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The gap, for some of us, is tragic.  Soul murdering tragic.  Heart-breaking, self-depreciating, some-times unspeakably…tragic.

The gap I’m referring to is the one between “the real us” and the us we think society expects, dictates, demands.

I wrote about this one day last week – how I was lonely for the real me and how the real me wasn’t turning out how she was “supposed” to.  Then, I watched a video of a Texas city councilman talking about his own gap. Only his gap was really, really huge:  the son of a prominent Texan who was also gay. He spoke not only about the pain his own gap caused him but also about the pain the young people who have recently taken their own lives must have experienced.

His story is too authentic not to watch…to raw not to touch even the coldest of hearts: http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/ThankYouJoelBurns

Then, last night, I had a glorious dream that I was hovering above a canyon of grand proportions.  On the North-end, the gap was enormous and there were millions of souls looking at it with horror with other souls desperately trying to keep them from the edge.  In the dream, I wept for all of them.  Then, I noticed the bridges and all the souls crossing.  Some were running, some were crawling, some were half way across and looking back – unsure which was the right direction.  I could hear cheers of encouragement coming from the souls who had already crossed.  Then, the whole canyon finally came into view and at the south-end, there was no gap at all.   

In looking-back on my own life, I had truly believed my parents wanted me to turn out a certain way and that they were disappointed when life started veering off course.  I now see that they were simply afraid for me because the path to the bridges was scary, convoluted, painful, crazy and completely foreign. 

For me, acknowledging the gap started with a divorce at age 25.  That certainly wasn’t part of the “grand plan”.  Yet, without that shake-up, I might never have known the sweetness of self-discovery….the sweetness of being “off-course” only to find that, no, this maybe – this just might be the right way, after-all. 

I never saw my own soul in the dream but that was alright because I know I’m happily skipping across the bridge grateful to finally be heading toward the peace of integration between my true-self and my made-up expectations of what I should be.