So, I’ve been at this walking challenge for 12 days. Usually, I just walk. Sometimes I combine errands with the walk. And then, apparently, there are days like today when I spend my steps thinking. Solidifying concepts within myself.

Yesterday, I did some sharing with a companion. I won’t share again the story I told, primarily to protect the guilty, but after the tale was told I ended with “and this is why I won’t get married again until I don’t have kids at home.” I mean, I can look back now and trace the reasons for why people acted the way they did, and I can be objective and say things like “they did the best they could with the things they carried.” And I can and do believe that. But. There is something about seeing horror on a person’s face and pity in their eyes that will make me realize, yet again, that sometimes a person’s best still fucking sucks. Really hard. These stories I keep in my heart, they may be my normal, but they are not normal at all. For most people.

So today as I walked, that was what I was thinking about. And then my mind went on to considering one of my dearest friends. One who has let me down fairly frequently and whom I still call on, even though the success rate is 50/50 there. And that’s not a good track record. But. There are decades of longevity in that relationship. And I know the hidden stories in that heart. So I know that this person is a hero twice a day, minimum. Every morning that didn’t result in overnight suicide and every night that didn’t result in a cash-in that day is a success.

And the up-shot of all that, at around five thousand steps was this: There are times when just living to tell the tale counts as success. I am successful.

You know, I went into psychology to confront my own head. When I realized I was scoring great on the exams, but not really making headway with my own issues, I switched to social work. Man, have I done some serious demon confrontation in the past few years. Which is not to say I’m done. In fact, I woke up Saturday morning gasping for breath and on the verge of tears from a dream I had. My family, alive and dead, was talking about my dad. He wasn’t there. Because: dead. The conversation was pointed at my mother. And there was no resolution there. Which I guess is accurate, because there is never going to be any resolution there. It is a thing that just is. And while last year I was able to be loving and generous toward the fathers in my life on Father’s Day, that couldn’t happen for me this year. And that’s okay. That’s okay, because I am still successful: I’ve lived to tell the tale tales.