It's strange to look back, isn't it?
While sipping coffee this morning, I pulled up my Pinterest account. No reason to revisit my poor, abandoned, neglected boards - just a random click. I haven't been active for months (years...) but I am still gathering followers weekly. "Oh, look! She's on Pinterest! Let's see what she's got going..." Not much.
The good news: I STILL like every single thing I collected over there. I think I was on the right path, especially when it came to getting settled into the house. Good tool. Maybe I will start utilizing it again?
But looking at that defunct account made me come to THIS account. I've had it for close to five years now and here we are, first post.
I used to blog about everything under the sun - the good times, the bad times, the random things that popped into my head, the things that delighted me, the things that angered me - all of it ended up in my daily blogs.
Then life got overwhelmingly busy and choices had to be made: blog or sleep? Sleep won. Blogging fell to the wayside. I always thought I would step back into my old routine, sitting down and picking up where I left off one day. The elusive "one day" never came. Instead, one day corporate decisions were made and the website that hosted the things in my space decided to reinvent itself. The things in "my space" were gone - something unrecognizable took their place, and hundreds of blogs simply disappeared.
So much for things living forever on the Internet, eh?
Life changes.
You're never really ready for it. It doesn't matter how well you think you may be prepared, it doesn't matter how much you've planned. Life is going to change, on it's own course, in it's own fashion and the only guarantee you will have is that life will indeed throw you a few curve balls. Sometimes, this is a good thing - a great thing, even. Sometimes it's a real pain in the ass. Sometimes it's tragic.
You never know yourself, or those around you, until you have weathered some of the changes and you find out how you handle both yourself and each situation.
You THINK you know how you'll handle new things. You don't. They're new. You have no foundation for them. Keeps life interesting, doesn't it?
Looking at those Pinterest boards, I mentally traveled back a few years. Things were different.
Someone who follows me there might see exactly what they'd expect: quirky things that are just my style. When I look? Yeah, I see the things. The Jacobean wall paper scattered with monkeys. The salad bowl that looks like a rowboat and is worthy of being on permanent display. The incredibly adorable things for tiny boys. It's all there, all on display.
I was planning things.
Planning projects for our newly purchased home. Planning things for my daughter as she struck out on her own, starting an adult life and feathering her own nest. Planning the type of life I wanted for my husband and myself as we began a new phase in our lives, the one focused on US and not every one and thing else that had become our routine.
What I see there is the excited beginning of a new life, a new chapter, a happily ever after in the makings.
Then life hurled a giant curve ball my way.
I honestly and truly did not see this one coming. "Least expected" does not even begin to describe that moment in time. Devastated comes closer.
I thought I had prepared myself for every conceivable mishap. When you spend a quarter century as "the better half" of someone serving their country, you won't make it if you don't plan for the worst case scenarios. When you raise a child with sever disabilities, you live in a constant state of being aware and preparing for the bottom to fall out of your universe.
Stupid me. I thought all of that was behind me and that I had FINALLY reached the golden moment where I could walk away from the constant state of worry and over-preparedness. I should have known better. I was stupid.
Maybe stupid is just another part of life? You inadvertantly do stupid things (does anyone really do stupid things on purpose? I don't think they do - but it's definitely a sad possibility, I suppose. Let's focus on what semi-sensible people do and let Darwinism sort out the others, shall we? Semi-sensible people tend to inadvertantly do stupid things from time to time. I'd really like to think of myself as semi-sensible at the very least.) You realize you were stupid, smack yourself in the forehead, do whatever you possibly can to repair the damage and correct the situation and (hopefully) learn a lesson. You move on with your life. Or life moves on, I guess it all depends on how you look at it?
Here's the kicker: what if, after realizing you were stupid, you THEN make the wrong choices? How do you know what the right choices are? It's said that reactions to stressful situations come down to two basic categories: fight or flight.
How do you choose one over the other? And how do you live with your decision? Even if you're certain you've made the right choice, will you forever be haunted with the shadow of "maybe I should have done the opposite?"
I had to choose. I chose to fight. It almost killed me. Not a physical death - unless you want to count how close I came to succombing to takotsubo cardiomyopathy (go google it, I'll wait) but my spirit? Yeah. A huge chunk of that died.
Things are different.
I look at things differently. Things I would never have given a second thought to before are now mentally mauled. Try as I may, I can't force myself to just skim along and take things at face value. I let my defenses down once before and I paid a dear price for having done so, my mind is struggling to never let that happen again. I was always a bit of an introvert, always selective of who I'd let near, but now? I didn't think the circle could be smaller, the walls tighter, until now. I hope, eventually, this will change. I don't think we're really meant to live with so much distance.
I react to things differently. Almost all things. My "happy" isn't nearly as happy as it once was, and god knows it was always a stunted happy at best. I think I am miswired - I can't seem to let myself be fully happy, fully joyful, for fear that coming down from that level of elation will be too much of a crash. I always thought that was maybe a good thing? While some may find that sad, I have always looked at it as a survival skill, one that has been well-honed and been very useful. What scares me a bit is the anger. I'm an angrier person than I ever thought I could be, angrier than I ever wanted to be and - ha!- THAT makes me very angry. I'm weary. I used to bounce back quickly, but it seems I've gone a bit flat. Because I am afraid to let go and be happy, because I'm afraid of my anger, I spend my time at war with myself, always trying to stay in the middle ground. It's exhausting.
My thoughts are different. In the ONE relationship I have ever had that should bring me peace, instead I find everything but. Angst. Enmity. Anguish. Deprivation. Desecration. They're all there. And yet, surprisingly, love is as well. Maybe without that one elusive thing, the others simply can't exist? Trying to reconcile all of this is all-consuming. It's been that way for the last few years. It's almost as if my mind is busying itself playing a giant, winner take all game of chess.
My dreams are different. As a child, I remember having a recurring dream. I can remember vividly how it looked, how it smelled, how it felt, and jolting awake every time I had it. Heart pounding. Slightly sweaty. Upset in a way that you couldn't quite put your finger on, but you knew it was bad. For many, many years, I didn't remember dreaming. I was always fascinated listening to people recall vivid, technicolor dreams, it always seemed fantastic. And now? Two nights ago, I woke up angry from a dream and was awake for the next couple of hours, replaying the dream, reliving the hurt, fueling the anger. It's been a recent pattern.
I don't think things can or will ever be the way they once were, I think I'm too damaged by it all. I thought I had been hurt before, I thought all the damage was done, I thought I had every scar I was going to have to bear. I had no idea. This is a million times worse than every prior injury. They all, every one, pale before this. I don't even have the words to fully describe it.
But I am still here, aren't I?
I chose to fight. Flight would have been easier. Flight would have been cleaner. Flight would have been quicker. That's never been my style. Easier, cleaner, quicker, to my mind, are all lazy. They're weak. They're a cop-out. I chose to fight because, if one doesn't fight for the things that are truly important, what was the point? What else matters?
In the end, my decision boiled down to this: what matters to me in my life?
That's when I realize the depth of something surprising. I am, truly and deeply, in love.
It's ugly. It's messy. It's cruel.
This isn't what the majority of the poets wrote endlessly about, this isn't the crap that songs were written about, this isn't fairy tales. It's real, it's gritty, it's got a double edge. I'm starting to believe that the only thing one ever hears about it that IS true is that it's rare.
I know why: most don't have the stomach for it. It's easier, FAR easier, to walk away. Go search for new love - that euphoric, glowing, happy thing of poems and fairy tales. Old love - that of the hurt, the kind that's battered, the bruised, broken and repaired love, it's much more difficult, isn't it?
Is it worth it?
Nothing else matters.
