I just finished watching The Good Place. I don't watch a lot of shows, but I really connected with it because it deals with a lot of things that are meaningful to me. The idea of bettering ourselves and trying to do more good than harm. The motivations for our actions and how they affect others. The idea that certain people are meant to be in our lives and how we're better for it. The sacrifices we make for those we love. The last episode had a really hard moment and this quote that meant a lot to me:
"Picture a wave in the ocean. You can see it, measure its height; The way sunlight refracts when it passes through. It's there, you can see it, and you know what it is. It's a wave. Then it crashes on the shore, and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while. The wave returns to the ocean where it came from, where it's supposed to be."
I found this photo from when I was in Florida a few years ago. I went out to the beach at night and took some long exposures of the waves. I can still hear them. They're just a memory now. Waves don't last forever.
Watching the series this past week coincided with a really important event in my life: I have my sisters back again, along with a brother I had never met. To skip over the gritty details, our separation was my fault in the first place and the loss and guilt from that is something I've carried for over a decade. Now I have a chance to try to make up for it. I have been the cause of so much pain. Trust is a difficult thing, and I have to earn it. I understand that. You can't know for sure if and when someone will leave you or hurt you. But I won't be going anywhere. I can’t ever let that happen again. That mistake influenced who I became. I'm stronger now and ready to be the person I should have been a long time ago. I hope that I’m worth more than I feel like I am sometimes and that I’m worth keeping around. I need to know that now more than ever.