YEAH!!!! My brother's wife recently gave birth to beautiful, healthy twins. I am an Auntie and it's kinda strange to think of my 'baby' brother being a Dad, but I am so proud of him and happy for him that I could BURST!!!
New life is always energizing and special. God Bless my brother and his wife and their new additions!!!
I find myself at a crossroads, knowing that a major change is needed in my life but not exactly sure where to begin to affect the needed change. I am trying to connect or reconnect with my internal compass, so that I can stop feeling like I am wandering around in a dark room I used to know where someone has moved all the furniture and I keep bumping my knees.
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Lost Love
It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I don't think the person that said that understood much about loss. Lost love is a bitch. Maybe it's just that love is a bitch. That image of love that you learn about as a little girl is more bullshit than it's possible to swallow. I don't mean to say that I don't believe in love or that love is some kind of made up thing that we all learn about as children but can never really experience. I mean that love is work. Love takes effort. Love is painful and messy and challenging. That effortless fairytale love that you learn about as a kid is exactly that, a fairytale.
I have loved many people in my life. Most of those people, by God's grace and blessing, remain a part of my life. There have only been a couple that I have truly lost. But that doesn't mean that I don't suffer over the loss of love. I sometimes wonder what my fate is with regard to love. Am I destined to spend the rest of my life searching for the kind of love that lasts a lifetime? Is there even such a thing? It seems to me that whenever you hear about lasting love, it ends tragically. Romeo and Juliet. Anthony and Cleopatra. The Bronte sisters wrote about that tragic kind of love.
My parents loved each other once but they didn't last. My ex-wife and I loved each other and that ended too. In my most recent days, I let go of someone out of love and now that is over as well. For me, when love ends, the pain that's left behind is an aching place that heals ever so slowly. Then, that part of my heart, that I gave so willingly, becomes a scarred place full of memories that forever belongs to the lost. How many times can a heart heal and scab over before it loses it's capacity to love again? I wonder.
I learned a long time ago that humans are not solitary creatures. We are meant to bond and live out our lives in concert with another. If this is true, then there is someone out there for all of us, for me too. I hope my heart maintains it's capacity for open, unconditional, honest, messy, tragic, unexplainable, beautiful, magical, wonderful love. I live in the hope that I will someday find that love which last through my lifetime.
I have loved many people in my life. Most of those people, by God's grace and blessing, remain a part of my life. There have only been a couple that I have truly lost. But that doesn't mean that I don't suffer over the loss of love. I sometimes wonder what my fate is with regard to love. Am I destined to spend the rest of my life searching for the kind of love that lasts a lifetime? Is there even such a thing? It seems to me that whenever you hear about lasting love, it ends tragically. Romeo and Juliet. Anthony and Cleopatra. The Bronte sisters wrote about that tragic kind of love.
My parents loved each other once but they didn't last. My ex-wife and I loved each other and that ended too. In my most recent days, I let go of someone out of love and now that is over as well. For me, when love ends, the pain that's left behind is an aching place that heals ever so slowly. Then, that part of my heart, that I gave so willingly, becomes a scarred place full of memories that forever belongs to the lost. How many times can a heart heal and scab over before it loses it's capacity to love again? I wonder.
I learned a long time ago that humans are not solitary creatures. We are meant to bond and live out our lives in concert with another. If this is true, then there is someone out there for all of us, for me too. I hope my heart maintains it's capacity for open, unconditional, honest, messy, tragic, unexplainable, beautiful, magical, wonderful love. I live in the hope that I will someday find that love which last through my lifetime.
Monday, March 15, 2010
In the Shadow of Dragons . . .
I just finished watching a documentary about a 15 year old boy who was suffering from bipolar disorder and committed suicide. While I see the tradgedy in this loss for his family and his friends, I also feel a certain kinship with this child lost so young.
At 20 years old, I wasn't sure I would make it to 30. The year I turned 30, I had a wonderful birthday celebration because I felt so blessed to have reached this significant milestone. I am not sure why life saw fit to send a major storm into my world that year which tore apart the life I had been so thankful for making it to enjoy. I feel like I have been trying to emerge from that storm ever since. Now, I wonder about 40. I wonder if I will see it. Truthfully, most days, the only thing keeping me putting one foot in front of the other are the people around me who would be devastated by my loss. My own life isn't what motivates me. It's how my life, or rather my death, will affect others that keeps me going. I pray that I never reach a point where selfishness takes over and I decide I don't care anymore about how my loss will affect others.
When I was in my late teens, I had a therapist that I told I saw dragons behind my face. This wasn't a literal 'seeing' (that's another illness entirely!) but more a figurative expression of my own bipolar disorder. They aren't scary dragons as the image that the word brings to mind. In truth, these dragons are beautiful, coiled and silent. When the depression is under control, the dragons are asleep. When my illness is raging, the dragons are swirling but, oddly, they remain silent. This silence is the expression of my innermost pain. I know how my illness works. I know better than anyone how I suffer and what the symptoms are. I also know what needs to be done to keep the dragons coiled and still. Sometimes knowing, intellectually, and living with something in reality are such different things. I have learned to live with the dragons, to see them as they are swirling or still, but I also feel that someday the dragons will emerge, raging and roaring. I wonder what will happen that day and whether or not I will survive it.
These days, numbness is my friend. I don't allow myself to feel my feelings for fear that they will take me over completely. The feelings are so negative and so strong. Crying spells are rare but hope and faith are even more rare. I watch the dragons swirling and fighting them takes more and more of my energy. I don't think that fighting is even the right word, containing is probably a better expression. I contain them so that I continue to survive. I contain them so that I don't hurt the people I love the most by giving in and allowing them to take over. I contain them because not to do so is to succumb to the silence and be devoured by these beautiful monsters. When I am honest with myself, I know that I want to give in to the dragons and give up on my life. Instead, I keep watching and waiting.
