with them.
I think of that moment often because I've felt a lot like yelling "Do over! Do over!" over the past year. I screwed up a lot of things, including, especially, staying with the wrong doctor for too long before finding the courage to say, "No, that's not good enough!" -- and finding someone who cared to identify and manage my illnesses. (Yes, illnesses is plural, and that's a boring medical subject into which I won't delve at this point.) I also didn't readily accept help as early on as I should have. I didn't make clear to friends and to family what I needed, because "needing" is "weakness," right? I said "yes" to the wrong things and "no" to the wrong things, too. I didn't stand up for myself enough and, when I did, stood up at the wrong times. I felt like the star of "The Truman Show," part deux, but I wasn't nearly as funny as Jim Carrey. In fact, nothing about life was funny last year. Nothing's quite as unfunny as being unwell.
But now, I'm feeling much better, and, as my 37th year dawns, I'm realizing that there are a lot of things that I can, in fact, do over -- or, at least, do better. For example, I can come back into my faith, which was all but lost last year. I always thought that, if I were to face The End, my faith would empower me to embrace the change, knowing that greener pastures awaited me -- and who doesn't want to go to heaven anyway? Well, I learned the answer to that question last year: not me, yet. But faith can give me a lot of tools to face what is shaping up to be an ongoing battle. It can give me a place to turn when I'm feeling weak. It can serve as a reminder of the goodness in the world that was and that is. Most importantly, it can help me address the question of "what kind of person do I want to be?" Goals do, indeed, change when you realize that you can have a lot of do-overs -- but only one life in which to do it.
There's a long to-do list ahead for me, and the first item in order is clearing away the wreckage of the past year. Today, I feel that I've done that, as much as I can. I have done a 180 on my life, choosing to view the time I have ahead as love-filled and positive, strengthening and empowering -- which is much better than the measuring out with coffee spoons that I was doing last year (with apologies to my favorite poet T.S. Eliot). Kind of like the Ikea wine glass we broke into a million shards on our patio a few months ago, I'm well aware that jagged little pieces of the past year, health or otherwise, will occasionally come up and hurt me at the most inconvenient and annoying times; but I am ready to say, "I'm stronger than that." And I am moving on from that time of darkness into a time of light.
This is my do-over, do-better year. I am 37, happier indeed than I have ever been, and I am ready for even greater things to come.
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