Walking
Some days are days where everything makes sense-the sun comes up just like you need it to. The coffee is hot but not too hot. Your phone is quiet and the dog’s tail thumps on the floor behind you and your favorite TV show is all saved up to watch.
These days, the days where it’s all like it needs to be, are the days which remind you that things will be ok.
In my head things buzz around. A long email which needs answering but I don’t know how to answer it. A project at work that I want to sink my teeth into, but am not sure how to proceed. A long litany of words swimming around in my skull which need to be unleashed. A move towards the next step in the therapy of me that needs to be taken. All of these things move in me and on me and will be released when I am ready, when they are ready.
Sometimes life comes in and affects us so profoundly that we think the life we knew before will never come back again. We had gotten comfortable, we had become secure, we never knew that things could go the way we didn’t want them to go. We walked our daily walk, never knowing the storms that were brewing, the fact that the sun is going to disappear.
When the darkness comes, we never think we’re going to make it.
The thing about life is you don’t really have a choice.
Pick any tired cliched adage you want – When God closes a door he opens a window. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. We are never given more than we can deal with. Through every darkness, there will be light. It doesn’t matter the saying, the underlying message is this- it’s bad now. It’s very bad. It’s a sheer and unmitigating darkness that swallows you whole.
But it will go away, in time.
It always does.
Yesterday was not a remarkable day. In the ordinariness of life, this day was stunningly ordinary. Return from holiday, laundry hung out to dry, dishes done, the dog was bathed, and I passed out on the couch from jet lag.
Yesterday was the day that the child we miscarried last year was due.
I didn’t mention the day to anyone, I didn’t do anything to note the event.
I didn’t need to.
Yesterday the sun rose and set and then it came up again this morning. It will continue to do so for as long as I’m alive, which is a great deal longer than that embryo ever will be. Once I didn’t want children. Now, I know children are something I want more than I know words to express it. And I look back on the unrelenting grief that was August, I remember the loss of the one I nicknamed Dr. Seuss baby, and I feel ok. I feel like I have been on a long walk, one which nearly took my career, my heart, and my happiness down with it. I walked through the storm of it all, and I look at yesterday with a bittersweet calm.
A birth didn’t take place in our world yesterday.
And it’s ok.
I’ll never stop walking.
-H.
Keep on walking, keep on living, keep on having hope for a future.
No comments I can express in words, other than “thank you”.
“And it’s ok.”
Some of the most peaceful words I’ve ever read on this blog. Kudos to you for that.
You give so many people in the world hope and light each and every day. My greatest wish is you get your wish someday.
I think that’s the most any of us can do in life, just take one day at a time. I’m glad you’re feeling at peace about things :)
*hug* Walk and we all walk with you.
It’s amazing how true those words are though. There always is a light out there waiting for you. You just have to keep walking to get to it. There are times when something will trip you as you walk through the darkness and you start crawling. Eventually, you start walking again and before you know it the walking gets easier. And then the light.
The thing that always scares me when something happens that swallows me in darkness is the thought that someday, life will just go on-and all that pain will be a distant memory. Sometimes that thought is unbearable during the middle of a desperate time-all the awful feelings, the blackness that is consuming me at the moment-it will all go away and the sun will shine.
The irony is thank god it does, or life would be truly unbearable.
Hugs to you, and just to be cliche, no one is ever forgotten as long as they live on in your heart.
Okay. That’s it. I’m not opening your web address in my browser without a fresh box of Kleenex.
I’ve been saying it for over three years, now, but you are stronger than you realize.
I love you, you know.
Remember the song from the old “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” christma special? The one with the godawful animotion?
I don’t remember all of it, but part of one of the songs has the words “just put one foot in fron of the other”. Just make that your theme song
Easy-
It was “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” that featured the song “Put One Foot in Front of the Other.”
I know my Rankin/Bass-don’t mess with me.
;-)
“…and soon you’ll be walking out the door!”
I am glad that you are okay. Hope springs eternal, as they say, and I hope it for you with all my might.
just thinking about you guys
I am proud of you, Helen. Keep walking, with your head held high. You are strong, bold, beautiful, but most of all, resilient. You are an amazing woman…