Sometimes, life surprises us

Actually, fuck “sometimes.” Often?

Often is more accurate.

Surprises can be delightful, or they can be traumatic. Or anywhere in between. I’ve had my share of traumatic experiences in the last decade. The surprise there was how evil some “people” can be.

Those surprises made the current state of the world much less surprising. That’s unfortunate.

But in the last few days I’ve had some good surprises.

I let someone know I’d been uncomfortable with a situation that happened some time ago. I expected misdirection, redirection, blame, dismissiveness.

Instead, they also expressed discomfort and we agreed on how to move forward.

A surprise: a delightfully pleasant one.

And today, I had a non-human surprise. My partner and I had identified some probable poison ivy in the yard. Unfortunately, the “poison ivy” was climbing my fence – the only reason that my dog stays here! So it came to be choppin’ time.

I chopped chopped chopped. Lots of vines, not all looked like poison.

And then… I saw them.

Berries. I stopped and thought to myself, “does poison ivy flower? Does it have berries?” What about those thorn/spike things? Is that a feature of poison ivy?”

So I got my phone from the house and identified the plant: blackberries. Poison ivy does not have spikes/thorns. I stopped there, still not sure if the stuff flowers.

I stopped chopping. Yes, the fence still needs care – but I want to see what I can do about not killing off all the berries in order to protect the fence. On a cool morning.

And so… surprise. The thing I had earmarked as “bad” was… not only not bad, it was entirely misidentified. I had labeled one thing — something I wanted — as a bad thing.

And so… healing. It all comes back to healing.

EMDR. Reprocessing trauma and learning how to be me safely in the world. Learning. Growth. A reminder that things can turn out to be good.

So I ask… dear world: please continue to surprise me in the delightful way, because right now things are looking pretty fucking grim in “the world” (I mean the close-to-disUnited States) and I could really use some more … optimism.

And lastly but of course, not least… happy birthday mom. I miss you. Thank you for sending some berries to eat, along with that tiny dash of hope. ❤️