The bridge or the brakes?

Tonight I was driving to and from Amish country to have dinner with my father.  On the way there the sky was roiling with clouds.  On the way back, I followed a car that kept braking on the highway.  Both seemed just about right for the day, perfectly metaphoric. 

This first picture tells me that, though the last few days have been hard -- really hard -- and what I have learned about myself has been hard -- really hard -- I can still use this experience as a bridge to a better me.  I have cried buckets in the last several weeks leading up to the last three days. At every turn, I seem to simply break down and cry.  I know that I do not like who I am being: I have learned that I am not open, I am controlling, I am frozen in some ways, unable in many ways, not as kind as I could be.  And knowing that, and the ways that all of those things harm me and the people I care about, I can change.  I have a reason to change.  If I could, my prayer tonight would be to let it all go.  Stop clinging to fear and judgment.  Walk across that bridge from what I knew to what I now know. Realizing that it is not as easy as saying a prayer or traversing a bridge, yes, I have called my therapist.  I need to do the hard work now.  I need to find the source of this river of tears and drink from it.  Quell it.  Redirect it.  I need to find a better way.

If I do not find a better way, I will never know love, and that, dear reader, would be a waste of a life. 

And the second picture is just right too. The whole way heading north on 83 and then on 71, this small white car kept braking.  Somehow he was able to go 65 miles per hour and intermittently brake at the same time.  For no apparent reason.  I followed him for miles -- 20, maybe 30 -- and it was making me crazy.  Stop, go, go but not too fast, stop but keep going, respond to nothing, control, control, cautious without need. And, near the end of our travels together, I thought, 'That's me. That's the way I live life when trying to love. One foot on the gas, faking people out, a heavier foot on the brakes.'  I am the small white car that is damn frustrating.  Tonight, as I go to sleep, I will have only one question in my mind: what is there to be afraid of?  Why do I keep applying the brakes?

It is no longer acceptable to me to be the way I am.  I do not say that as if I am dumping it all out.  I fully appreciate and will not change certain magnificent things about me.  But this stuff -- the fear and cautious part -- that needs to change, morph, slide away like an east moving cloud.  It must.  My life depends on it, now.