Rough Night

It's a rough night for me tonight. My husband and daughter are downstairs watching a movie which is a good thing, I very much need alone time. I am on my couch with a blanket over me, sitting in front of the Christmas tree crying. While these tears aren't happy ones, they ARE good.  Tears free up your soul a bit for whatever else is to come. I tell my daughter its like a cup sitting under a constantly leaky faucet, eventually you have to get rid of some of the water in the cup or its going to overflow. The heart and spirit are like that as well, you have to relieve some of the pressure or it will relieve itself and probably at a time and place and in a way that you don't want them to. May come out as anger, or regular crying just not when you want, you may shut down emotionally and mentally, or you may get sick either acutely or chronically. One way or another, the pain will find a way out so better to have the control over it. So many of us try to repress pain, seriously, who wants to feel badly? No one, but thats how many people end up addicts, thats how my husband relapsed. That is how people have nervous break downs. You can't push it back , you just can't. The only way out of the pain is through the pain and it takes as long as it takes. You can't see the rainbow until you've gotten through the rain.

My motto lately has been "the only way out is through" and I have to hang on to that. I don't know HOW I will be okay, I have no freaking idea in the world how I will be okay. But I KNOW that I will and right now that's all that I need to know, I don't need to know how, I just have to know that I will. I look at my dad and my step mom, both have lost both parents, in fact my step mom lost both of her parents within weeks of each other.....and it devastated them BUT, they smiled again, they laughed again, their life went on and they found a new normal. I will too. I will never ever be the same for what I have gone through this year and what next year will bring but that's okay, I don't want to go back to being who I was before this because after going through this I will have more strength and more compassion and more appreciation for life. I wish I never had to go through this but if I have to then I'm taking some lessons with me to help some other people.

Today I was down with my mom, once I had her settled, I went into her room and started wrapping the last Christmas presents that she will ever buy, and as I curled the ribbons I cried because I was missing my Gram, she was the one that taught me how to curl the ribbons, and I thought about Uncle Joe and his upcoming memorial and my cousins and how hard things must be for them right now..

So yeah, it was a really hard day and I am letting the memories slide down my cheeks tonight without bothering to wipe them away. When I'm done,I will feel better and I will have the strength to keep going....