Snowflakes

Yet another dual blog day.

On the way home from our first marriage counseling session, P. suddenly said, "Look, what do you see?"
I peered into the darkness. The traffic sign? Car ahead of us?
"No, look closer, in the headlights."
The license plate with one of those vanity sayings you don't quite get?
"No- it's snow! You love when it snows!"

Normally I did, but right then, my heart was heavy with our problems, it only lifted my spirits a little. The first snow of the year and I was too morose to enjoy it.

Today, as I was driving home from a couple of days staying with good friends, the light drizzle became snow as I drove up into the mountains. Lightly falling snow that reminded me of the first one. I started thinking about how each flake is so fleeting. It was like the feelings and thoughts that I have let overwhelm me in the past, and still have to fight now (perhaps my whole life). Like snow, they can pile up, oppress, freeze you in one spot. But taken one at a time, recognized as a thought and not reality, I can let them melt away.

It seems so simple, recognizing a thought as just that and not reality. But it's taken me 33 years and countless therapists to learn that. Now, some thoughts I try to imagine as gnats and I squish them to get rid of them. Others are snowflakes and they just melt away.

I think I can begin enjoying the snow again with the joyful abandon I always had before.