I usually wait until December to do the year in review. Today seems like as good a time as any.

Thanksgiving for me has been a ‘holiday’ that is pretty…meh. As a young me, I did enjoy being with my mom mom in her kitchen. I just loved being with mom mom. I never did learn how to make her biscuits. I did learn how to cook chitterlings. Thanksgiving when she could still walk was a good enough time.

Even when it moved to Limekiln Pike, if we could load her into the car and get her to the dining room it was a day. A good day. When she left this earth, I was over Thanksgiving. I don’t think about Valerie a lot these days, I try to direct my energy to other places, better places.

When Clyde arrived in my uterus, I had vizionz of what life would be like with my new family. Those ideas didn’t happen, life had a different plan. Then the incident happened and I thought that life was over.

It wasn’t. It is not. In fact, a version of life is just beginning.

This Thanksgiving physically is similar to the last few. Me ignoring the day, wondering why there can’t be more things open for people like me, who choose to be alone.

Yes today is a choice in a way. I am sure had I put any effort into it I could have found a location to go to, and be with people. I just was not interested in putting on a face and pretending. Yes I have some sadness, but I am mostly ….meh. I don’t have the emotional and mental spoons to pretend that this is a day that I look forward to, and celebrate much of anything. I find that it is better for me to not bring that to others joy so I typically choose to just be alone. I sometimes will go to a movie, but surprisingly I have not been inside a theater since I got to live in Baltimore. I was in one for a visit, when things were different with momma M, but since this became the city of residence? Nope. I am going to alter that, just not today.

Today I am going to accept that I am different in a way, but I am also going to look at the future.

I have a fortune cookie here that says ….well I can’t find it now but the essence of it is you cannot have a future if you do not look for it.

I am looking for the future.

I have one.

August 4 is a thing. I mean if you have visited here you knew he was a thing, but now he is a thing. We acknowledged the R word, relationship.

On a side note, yet again I was out here planning to live my best ho life and found myself in a relationship. Ha fucking ha universe.

He makes me smile. I wasn’t smiling. He makes me laugh. I was not laughing. We are gonna have to work on his voicemails though. In his defense, he delivered that which I asked, and that is exceptional [perhaps it should not be, but history has shown me otherwise]. I had to ask more than once, that is something to talk about but I asked he gave. Simple right? It seems such, yet I spent close to 20 years with the opposite. I’ve retired the moniker before this time its gonna stick though. Grant. I feel like The Man is disrespectful to who and where I am today. I am going to reflect less on him, the same I am going to reflect less on the past. Ironic as the title of this post is nostalgia but let’s just keep rolling.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post, speaking of the future I wanted a year from now. HE was August 4. Now he is he. I don’t see that specific future now, and I am good with that. I have a vizion of something else.

I type and ask myself if I am becoming one of ‘those’ women, who now that she has a man is complete. I inherently know that I am not, but it’s me so those questions happen. I simply have to work on giving it less room, until there is no room. Forward.

I haven’t hit all my goals, I will though. I will make new ones. I will live.

For that I have thanks.

This is likely my last winter on the East Coast. I am embarking on a life I could not have imagined before. I did imagine before, once a move West. This is so different though. Based on truth, based on reality, based on integrity that I didn’t know existed as I clung to emotions.

I held onto a feeling afraid that I would never experience it again, not allowing myself to understand I could have it ‘the right way’. I can have a whole life ‘the right way’. Go figure.

The house is quiet, and for that I am also thankful. I’m set up to not have to leave the house, and for that I am thankful. I don’t ever want to spend the day alone in bed, especially not now that there is a different way it can be, but I will today and for that I have thanks as well.

There’s a lot to unpack, some of it here, some in that other place. For right now? I am going to finish my late morning coffee, and hit the shower and listen to that voicemail. Yeah it needs work, but we’ve got time. I am grateful for time.

Aphrodite Brown