There are some things you just aren’t allowed to process out loud. Whether it’s the circle you are in or greater society, shame still has its hold over certain topics. And I am squirming, my kids see it, my lover sees it and I see it.
I remember after my mom died I had this acute awareness that there was very little time to mourn in the respect that life continues on. Kids have to be taken here, suppers need to be made, eaten and cleaned up after, and work needs to be attended to. Life doesn’t stop, even when you want to cry, scream and stomp your foot. Life is relentless, until it isn’t and we all know that side of things isn’t necessarily any better.
So here I am processing, wishing for time, wishing for space. It’s a cross between wanting to run away, wanting to hide and well… wanting to punch someone. You see, I will always be that person, that carries just that little bit, that edge of sadness in her soul. Someone who picks at her wounds, who ruminates, who stores pain in her soul. It’s not something I consciously choose, it’s not even something I enjoy, but it is who I am, and today even my 9 year old could see it. That hurt a bit too.
When we walked the West Highland Way it was hard. Like real hard. It didn’t matter how long we walked that day, whether 12 km or 27 km, with 2 km to our destination for the day to go I wanted to die…like every fucking time. You’d come around the bend of some winding path and hope that this would be it, here would lie the Mecca… the bathtub, bed and respite for the day. And the disappointment, when THAT bend, was not THE bend to signal the end of the journey for the day.
I don’t think I am 2 km’s from my journeys end, not by any means (I mean not that I know of!!!!). But I keep coming around the bend, hoping for respite, and feeling pain and disappointment, discomfort and sadness. Hope squelched… for now.
So I sit here, on the side of the road, aware that hope can look like it’s missing, aware that just like the bends that came and went that brought no end to that day, obviously eventually came. Otherwise how could I be here, literally.
I keep hoping that one of these lessons in hope will stick, one of these lessons in pain will stick. And that the other shoe, that it would stop dropping, or… maybe I just need to be a barefoot kinda girl, cause I’m running out of shoes.
©️Entirety 2018
Entirety in Bits and Pieces 