Smile for me now

Photo courtesy of QATAR on Flickr

I spent Sunday allowing myself to unravel, digging deep underneath all those layers of muck to see what was going on in the cluttered up parts of my mind and the empty spaces of my heart. I drove from Langley back to Vancouver last night with Hospital Music blaring from the speakers of my Volkswagon and tears streaming down my face. Today felt long and strenuous. The stress is building, I can feel it. The obsessive compulsive part of me has already started making lists and trying to plan. I can't plan for what is unknown though. This is where the anxiety kicks in. I wanted to bail on every commitment that I had today, since I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep more than a total of two hours last night. Insomnia plagues me. I have been a raging, hormonal beast who may burst into tears at the drop of a hat. I had to fight all urges to call in sick and just stay in bed from dusk 'til dawn. If my plans for this evening had been just about anything but what they were, I would have called to cancel them, in favour of coming home and crawling right back under the covers as fast as possible. Except I had dinner plans with my beautiful friend Terri tonight. I was quite sure that seeing her smiling face would make me feel better. I was right.

We met up at Steamworks in Gastown for a pre-Christmas catch up. Terri is someone who, despite having a hell of a lot to endure for a person her age, has the most positive and upbeat aura. She is such an inspiration and seriously one of the kindest souls I have ever known.

Although Terri and I went to high school and attended French Immersion together as well as going on two trips to Europe with our class as teenagers, we never really spent a ton of time one on one outside of school and really didn't keep in touch post secondary. However, through the miracle that is the internet (and a little website called Facebook), we managed to get back in touch this year. Isn't it interesting the way that we can connect with our past in our present? Randomly. We decided to get together and clicked immediately. We both instantly wondered how we ever lost touch. When we get together, time always flies. There is nothing better than spending time with someone so sincere and genuine and with whom you can be completely yourself. There is never any lack of conversation, laughs, old memories, good stories and new stories. It's refreshing to cut through the bullshit of small talk and just tell it like it is. Tonight, I am feeling a million times better and it's all because of one special lady who is such an enormous inspiration. Keep smiling, Terri. It's contagious. I have realized that I am so over the pretending game. I crave this genuine sincerity in every nook and cranny of my life. These are the most precious gifts that we can give each other: our time, our ears, our compassion.