Sunny Side Down

I am a sunny person. Ridiculously so. Elle Woods is my spirit animal. I love to smile and I really love to make people smile. If Barry Manilow lyrics have flooded your brain, you are not alone.That doesn't mean I live a cloud free life. I am surrounded by clouds. Some are white and fluffy and some swelling, deep and gray, full of tears ready to fall.NEWS FLASH: I don't handle these clouds well.I try to blow them back with a manic burst of insistent sunshine. Nothing to see here, folks. No grey clouds on the radar.But sometimes, sunshine isn't enough. And no matter how many unicorns emojis I include in my texts, anxiety feeds system after system just waiting for the right wind to blow my way.I have survived metaphorical Katrinas and a literal Harvey. And lately, I have heard the thunder and felt the gathering storm. The blue skies edged to green and I chose to ignore them. In my life, I don't just bask in the sunlight, I am too often the sun itself. My moonlit loved ones reflect back beautiful silver rays but they are consistently creatures of the night. Their mercurial hearts rise and fall with the tide. And I fear if I allow those clouds to creep into my atmosphere, my home will fall under an eclipse-like darkness with rising waters threatening to wash us all away.So like the shoreside citizen refusing to evacuate, I sit on my sunny porch positive that those clouds in the distance will never darken my door.Until they do.When the winds of reality crash onto my shore, I am lost. The levies fail and no longer can I hold back the storm. Category 5 tears of fear, anger, and sadness, long building in the Gulf of Traci's Denial, fall.This year has been one wherein I have allowed many storms to threaten my sunshine and this star is collapsing.I am tired.Yet, I'm still smiling.  I know that the sunshine will return.But for today, this Sunny Side girl is down.