You MUST Listen To Your Soul

I am feeling overwhelming gratitude this minute - hell, this week. So many incredible things have happened this week; both bad and good, and in time they have shown their true colors and made clear what I needed to see.

I just arrived home from a dinner Meetup where I met wonderful, new people and, FOR THE FIRST TIME, saw old, familiar people that I'd seen at other meetups and recognized AND THEY RECOGNIZED ME! And just by being who I am I was able to make a newcomer feel as if she'd been there for years (I have a way of doing that - if I do say so myself). The people that recognized me were giving me a hard time, joking with me about being a dive instructor and a football fan. I felt like one of the group. It was wonderful.

After dinner we went to the first bar I went to when I first moved here: Ozona Blue. It has a swimming pool, a jacuzzi, and is right on the water. It's fucking amazing. There was live music tonight (as there was at the other place, but for some reason - which I don't care to detail at this time - we decided to go down the road a half mile and the equivalent of Key West to South Beach) and we drank and danced and had a great time. After everyone left I stayed and bathed in the moonlight - trying my best to get a moonburn on one of the lounge chairs listening to the band. I couldn't understand why someone, on a Friday night, would want to leave the company of a live band (who was pretty good), the quarter moon, the sound of the waves lapping at the boats tied up nearby, the glow of the pool, the service of the waiters in the cool breeze of a Florida evening. I just didn't get it. Search me. I have to get up early this morning, too, but SERIOUSLY! NOTHING is that important. If it is you don't have your priorities in order.

So when I finally peeled myself out of that lounge chair I meandered down 19 Alternate (which runs down the Gulf Coast) and stopped by (first) Edgewater to walk the pier and cry. I do this frequently; both walk the piers and cry. LOL I talk to the water and tell it my dreams and how soon I will see it. This time I could tell it it would be really soon. :) I'd found my scuba shop and I now knew it was going to be REALLY soon. I stopped to think about that for a moment... I've been here a bit over 2 months, and as impatient as I am I have found a scuba shop. That's bloody ridiculous. OH - I'M SORRY. I didn't find them - they found me. Well, pretty much.

Anyway, I dried my tears, got back in the car, and continued down 19 Alternate to Sunset Point - my street. Well, basically my street. I live right off of it - you probably can't find my street on a map to save your life. It DID take the U.S. Postal Service an entire MONTH to find me, after all. I pulled off at 19 and Sunset Point to a lookout on the Gulf and sat and looked at Clearwater Beach across the bay for a few minutes. I still can't believe I live here. I wake up every day to this ridiculous noise of Highway 19 - the deadliest road in Florida - a sound I have grown to love (how nuts is that???), I hear the whirl of my ceiling fan in the background (because it is now cool enough to leave the windows and doors open and cool the apartment with the fans only), I hear the birds, the frogs, the crickets, the occasional emergency siren, noisy neighbors, and endless other noise pollution and I know I am in paradise. Frankly, the apartment that I lived in in Greensboro which was situated in the middle of a protected National Park was FAR MORE QUIET than where I live now.

So why do I go to sleep and wake up knowing I am in the paradise I never want to leave for the rest of my life??? It makes me laugh! I can't smell the salt water from here, I can't see it from here, I can't smell fish from here, I have some palm trees around but no mangroves and CERTAINLY no manatees. But I am home. Wherever I am in this silly place, as long as I'm within spitting distance of the beach I'm home. And trust me, that "spitting distance" is getting shorter and shorter every day. LOL

The gratitude I am feeling is overwhelming and, at times, feels like one of those waves that will overtake you when you're in about waist deep. I get angry at times for staying in Greensboro for so long. I feel like I wasted so much time. I felt so lost and I felt like Greensboro was the center of the Universe and I was such a nobody. That is how I know that it was not very good for me. The center of the Universe should never feel like it is on Earth. It isn't. I now feel like I am balanced, and the Earth and the Universe are balanced around me. I believe THAT is what the world should feel like. When we begin to feel like we are the center of the Universe, or someone near to us is (like when your Father is dying) then we should realize that our world is out of balance; because - as stands to reason, it is.

I am still a bit peeved at Greensboro, but I will forgive. I always do. I simply couldn't get here any quicker. It wasn't within the realm of possibility. However, if you are reading this and you have any of the above-mentioned symptoms, or you feel the least bit unhappy where you are, GET THE FUCK OUT AND RUN TO THE PLACE THAT MAKES YOU HAPPY. You will never be sorry you did. You will wonder why you didn't do it sooner.