I've let go of the negativity

This evening, I sat in the second floor dining room of a cute Mediterranean restaurant that overlooked a quaint side street.  A cat lounged in an arched window of a red brick building across the way.  Colorful specks of light danced through my vision from the art hanging above the sidewalk.  I brought my journal along to further reflect on my Birmingham goodbye.

I was trying to figure out what specifically felt so radically different from the woman I was in Birmingham just a little over six weeks ago.  That is when it came to me.  When I left Birmingham that Saturday morning after my last day of work in that office, I left behind the last bits of negativity.

My marriage had been heavily clouded with my ex-husband's negativity.  Despite all my efforts to find stolen moments,  it was a heavy burden.

Then the separation two years ago lifted that burden from my shoulders.  It felt incredibly freeing.  But with it came clarity and I started to see other people differently.  I started to feel the negativity from a friend I thought I had been close to and I realized how much a cloud hovered over my work.

I think I got better at not holding other people's negativity but it still surrounded me.  I sought out colleagues who didn't dwell in it and sought the positive but it still affected us all, it still affects them.

I remember joking in those last weeks that I would drive away and look in my rearview mirror to see Birmingham in flames behind me.  Obviously not in a literal sense.  I had just reached a point where I realized how toxic so much of my environment had become.

Everything here in Atlanta just feels so positive.

I realize it isn't realistic to assume it is always going to stay that way.  But I hope that I learned a thing or two about cultivating the right relationships that add, not subtract from my joy.

I went to a book club this evening.  The group was diverse.  The conversation was intriguing.  It felt like a meaningful space to be in that I think may add to my life here.

Life is so much better now that I let go of the negativity.  May that inspiration guide me to hang onto the positive.