Courage

I have lost something, something that meant more than the world to me. It was the thing I cherised most and now I will never again feel the joy of being a part of it, of having it near me - just doing what it did best. It was taken from me and now I have nothing but the taste of ash in my mouth and the bitter tears of an alien - thrust into strange newness and yearning for home. I have become one without, an outsider to my joy.

I want nothing more than to clutch the pain close, to rock and moan, to shed tears for my lack. I want to wallow in the pain - to feel it forever as a reminder that I have been scarred. But there is a deeper lesson, just below the pain - there is a glimmer of a future lived in wholeness. I can see it sparkle, just an arm's reach away.

Give me the strength to take it in hand.

After three days without reading, talk becomes flavorless.Chinese Proverb

Luck of the Irish

Do you ever have those moments? You know the ones: your mouth hangs open a little and all you can do is slowly shake your head in disbelief at your good luck? My life this week has been made up of those moments.

I know I don't deserve it, but I may have been born with it.

Home

My whole life, I have been looking for it. I have so badly wanted to feel that I belonged somewhere, anywhere. I talked to people who had lived their entire lives in the same town, they knew everyone and everyone knew them. Their houses were comfortable, old, and homey. They had friends, knew all the out-of-the-way places, they took each others sisters to the prom, were in their friend's weddings, raised kids next door to each other, and lived in community.

By the time I was sixteen, I had decided there was no point in ever even unpacking; another move was sure to be just around the corner so why bother? I was so envious of the other kids that lived on our street my heart would ache. They had been there for the past five years and in another five they would most likely still be there. They had solidarity.

And then I learned the truth. Home is a place where our soul is free to breathe. I talked to the kids that I envied and I realized that while I had a new bedroom every few years, they were jealous of something that I had - a stable family who loved me. No matter where we lived, no matter how many times we moved, my family was always there for me. We laughed and cried together (about everything), we planned and dreamed and hoped together. We made a space for each other to grow and change; we set each other free. They are my home and I take them with me wherever I go. I love them for that.

I am going home for Christmas.

Loss

The capricious nature of the human race often puzzles me. More often than not, I look back at the decisions I have made and wonder what exactly I was thinking when those pivotal moments faced me. And nothing confuses me more than love.

It is something elusive, something beautiful, or so the poets would have us believe. We wait for it to find us, sweep us off our feet, carry us away to a land where we live happily ever after. Have we not been told this story since we were young? Who has so blinded us to the reality of love?

My experience has been that it is costly and messy, much like the rest of life. There is agony and blood, tears and sweat - is this not the way anything worth having is won? We know how much love will cost us, that is why we only play at it. We have created a game, a game that allows us to taste but never to own, allows us to feel but not enough to hurt. True love is bittersweet but we want only the sweet. We have become afraid to love for to love is to feel another's heart beating within our own; their pain, despair, their happiness becomes as our own. Is it too much for us to bear?

We yearn for it and then reject it when it comes to us. Why? How can we understand the true essence of love when all we have been allowed to understand is a facade of its true beauty?

Love is...........

Envy

I have to admit, the green-eyed monster has been making a pest of himself lately. I thought that I had dealt with him a few months ago; I told him not to bother coming back and he moved all of his stuff out of my apartment. It seemed like a clean break-up and I was surprised that it had gone so well.

But today, I found his socks stuffed under the left side of the bed. I think I'd asked him about a million times not to leave them there, and that was when he was still living here. And on Saturday, the peanut butter was sitting on the stove and there were dirty dishes in the sink. I tried to convince myself that I had simply forgotten the midnight snacking that I did, but the socks were the clincher. That could not be me.

I guess I don't really know what to do. I don't really want to get back into this relationship, it did not work out that well the first time around. There were things that were great but the truth of the matter is, the bad far outweighed the good. He was so demanding and thinking about him or taking care of him absorbed all my time.

He was so comfortable.

I am better off without him.