Who We Are In The Dark
We can only be one person
The last six months have wrecked me. Emotionally, I've been shattered... and the come-back has been slower and harder than I could have imagined. A HUGE help is seeing my wife smile and laugh again.
She's the kind of woman who can find a silver lining in almost anything. Plenty of vitriol in that big ol' heart of hers, but it's easily dimmed by the brilliance of her soul. When she got sick last month, I honestly feared for the first time in my life that I could lose her.
It was nuts.
She was never so sick that she was at death's door, but it felt like it. Compounding matters was the loss of that dear sister of hers. I understood for the first time in my life that I might find myself facing a future on my own.
That realization gutted me.
That spiraled me into weeks of fear of the future. I've been fighting worry about things that will never happen and things that might and things that will. But the worry didn't make any of it better, only me worse.
I've learned about myself that I really have a self-control problem. I'm not a wild firehose kind of lunatic, but in little things like how I think and feel, I've too often just let my mind run wild, embraced and even celebrated it. In my words, spoken and written, my art and journals... this felt like catharsis, but I worry now it was reinforcing bad habits and traits. This created a facade of control, but like a chair about to tip its sitter, all that fallacy needs is a breeze to wreak havoc. Sometimes that manifests in the physical, but more often in an internal, emotional maelstrom.
From broken and lost relationships, to eroded trust and loss of respect and even irresponsible financial and personal decisions, the person I have been was too flagrant and carefree. My focus and intent has to be on the little things (faithful in least, after all) instead of thinking they are no big deal. Strong walls are made from quality bricks and good mortar.
Thinking about this is what helped me understand that it doesn't matter who I please or make happy, or how much praise I get (which I still long for), if the secret person of the heart isn't grade A, the rest of it is just hypocrisy. A white-washed grave.
So, I'm trying to change. To be a different man in the dark. But I know this won't be a momentary effort. I know that it will be months, maybe years of work and retraining my thinking patterns to reign that wild thing called heart into line.
So, we're busy looking at our lives and thinking twice about where and how we want to spend our free time in a way that is most beneficial for each of us and our friends. We two together have built a strong community around us, but I haven't been doing the same bulwark work on my own mind and heart. It's time to start.
That way, when I turn on the lights, the same man is revealed as sat in shadow.
Epilogue: She's in the living room right now singing 'I will Always Love You' by Whitney Houston. Her sister loved that song and the two of them sang it together some years ago.
This isn't a melancholy moment though, I hear here laughing at something now. How beautiful the mind is. Healing is a weird journey.
Yesterday, she said this to me:
'At first, all the days were bad days. Then there were fewer bad days, interspersed with days that go up and down. Now, it’s like a few bad days each week, and otherwise bad moments through most days.'
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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