I am writing again. I am writing. I had hoped to feel so energetic that I burst back onto the scene like the Kool-Aid man I’d known in my childhood.
Instead, I’m feeling more like a twenty something doing the walk of shame back home at seven a.m.- disheveled, and not feeling so good about myself. But, here I am, I’ve reached the keyboard.
I have a wide range of emotions in my head…fear, gratitude, anger, happiness, sadness, rage, hopelessness and hope. I am digging deep to keep myself moving forward. The world has not ended, other people are worse off- blah, blah, blah. I’d like to stop with the daily banter about it, I’m beginning to appear obsessed, and appearance matters.
Years ago I posted a question on Facebook about “Nurture vs Nature.” Kind of a fun way to get some banter going. I had posed the question of how the five of us siblings had been raised in the same house with the same parents, yet we were all different in our outlook on life, our opinions and how we expressed them etc. The general consensus was that yes, we had all grown up in the same house, we all had the same stories to tell about things that happened in our childhood, but depending on our age and our abilities to cope at that age, the event was viewed differently. And, because we were all experiencing it from our own perspective, we became shaped differently. I feel like this situation is the same…. our family has been shaken by a singular event and although the event is the same, our reaction to it is different.
So, some shelter in place, others run about. Some cry with you and some try to avoid the subject entirely. When looking at it like this, I know not a single person can understand how I feel because they are not me. They don’t know what my soul felt, what my eyes saw, what my heartbreak feels like. It’s not possible to tell them, so I move on as quietly as possible. Quiet has never been my strong point, so when I do finally speak up, it’s usually anger that spews out- which is fine by me, but makes me bad company.
Hope. I have hope. Faith. I have faith.
The positive feelings are harder to express. Fear of the letdown…don’t speak it in case it doesn’t come to be. But, I do have my positive days, thankfully. I manage to get a few chores done, talk politely to friends, organize and plan and give myself a pep talk- that’s time well spent but it’s fleeting and the- the anger kicks in.
I listen to my new favorite artist every morning. The lyrics to “Rescue” hang in the spare bedroom so they are seen every day. They are powerful. God’s promise to us, transformed into my own message to my child. I don’t know how I have the strength to be the person who provides the rescue, and the last time I gave myself that responsibility it didn’t end well…. but this time, I am determined, and just fired up enough to make sure this time it pans out.
This time we will have the victory in life. This time, we will have life.
Till next time- Erin