the direction we are facing

I know my call despite my faults
And despite my growing fears

And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again

'Cause I need freedom now
And I need to know how
To live my life as it's meant to be

~mumford and sons

and so here it is, the end of summer,
the end of a hard summer,
hard in ways i didn't expect and wasn't prepared for.
I can know that endings are really just beginnings and that
the two are always so tangled up
it is hard to tell the difference really,
but there are big parts of me that want
to separate the two, that want
to know this is what is over and this
is what is starting.
there is so much in me
that wants to look backwards,
that wants to say
I see where I made mistakes,
I see where I failed,
I see where I fell short
and where I just never even really tried.
and I want to say sorry
and I want to explain myself
and I want the chance to make it right.
but because this is not just an ending
but a beginning, too,
there is even more looking ahead,
seeing what needs to happen right now,
what ways I need to forge onward,
to leave other people's perceptions to other people to figure out,
not to fix it all,
not to tie it up in a package with a bow
to store under my bed in a shoebox labeled quinipet 2015,
but instead to take that messiness,
the places I didn't do my best or didn't do at all,
to take the relationships
that left me feeling yucky and burned,
to take the criticisms, the hard conversations,
the conversations that never happened at all,
to take all of that
and all the good that came this summer too,
to take it all and use it as the lens through which I look ahead.
to take who I was
and who I am and
keep becoming who I am meant to be.
to keep hearing the call that only gets louder,
even when other people keep trying to drown it out.
even when I, in my insistence otherwise, in my glaring mistakes,
try to drown it out.
the call is clear.
the call is for home and community and intimacy.
the call is to keep creating even though none of it comes easy.
the call is to live big and love bigger and bigger and bigger,
big enough to forgive myself,
big enough to keep trying anyway,
big enough to let go,
big enough to say yes.
there is beauty to be found
even in the mixed up tangle of a beginning
and an end. because what is the difference, really?
only the direction we are facing.