lights

it feels SO different entering into the holidays with my own home. i have lit up my little house with all the sparkles i feel it can handle--which isn't much, really, but for now it's just perfect. it feels so perfect, in fact, that i never want to leave. this is new! at first i didn't like being here so much alone. but i am surrounded by big warm blankets and twinkling lights all around me. it is comforting.
the other night i was seized with so much fear. some of it reasonable, other parts of it completely irrational. fear of not being able to pay my rent. fear of never being loved again. fear that i am doing my life wrong. or not doing it as MUCH as i should be doing it. fear...it's a paralyzing thing. a good friend of mine wrote me an email recently, and very casually commented on the subject of loneliness (responding to something i had written her). she said that she remembers a time--in between boyfriends--where she was so lonely she felt like she would die of loneliness. i have not been able to get that statement out of my head. maybe it's because it's annoying and kind of looked down upon to talk about being lonely. or pathetic. but i have never heard someone describe it that way, actually admitting to that amount of depth in it. it was helpful to read it, if only to realize that, like most human experiences, i am not alone. ever.
i am living my life the way i want to. i am free and happy and full and living wild dreams of mine that seem too good to really be true. but they are.
so here i sit, surrounded by sparkle lights, in my own home at christmastime.