Melissa Roth -- Freespeak Blog

I have never owned a home.   I have always rented.   In my life, I have probably signed 15-20 leases.   Today, I was presented with a lease the likes of which I have never seen.   It was 33 pages long.   Thirty-three pages of rules, procedures, warnings, and instructions. This lease instructs me to put ice through the garbage disposal once a week.   This lease tells me I must never put the a/c below 68 and the heat never below 65.   This lease explains how I must water, fertilize, and pesticide the lawn or face dire consequences.   This lease allows for one key for the house which will be in the lockbox on the door which I get the combination to on the first day of the lease.   One key.   There is a garage but no mention in the 33 pages of a garage door opener.   There is mention of a mailbox key for which I am told to find the nearest post office and get one there.   This lease includes a paragraph and a half tell...

I have long believed that life was full of trade offs.    I accepted it.   I lived by it.   The thing is I was the one deciding what would be traded.   And I don't know.   I have been struggling with feeling hopeful about our move because I I believed with all my heart that the trade off was no more dinners out, massages, puzzles, books, trips, festivals, duds, furniture, health care--all the accoutrement of middle class life--I was going to have to give them up in order to move.   I thought that was the trade off.   Complete belief in limited thinking. Today I worked and worked (as I have been doing lately) on trying to believe that life wasn't full of trade offs but I couldn't get there.    I couldn't feel it.   Suddenly I realized maybe I have the trade off wrong.   Maybe the trade off isn't what I think it is.     Maybe we are not limited to a certain amount of abundance and joy.   I don't have t...

I'm still here.    My current battle cry is simply that, "I'm still here."   I only realized today that the mere fact of my still being here – here on Earth, here alive, here in my life, means something.   Now, what it means is debatable.   It could mean I am smart and have outwitted my foes and defeated the odds.   It could mean I am stupid and just don't realize I lost the game.   Or it could mean that I am just plain stubborn.   I don't give up.   I don't know, but I do know it means that I want to be here. See, I believe that if people choose to die, they do.   I don't mean like suicides.   I mean when people give up.   They aren't here anymore.   We all know stories of people who were supposed to die and didn't or were fine and died or some variation. No explanation.   I remember when my mother was very ill with bone cancer.   She was doing okay and within 2 days of her being admitted to a long term...