The view from the deck today is beautiful. It’s not too hot yet, and the sight of the deer isn’t creeping me out.

I never get used to deer just walking around. I was going to type like they live here but they do. This is just as much their home as anyone’s. This city girl just is not used to living with raccoons and deer and rabbits and such.

Truth be told, I am scared. Yep surprise. There was a 3 year plan, I am 1 year into it. That plan is now out the damn window and I want to ask what next. I know what’s next though, and its okay to be afraid.

Saturday turned out to be a reminder // nostalgic tour. It wasn’t intentional I don’t think yet it happened anyway. What is somewhat a surprise as I type this are the places I didn’t go to. As I consider this, there were times over the past year that I went past those locations less and less, not that I never did, but I did because they were on the way to something else.

I spent a fair amount of time in the past year in West Philly, yet the drive never took me to 40th St. I never circled the complex looking for that grey Nissan, and I never parked to look at the window of that apartment wistfully. I may have and did have a mental note if I make this right turn then I will go past there. Instead I just didn’t make the turn. Yesterday it would have taken less than 10 minutes to get to Limekiln Pike from where I was. I noted to myself that I was less than a football field from the office I went to for counseling as I struggled to try to hold onto that house. I made the specific decision though to not drive past there.

I rode past the ‘first’ home and the ‘last’ home and I didn’t even mention to my passenger that it used to be my playground. It was just a place in a series of places that existed and will. I can choose to think of it that way, because I’ve also chosen to see it another way. The other way hurts. It feels like failure, it feels like loss, it feels like there is not a reason to do what I am doing. It feels like darkness. What I am not going to do today as the sun shines on me and a fox, yes a fox runs across this lawn is sit in darkness.

It’s not that I won’t have those moments. I will. It’s a part of feeling. While I have those moments upcoming they don’t have to be now, and when they arrive in the future they don’t have to stay. Right now I am going to think about dreaming. Not my dreams but dreaming. I remember the talks B and I used to have and how I would remind him that he was thinking small. I am having one of those small moments. In this time when I have this blank canvas upon which I can paint anything I can only see existence. I keep seeing the minimal, the smallest of victories. That’s not a bad thing, once upon a time even that wasn’t possible. It’s not enough though, not now. I have to trust that those small little things are given, in a world where little is given. This is the time to think beyond the basic. That doesn’t mean I will neglect the basic I am just giving myself permission to see and do more.

I’m gonna have to do that more than once, but that’s okay.

Aphrodite Brown