Recently, my mother told me to focus on my brother and his wife's coming children and find light in the lives that will soon begin. She told me to think of them and the joy they will soon experience. This has turned out to be a double edged sword. In the shadow of dragons, I look at their coming blessing and feel the loss of my own. I always wanted to have a baby myself, but life had other plans. It's another way in which I feel loss and failure. I am so happy for my brother and his wife, but I also see what I will never have and that makes me sad. Happiness for them and sadness for myself . . . life in the shadow of the dragons.
Dragons are angry and selfish, lonely and scared. Dragons are raging and silent and I am the life that they share.
At 20 years old, I wasn't sure I would make it to 30. The year I turned 30, I had a wonderful birthday celebration because I felt so blessed to have reached this significant milestone. I am not sure why life saw fit to send a major storm into my world that year which tore apart the life I had been so thankful for making it to enjoy. I feel like I have been trying to emerge from that storm ever since. Now, I wonder about 40. I wonder if I will see it. Truthfully, most days, the only thing keeping me putting one foot in front of the other are the people around me who would be devastated by my loss. My own life isn't what motivates me. It's how my life, or rather my death, will affect others that keeps me going. I pray that I never reach a point where selfishness takes over and I decide I don't care anymore about how my loss will affect others.
When I was in my late teens, I had a therapist that I told I saw dragons behind my face. This wasn't a literal 'seeing' (that's another illness entirely!) but more a figurative expression of my own bipolar disorder. They aren't scary dragons as the image that the word brings to mind. In truth, these dragons are beautiful, coiled and silent. When the depression is under control, the dragons are asleep. When my illness is raging, the dragons are swirling but, oddly, they remain silent. This silence is the expression of my innermost pain. I know how my illness works. I know better than anyone how I suffer and what the symptoms are. I also know what needs to be done to keep the dragons coiled and still. Sometimes knowing, intellectually, and living with something in reality are such different things. I have learned to live with the dragons, to see them as they are swirling or still, but I also feel that someday the dragons will emerge, raging and roaring. I wonder what will happen that day and whether or not I will survive it.
These days, numbness is my friend. I don't allow myself to feel my feelings for fear that they will take me over completely. The feelings are so negative and so strong. Crying spells are rare but hope and faith are even more rare. I watch the dragons swirling and fighting them takes more and more of my energy. I don't think that fighting is even the right word, containing is probably a better expression. I contain them so that I continue to survive. I contain them so that I don't hurt the people I love the most by giving in and allowing them to take over. I contain them because not to do so is to succumb to the silence and be devoured by these beautiful monsters. When I am honest with myself, I know that I want to give in to the dragons and give up on my life. Instead, I keep watching and waiting.
Recently, my mother told me to focus on my brother and his wife's coming children and find light in the lives that will soon begin. She told me to think of them and the joy they will soon experience. This has turned out to be a double edged sword. In the shadow of dragons, I look at their coming blessing and feel the loss of my own. I always wanted to have a baby myself, but life had other plans. It's another way in which I feel loss and failure. I am so happy for my brother and his wife, but I also see what I will never have and that makes me sad. Happiness for them and sadness for myself . . . life in the shadow of the dragons.
Dragons are angry and selfish, lonely and scared. Dragons are raging and silent and I am the life that they share.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Wandering In the Dark
For so long now, I have felt like I was wandering around in the dark. As I look back on the scattered entries of this blog, I see that there have been places of light but I can't seem to orient myself in the light permanently. Always, the darkness seems to descend again and I am back at the beginning. Am I destined to wander forever? Did I get so lost somewhere along the way that the glimpses of light are all I can hope for? Have I lost touch with my own inspiration? When I ask myself these questions, really thinking about the answers that are within me but somehow out of reach, I find that all I can do is weep. The tears come easily, sometimes noiselessly, leaving silent trails on my cheeks. Sometimes the tears come in great heaving sobs with running nose and blubbering words. However they come, they bring with them a sadness so profound that it threatens to drown me.
Where is my voice? I will be 36 years old this year, closer to 40 than I care to think about and still I haven't 'found my way'. I am raising children. My job is to help them find their way in the world. What kind of an example do I set when I am so completely lost myself? More painful questions! I know I exist in the dark because when I think about my life, really think about it, I feel empty, cold, unsucessful. More accurately, I feel like a failure.
I want to write. I want to teach. I want to be proud of who I am and what I have accomplished. It's not enough anymore to just survive. I want to LIVE! I want to be the person I dreamed I would be when I was a child. I want, I want, I want!!!! The question is . . . . HOW? Where to begin? How do I wander out of this overbearing darkness and find the light within myself again? Where do I begin?
Where is my voice? I will be 36 years old this year, closer to 40 than I care to think about and still I haven't 'found my way'. I am raising children. My job is to help them find their way in the world. What kind of an example do I set when I am so completely lost myself? More painful questions! I know I exist in the dark because when I think about my life, really think about it, I feel empty, cold, unsucessful. More accurately, I feel like a failure.
I want to write. I want to teach. I want to be proud of who I am and what I have accomplished. It's not enough anymore to just survive. I want to LIVE! I want to be the person I dreamed I would be when I was a child. I want, I want, I want!!!! The question is . . . . HOW? Where to begin? How do I wander out of this overbearing darkness and find the light within myself again? Where do I begin?