Today was a day of healing.

After the time spent with my dad fixing my bike yesterday we took a ride this morning that went really well. Initially I felt bad, because I am a horrible rider. I knew I would slow him down. He had the ultimate amount of patience for me, and it was really fantastic. 7 miles in he offered to let me go back and he would continue on to do his normal 35 miles. I was so pleased. I probably would have sucked it up and kept going, just because I want to be awesome at riding like my dad, but he was smart. So I turned around and after getting lost I returned to my parents house for a total of 14.5 miles.

It really has me in awe at how the relationship with my dad is changing. We are communicating better and loving first, criticizing second. We are enjoying our time together and I can tell that we are both less stressed. I think this has to do with he is changing, I am changing, and we are both growing in to our adult relationship as father and daughter.

It was with pleasure that after this I went to meet with RA, a man who is like a second father to me, and someone that I thought I lost almost two years ago to my struggles. RA owned the company that I worked for in Denver. Everyone there was like family, when I started having troubles they pointed it out. I still don’t recall how much I was losing it back then, but I trust that they knew me well enough that their concern was genuine. However, I did not react well to their urging me to get help. I walked around scared and feeling alone. I assumed any day they would can me for being crazy.

At that time I think I was wearing the “crazy” as a badge on my shirt. I had a right to be crazy, right? There had been a lot of stuff in the previous years that my sweet, kind mind just couldn’t wrap itself around… so it was a great excuse. I now know that if I am wearing the “crazy” badge, it is because I am choosing to. I am choosing to play the victim, requesting special attention and affection because I am not quite of sound mind. It really wasn’t getting me anywhere. I didn’t have the tools or the understanding at the time to be any different. I have said it before, and it still stands true… I was either the victim or the hero… there was no in between.

So I met up with RA today and sat down to just catch up. This was something that I was terrified of, up until the moment I saw his smiling face. When I went to the office a few weeks ago and everyone was happy to see me I assumed that they were just being polite. That changed when I saw RA. The familial feeling was still there. The love and respect in his was unchanged from two years ago. One of his first questions was “What happened?”, right after he said “I’ve missed you”.

We got in deep quick. I laid out where I was when I left, what I perceived and felt, what I was going through. He shared his perspective on it, which was much different than mine. In that flash of a moment I determined that perception without clarification is just like assuming. If I had been more clear headed then, as I am now, maybe I would have never left. He asked if I would move back to Denver, and if I did, would I come back to the company.

That request was more than my heart could imagine. I am not ready to go back to Denver, and maybe I will never be, but if I am, I know I have a job or at least an extended family who I will always be connected to.

So wanderer, you are probably wondering where this story applies to you… If I had not kept myself open to the chance to speak openly with both my dad and RA, I would not have felt this sense of love and understanding that today I feel. This is an important part of the journey… searching for clarification in your past. We can leave the past behind us, but if we have a chance to heal, don’t we owe it to ourselves to try?

Please, for your own sake, take the leap and try.

Signing off Denver, CO.