There is so much I want to write about, so much to say on so many different subjects that they all jumble together. But today, the past, the present and the future.
In the days I was writing that journal, I was stuck in a pattern of repeating conflicts. Mourning, pining, wishing, hoping, groping for the light that was supposed to be at the end of the tunnel. I couldn't see any light. There was no flicker of hope. There was only darkness and despair. The strange thing is, the thing that put me into that place, is the thing that got me out of it. Sort of.
I was in that dark place before it took me over, but I was never the resigned type. Usually, I take the bull by the horns, wrestle it to the floor and force it into submission, one way or another. That figurative bull was any obstacle, situation or conflict I might be facing at any given moment. But wrestling bulls gets exhausting, and isn't there a saying about bulls? Something about horns? Yeah, you know the one. So, I got the horns, and it got dark.
There was a middle time, between the first break and the break that starting my healing. The darkness in that time was intense. All I could do was pine and mourn over a beautiful fiction that I had created almost by myself. There were aspects of it that were real, that I hadn't created, but it's easy to see what you want to see when you feel nearly desperate for appreciation or to even be acknowledged as worthy of attention.
The things I learned from breaking are profound. One of the main things is that there is always another chance to get it right. The chance may not be with the same person, but the chance does reoccur. The lesson you have to learn to get to the next step in your personal evolution will present itself again and again until you get it right.
I don't pine anymore, but I still mourn. The pining was less about any particular person, but about love. That thing that had been just beyond my reach. It would appear in front of me, shadowy and misty. Then it would materialize and make me feel safe enough to reach for it and disappear into thin air and leave me bleeding and reeling. As I was learning to love myself enough to not settle for anything less that something quite real and tangible, I had to start to mourn for the person whose job it was to teach me unconditional love. Dads are funny things. Flawed and flailing in their own worlds of ineptitude, how can they do their job when no one taught them those things about themselves?
The truth is, unless they are very diligent, they cannot teach what they have not learned personally. It is forgivable, because it must be. To live happily we must forgive the inadequacies of those who started molding us, as difficult as it is.
So here I sit. In the present. Having looked at the past, reflected on the present and looking forward to a future that is all light and no tunnel. Emerging into the light has been a relief but has come with it's own birthing pains. This is to be expected.
The lesson is, if you are in darkness, darkness cannot persist, for into the darkness, light will come - one way or another. But you must be patient in the interim, the light is worth the wait.
~ * ~
In unrelated news, I'm still knitting that baby blanket. The baby is born and getting old by now. Maybe this blanket is for a different baby? That's what I have to tell myself for procrastinating so long. Oh well, that baby already has lots of blankets. =)
