The calm before... more calm

I am floating in calm contentment.

No, Daddy wasn't here today. This contentment is not directly related to any particular interaction. It is general, surrounding, caressing, and unusual before the last year or so.

I know who I am. I know what I'm about. I live in the embrace of a relationship that shouldn't necessarily lead to such a sense of security - except that it does. Despite my various medical challenges, despite living on a financial fault line, despite finding myself in an identity that would worry and displease almost all of my friends and certainly all of my family, I feel anchored and at peace.

Last year was a series of unexpected, unwelcome, and very costly events, from the death of my Mac laptop just before Christmas 2009 to the death of my car and the near death of my boy cat early in November of this year. At some point this fall, after being laid off from my low-paying and highly stressful job, I speculated that I might be under a year-long curse. If so, I decided, it would end at Christmas, a year after it began.

Some things have already improved. I have a delightful, rent-paying, if often absent housemate. My relationship with the sadist has stabilized, and my insecurity about it has disappeared. And I celebrated Christmas in the traditional way with a thoroughly satisfying movie followed by too much good Chinese food.

One can't expect a year to go by without set-backs. Especially with very aged parents, my own aging body, and an economy that isn't all that healthy either. But it was the accelerated accumulation of financial hits that made me feel cursed.

I have decided
that the curse has run its course.
I have decided
that this year will be better.
I have decided
that the winds swirling outside my windows
will soften as they pass over my cheek.

And I know
that belonging to the sadist,
that serving the fiend,
that being my Daddy's adoring baby girl
has strengthened me to cope with whatever may come.