About Me — Shelli Reals
My speed dating “About Me” story goes something like this. . .
I’m well into my fifth decade of trips around the sun. Yes, I’m getting old! My hair is turning gray, the lines on my face are settling in. My boys have grown into brilliant young men with lives that extend well beyond their momma’s reach. My own parents seem to be shrinking smaller and smaller every time I see them.
I’m a survivor of my brother’s suicide and my own depression; my husband’s substance abuse and his unexpected death. My emotional repertoire is heavy on grief and guilt, loss and despair.
Yet, I’m also a Piscean, an introspective thinker, and a dreamer. An “Imagine” nod to John Lennon is magnificently tattooed across my forearm. And I’m preferential (always!) to dogs over people, and along with dogs I must add in cats and goats and birds and bears and deer.
I married my forever person a couple years ago, right as the pandemic was gaining momentum. We shared our vows in some sort of conference-room-turned-storage-unit at City Hall just hours before New York’s statewide mask mandate hit. We celebrated our moment in the parking lot, sitting on the tailgate of the Jeep, drinking from bottles of Corona.
Now, in the house we call home, we’re filling up the hallway wall, floor to ceiling, with frames of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. Most of those frames hold photos from the places we’ve been, the places that hold fast to our shared memories of happy, easy, enchanting days. A few others hold photos of our beloved fur and feather babies, and fewer still hold some carefully chosen words — like the line from a favorite poem by a favorite poet that anchors the collection at one end of the wall…
What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? — Mary Oliver
Anchoring the collection at the opposite end is the simple edict, “Choose happy”.
Every time I walk down this hallway the images call out to me. They speak to who I strive to be these days. Who I want to be. And where I want to be.
Of course, I want to choose happy every day. Always. I want to make the most of my wild and precious life. Every moment.
So while I know I will always write about the dark places I’ve been to . . . the heartbreaks of addiction and death and loss and hopelessness and despair . . . I am ready to see what words I can pull together from the light.
Indeed, this Medium journey I am just now embarking on is really about challenging myself to find a rhythm to my writing that embraces all of who I am today. You know, the good, the bad, and the ugly! It’s about pushing myself to take risks. To write out loud about what I think and how I feel.
If you’ve gotten this far in my story, I thank you!
Best to save the rest for a “second date” story version, down the road a bit once I’ve had more practice navigating Medium, and once I’ve gotten a better grasp on ways to tell my tales so that Medium readers and writers will want to listen.
Until then, Godspeed.
