I haven’t cried for decades, except that’s a lie. When Piglet almost got blown away in the Hundred Acre Wood, I did shed a few tears. It wonders me, as I watch everyone else leak a lot when shit hits. I sort of envy them that release. I know I am far from cold, feeling everything about everything and for everyone, but maybe I have some sort of cold in me, a woman in a life, one who wants no pity, no fixing, and one who has grown tendons and sinews like steel props. I just made that up. It’s probably ridiculous. But it does think me. Those of us who have pixillated themselves into another’s world out of choice, willingly at first and then through sheer stickability, find sinew and tendon strength. I don’t think it resolutes us, not all of us. Some grow bitter as old wine, vinegar, loose teeth and joy. Others choose the yellow brick road, the tricky walk towards a truth full of wonder and hope. Life is not a dream. Life is a dream. The Bothers, the Both-ers. We seek another and then that other just isn’t enough, nor are we for them. Two separates with too much of a gap for the mending, the amending. A sadling for sure, but a reality. We change, we learn differently, we choose what comes to us through a learning. And, we divide. And I know this, I see this, and I also see that the ‘stickability’ of the old pioneers has had its time, because in those times, nobody was their true self, not could ever, ever, admit to such. I lived there, so I know, albeit at the arse end of that limitation.

What we all long for is to be who we are, without fear, safe, recognised, welcomed. We may be years off that but I hope it is coming because for too long the world, often the religious world, has controlled and ruled through fear. The people believed and walked in blind deference, superiority and damning, like they had no independent thinking. Independent thinking got you hanged, subdued, dismissed. We don’t have that fear now and yet we still can’t be sure of who we are without labels. I am seriously hoping that for the next year, those with the courage to gently voice, with the courage to step out, to come out, to be who they really are, will find the strength to rise, to pioneer us into a truth which just might kill off the lies of centuries.

In all, in everything, in the daily grind, in the knocks and batters, in the sudden joys, the falls the resists, the hidings, the resists, the falters, there is choice. Always is, always, no matter the stricklies. New word. For me it is all yellow brick road and the hope and the courage and the determination and the honey. That choice is no nonsense. Try it.