Real Life

How many times I have thought, "It will be so much better when..."

When we find out for sure about med school.
When we can buy a place of our own.
When he's done with med school.
When I can escape my soul-squashing job.
When he gets home from deployment.
When our son is born.
When our daughter sleeps through the night.
When we know where he'll do residency.
When we can move into a bigger house.
When we can get out of this city.
When we're finally done with residency.

And if I kept going, I could fill in that blank for the rest of my life.

But Real Life doesn't start when we're done with this or that, when a dream comes true or a nightmare is simply over. The adventure is right now, when things aren't perfect and hopes aren't met. So today I'm going to look at the difficulty and call it opportunity. I'm going to look at the bend I can't see around and call it possibility. I'm going to kiss the faces I love and call them the best thing that keeps happening to me.

This is real life. The awful, the banged-up and bruised. The gorgeous, the breath-snatching, the limbo-ridden and the scary. The quiet and lonely. The harried and the tired. The sweet and the lovely.

This is my real life. I will own it. And I will live it like I only have one.

This post inspired by Beth's You Capture: Real Life prompt.