I needed a lemon for a recipe the other night and what came home from the grocery store was an entire bag. “Babe! I only needed one! What am I going to do with all of these lemons… I guess I could make lemonade.” I laughed to myself as I thought of literally making lemonade out of leftover lemons.

A week later and my fridge was still sunny with citrus. “Damn, I guess I really am going to make lemonade.” I pulled out the bag, turned the music on blast and proceeded to roll out each lemon for optimal juicing. It was a far more labor intensive process by hand than I had imagined but it gave me time to think of that same stupid saying that brought me there in the first place,“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” I shook my head and smiled, knowing that for the last several years of my life I’ve preffered the alternate option, “Just say fuck the lemons and bail.” But how unfair have I been to myself by letting every sour situation go to waste? How many times have I had water and sugar in abundace but I threw it all away because I didn’t want to put in the work? How unlike myself have I become?

2018 was the Year of the Lemon for me. Everytime I turned around it seemed like another lemon had found me. I needed the ultimate bail, so I moved to Cambodia and left all of my lemons behind. Chris has called it our “Hail Mary” but by the time we were there I was already gone. I wont go into detail now, I may not ever, but Chris and I had been going through an incredibly challenging time. I want so badly to say that I tried everything I could, that I alone fought and cried and wanted us but I know that isn’t true. I know in his very own Chris way he did try, fight and cry for us. I know neither one of us wanted it to end but sometimes you throw a Hail Mary and miss the catch.

It’s hard to say which one of us was throwing and which one was receiving, I like to think both. We were both so broken. We could blame business, family, our past lovers and friends, but what I finally realized is that we should be looking at the common denominators in it all. We had done this to ourselves. God dammit! I moved half way around the world only to find out that I am my most heartbreaking lemon!? It was in that moment I started to look at myself and realize that I was more than the water and sugar I put out into the world. That someone, somewhere, was making lemonade out of my tart precense in their life. That we all have the capacity to be all three ingredients but we so often see ourselves as only one or two. What a limited view.

I needed to face my lemons. I’m trying to do that now. I’m looking at all the things I know but wont own, the things I have run from and refused to “be” but still am, the things I have done, the people I have hurt. I’m forcing myself to see and work with all of my ingredients and find a way to make something beautiful.

I’m grateful to be at this point in my journey to self acceptance but I’m hurting, a lot. It’s always difficult for me to read the last few pages of a great book. Hard to accept that when I do, the adventure will all be over. Chris will always be the Spock to my Kirk, but can you imagine what would have happened to the USS Enterprise if those two had tried to date? Absolute madness I tell you! It was a beautiful madness though, and it was ours. I don’t know how to explain the wonder and the heartbreak that comes along with loving and letting go of someone so alien to you. It’s lemonade in and of itself.

Nothing will ever change the story we’ve already written, and I don’t want it to. I have learned so much about life, love and myself by being two ignorant lemons in love. Maybe this is 30? The end of the road to self discovery and the begining of self acceptance. I guess we’ll see. :)

Live long, prosper and make lemonade.