I have no idea what to call this post because the concept is still too foreign.

Something good happened today. No, I did not get a lot done and I still had anxiety problems, but they were less than they have been. I think it is because I know where this recent stuff has been coming from now (see the last post). Anyway, I went with my husband to attend a concert that our daughter was in tonight. I ran into another parent and had a lot of time to talk with him before the concert. He and his family are very nice, safe and decent people and our children are all friends. I really like that family and so I actually enjoyed talking to the dad even though it was a struggle for me to leave my house to attend the concert. And briefly, while I was sitting there with him, I realized that I felt pretty much okay right then even though I am in the middle of some shit in the bigger picture. It was then that I remembered something, but this time it was a good memory and it was very much tied to what I was experiencing in real-time in the moment that the memory came to me. The man I was speaking with was IN the memory. The memory was from last fall. The same man came to my house after taking photos at the kids' first play of the year. He had gotten a lot of photos of my family and he very kindly brought me a disk (he has seen my photography and we share the hobby). When he came to the door that day last fall, I could not answer because I was deep down in the pit, could barely get off the couch and was very distraught. The kids let him in. A friend actually walked into the middle of my misery, marched right over to the couch and pretended that I was not disheveled and weird. He gave me the disk containing his work documenting a happy night with my family and he told me how pleased he was to have gotten such great shots of us. He said, very sincerely, "You people are so beautiful." His kindness and sincerity gave me a little island of peace and hope in the middle of my grief and the feelings were able to co-exist without invalidating each other.

I feel like this is very important, but... I can't explain it any better right now. I had to put it here so I don't forget. There is something about these two encounters with this man and how they made me feel that could hold some... thing. Something that I could somehow recreate. If recreation is not the thing, then maybe cultivating the capacity or the opportunities to have the same kinds of experiences is what I am looking for. I don't know, but for right now I keep hearing this: "You people are so beautiful."