Upon spending the night in angst wondering if I would spend it the way I did last night....up all night, tossing and turning, stressing that my little one was finally in her own, big girl, room. I decided to relax with a Cuba Libre and think about how this journey has been.

Before becoming "mommy" I played many parts. The angsty teen, the independant lady, the hysterical lovestruck dame, the drunken party girl, the wallowing despondant, then finally the baffled and moody pregnant woman. Each of these rles didn't quite fit, but they fit at the time. Finding my identity was a process of epic proportions. Each taught me a bit about people, a bit about life, a bit about myself. Each inched me closer to something. whether that something be eternal despair or exhillarated triumph was anyone's guess. But I find that they all are small, if fragmented, pieces of the whole.

A friend reminded me today of a place I was in my life not long ago. A place where I was loved, but still not fully "me". A place where I was out of place although my situation was bordering on perfect. I found myself back in that place while attempting to console her and I remembered just the depth of my self-disdain. I've come a long road since then. I have achieved more in my interpersonal life than I ever thought I was capable of. I have become a woman I never thought I would be, inside and out. And I realize how far from the depths I started in, I have rised.

I think it is only through our tests and trials. Our moments of giving up. Our moments of fleeting fullment that somehow leave us empty. And then our finally making the attempt to see in ourselves what it is so many others see in us that we gain some sort of steady ground. That we finally say "Life...it ain't so bad", and, perhaps more importantly, "Fuck YoU!" to the haters. And by haters, I refer to anyone that makes us think we can't do it. Even if those haters are pieces of ourselves.

I hurt for my friend, because I was there and I know how real it is, and how despairing. But I also smile for her because I know that she is well on her way to a kind of contentment that I never knew I could feel. And I think the only reason that it is SO real for me as it is, is because the reality of the despair I felt before didn't fade, but only serves to underline the sheer joy that coming out on the other side of it can be.

To get there is to finally see the solace and peace that life was meant to be. But the journey, long and arduous as it is, is perhaps the greatest and most profound that life can offer, as it becomes your measuring stick for how very far you have come, and how good it feels on that other side.