I am sitting in a noisy Starbucks, trying to block out the group chatter with headphones and hoping I can concentrate for the hour I need to occupy while my tires get replaced.
Glancing out the window next to me for a moment, I see a young boy, probably five years old, sitting on the patio with his dad, eating a cake pop. He has shaggy blond hair, plastic blue glasses, pink cheeks, and he is sucking every last morsel of chocolate off that stick. He is laughing, and so is his dad, who is waving a napkin unsuccessfully around his face while the boy wriggles around mischievously. The boy catches my eye through the glass, and I realize I am already smiling at him. He smiles back, a toothy, chocolatey grin.
It’s a beautifully simple little moment, and it’s not what I sat down to write about. And yet it also is.
You may be wondering where The Messy Middle went. (All 25 of you). You wouldn’t be wrong in noting that my posts on here have been infrequent, the topics veering from pithy to borderline emotional dumps that probably should have stayed in my journal. You won’t find any of them anymore. I downloaded them all to a zip file about 8 months ago and deleted them. I haven’t known what to do with this space since. Everything I’ve been feeling and going through in the last year has been… a lot. Anything on my mind I’ve wanted to express has felt too close, too intimate, lacking in the distance that allows for reflection. I realized that I was in the messy middle indeed, and it was far too messy to make sense of, let alone share.
This is the point in the post where you expect a happy resolution. I’ve slayed my demons, solved my problems, had my epiphanies, and am ready to share my wisdom with you all. Sorry to disappoint. There is no phoenix from the flames story. Far from it. Things are still not objectively good on multiple fronts.
But I don’t want to talk about that anymore.
Not because I’m on a new era of toxic positivity. Nope, still hate that. Down with all the platitudes and ever-sunny perspectives forever and ever. There’s still a lot to sit with, a lot to feel my way through. I’m calling this last decade the great unraveling, and I’m pretty sure we’re not done with that yet. At the same time, enough has happened, been lost, and is being let go of that it’s time to cut the last strings of whatever that was, and intentionally live into whatever is next.
This is what I want to write into. The life I want to create. I have this sense that I need to reach out for something new to truly let go of whatever is keeping me stuck. Clenched fists cannot grasp new possibilities. If only I had a clear vision of what the something new was. I don’t. But I do get glimmers. Little moments of peace and certainty that flicker throughout my weeks, where I feel myself exhale and think, yes, more of this, please! Sometimes they’re as small as appreciating the first sip of coffee in the morning. Other times, they’re as full as the Mother’s Day afternoon I spent in the park with my daughter, dozing under a tree and monopolizing the swings.
They’re even as unexpected as the moment of joy that comes from watching a little boy devour his cake pop at Starbucks.
And so Glimmers is born. Not to pretend everything is great. But to remember how to love life again, even when it’s not.
Here’s to bright spots, presence, gratitude, and little moments of hope.
I hope you’ll follow along and share your own, no matter how small.