When things are crummy, I look back on all the therapy and buddhism and reading and couple’s counseling and AA as the reason for the crumminess.

The joke is that all of it will make you feel better — ie, you’ll feel everything better.

The joke is not wrong.

But being more aware of what I am feeing makes it a little easier to ask a few things.

Is this true?

What is really happening?

What am I doing to make this a thing?

What are the things I can do to change this? And what are the things I can’t change?

Before, these were hidden. Pushed down. Ignored. They simmered together to grow into a steaming rage looking for a weak moment to come out into the open. (Sudden knives, I’ve called them before.)

Now, after all the work — and a pause — I can honestly say, that the smaller the doses of anger, irritation, and unease the less likely those eruptions will come forth with fire. the less likely they will be wounding.

I can’t expect them to be gone, but the breaks are less material than before. Less damaging.

That is a good thing, this blunting or venting of forces that can have sudden power.

On the flip side of this coin is the world that such activities have opened up to me: the garden door they’ve flung open to my life. The curiosity the 50 minute hours and slow steady step work has awakened within.

Who is this person that is me? I ask, no longer ashamed that I do not know the answer. Or as worried that there may be no answer. (Strangely, I am even comforted by that possibility.)

It has all made the world an oddly larger one with a bigger sky. So I can ask, “What will happen next?” — not out of fear, but in absolute and astounding wonder.