George Bailey lassoes the moon

I'll continue with this trend of introspection.

For the past two days, I've been in Nashville visiting with friends. Yesterday morning Walter got into town and seemed to feel a little prickly about the fact that I was going to go be with my girlfriends rather than with him. Although I was able to act like a grown-up at the time, I went into an almost immediate anxiety reaction, and, as so often happens when I feel anxious, I started assessing everything through the lens of anxiety: "There are so many people here I want to see and spend time with, and everyone wants to see me, and there's not enough time!" Let me be even more honest here: I began to feel really frustrated that I couldn't make everyone happy.

I have a friend who says that when she begins feeling like there isn't enough (time, money, energy, etc), it's because she's acting out of the (inaccurate) belief that she's supposed to manage everything all by herself. That's where I was for a little while yesterday, spinning in my own head, fearing that I wasn't up to the task of satisfying everyone around me. It's some classic holiday bullshit. I knew that my thinking was distorted, but I couldn't shake myself out of it.

Then some small things happened. I had chicken salad sandwiches with one of my very best friends. I heard a mockingbird singing like a cardinal in a parking lot. And I ate dinner in a candle-lit living room full of women I love. I was fed, fed, fed.

When I crawled into bed with Walter late last night, he curled up to me without waking up. I lay there and felt so full. And today, too, I feel like I'm brimming, like Mary Hatch in It's a Wonderful Life with moonbeams coming out of her pores.