Hope dangles on a string, like slow spinning redemption

I love how I am able to bend my life around everyone elses--at a moment's notice sometimes--how I am able to shift and conform and mold myself to be what others need me to be all the time, but how when I ask one simple thing, it cannot be managed--it is too hard, it is not what someone else wants to do.

So there's that.

I make a mental note of these things, these messages that are sent to me day after day, year after year that I used to dismiss as part of the "job" but now keep track of with a fierce determination. I think about them when I'm out running. They give me energy. They push me to do more, to want to get stronger.

When I dream, I am never married, and I never have children and oftentimes, I am flying high above the world with the wind in my hair. It is simple and calm. I am watching the world from a distance, and I know that I like it that way. I don't remember much of my dreams, but I do know that I fly and that it feels like what I imagine heaven must feel like.

Even though I've started to hate Dr. Phil because he's always celebrity name-dropping, and he has this weird superiority complex thing going on, there is one thing he says that makes total sense to me. He says that people treat you the way you teach them to treat you. I've done a horrible job with this but part of me doesn't want to own up to this because it's just one more place where I've failed and it's one more thing I've got to fix. The list just keeps getting longer and longer.

I am committed to living in reality, however, so I will add it to my list of things to do--teach them to treat me how I treat them.