The slow misty fog caused a sparkling halo to surround the street lamps. Each shimmered with scattered rainbow. All I could see was wet with gentle rain that caused everything in view to capture light and glow with color. Only one car passed mine and no wonder, it was 4:55am. The length of my drive to the gym was less than ten minutes, but with heightened awareness I have cultivated, what once would have been hours worth of memories were catalogued in just those few minutes.

I passed a dry cleaner’s sign that with a few bulbs out spelled an unintentional word. Lights were on inside the donut shop and I assumed the bakers were busy in back making sweets for the day’s morning rush.

Stopped at a traffic light a policeman in a cruiser was beside me. He seemed lost in thought staring straight ahead. Maybe he had gone through a difficult and traumatic night. Or maybe he was daydreaming about getting home to crawl into bed next to the one he loved.

Lit up almost like daylight was the big hospital on my left that covers a city block and keeps growing and growing. The wet pink marble glimmered in the spotlights it was being bathed in. Driving past my memory bought up the time when I spent several days in intensive care there.  Thankfulness was immediate that was behind me. The thought was followed by a moment of concern for those whose illness placed them there now and the concerned loved ones of those sick people. For the good health I have, gratitude filled me as I stopped at the last traffic signal before my destination.

Usually  the radio on or a CD playing when driving, but the evening before on the way home I had turned it all the way down to take a phone call. The silence was bordered by the sounds of my car, the rain falling on the windshield and my wipers moving the water side to side. I could hear the friction of my tires against the water on the street; a steady noise that was comforting in some odd way.

My hair was bent and twisted into a bed head style since I had done little before leaving home except dress and make coffee. Sipping on the travel mug as I drove the last quarter-mile the realization came that I had come a long way to not care what someone might think when they saw me with my hair sticking up. I was pleased with my self.

I chose to workout with a trainer very early three times per week because I knew at any other time I would not stay with it consistently. Pulling into the gym parking lot the last seconds of my drive were spent thinking in the silence while  the wet world outside went  by. I was struck by how good my life is. Not perfect; far from it. But good; really good!

Taking the time away from relationships for a few years to truly come to know ‘me’, by myself, enriched my life beyond anything I could have imagined ahead of time. There is a sense of great satisfaction today for having endured what I had to go through to get here. Before my insecurity caused me always need to ‘be with someone’. The loneliness I endured in the recent past to become accustomed to being alone was the single most difficult thing I have ever faced. Today I have a whole heart and a calm soul that is comfortable in this body. Without hesitation I embrace life and am grateful for all its possibilities.

You can be the most beautiful person in the world
and everybody sees light and rainbows when they look at you,
but if you yourself don’t know it, all of that doesn’t even matter.
Every second that you spend on doubting your worth,
every moment that you use to criticize yourself;
is a second of your life wasted,
is a moment of your life thrown away.
It’s not like you have forever,
so don’t waste any of your seconds,
don’t throw even one of your moments away.
C. Joybell C.