This entry marks the (belated) third anniversary of CHICAGO CARLESS. As is obvious, year four is getting started with a lot of changes. The most obvious are the totally re-designed layout and features of the blog. But they’re only reflections of the most important change of all: my renewed outlook on my life and the world around me. Something had to give. After 37 years, what ultimately gave was me.
Though here I go yet again, breaking up is still hard to do.
Last night during the 2008 Studs Terkel Awards at the Chicago Cultural Center, one of the winners, Sylvia Rivera, the general manager of bilingual public radio station Radio Arte, shared this comment from the stage: ‘You write the story of your life. You create your own legend.’ In two sentences, Rivera described my dilemma.
I am in love. Suddenly, astonishingly, sickeningly so. Know that first and the rest of this post goes down a lot easier for the less romantically inclined among you.
A little more than a year ago, when I wondered where my writing–and my life–would take me, I couldn’t have guessed what the following twelve months would have in store. Today, I return to Chicago Carless from a self-imposed month-long hiatus awed by the changes 365 days can bring.
The fact that I missed the two-year anniversary of Chicago Carless is a lot more important than the fall of my two-year relationship. So in celebration of the belated anniversary of my life being an open blog, I give you a look at the past 12 months of Chicago Carless.
Some people don’t like hearing about recovery–mine or anyone else’s. To others, stories of recovery are helpful tools on their own journeys to healing. I’ve heard both opinions regarding my recovery blogging here on Carless. The solution? Self select. Read or not as you are so inclined. But I give myself permission to write my own words.
These are, perhaps, the most unexpected words I will ever write in my life. Tonight, I came to believe in God.
Letting go is difficult when you don’t want to do it. It’s when you want to but can’t that you really get into trouble. Such is the story of my life–the life of a codependent.
Sometimes a bad day is not always a bad day. Now in the homestretch of my Hogtown life, today I started applying a new perspective to my life here, and to my future life in New York City. It was a day balanced on the funny line between joyously happy and absolutely not.