Well Well Well

Listening to Lennon…and I was never a Beatles fan.  But I was young and impressionable once, and now I’m under the spell.  Do I need time to heal the brokenness?  He didn’t beat me, yet the impression remains:  a heart with hole in it.  It started as a pin prick, then a biopsy, then a core sample, now a gaping hole.  Although time is short for us all, you can’t wallpaper over when drywall compound is required.  Why then do we try to take such short cuts with our emotions?  Is that where I am now?  I don’t think so, but I am afraid of how easy it is to become confused.  Where is my totem to discern the dream from the reality?  Am I running away or am I running towards myself?  I think finally towards, but I wonder how I could think soundly after the years of pain and abuse, after allowing myself to be controlled, after shaping my life around a dying limb from a tree growing out of a cesspool.  Everyone wonders that.  What happened?  Was I lusting after real tragedy in my life?  Was it too easy without?  Can I appreciate goodness better now?  Did I think I deserved it; a little girl sitting in a waiting room too tired to think about anyone but herself?  I wish I could tell that little girl that it is okay - that life will be filled with pain, with the unexpected, with the inconvenient, with joy, with moments of happiness, and that she never has to apologize if simply chooses to be herself.  She’s not a bad girl; she’s just complex.

There is real disappointment.  A little boy learning to speak says “Da Da Da Da Da,” eager to put his coat on, eager to go.  With the last minute phone call of cancellation, comes the let down.  He’s too young to understand now, but he will in time.  Will it make him stronger?  Will he realize we did nothing wrong, and that his mother finally did something right?  Will he know my love for him is bigger than our disappointment at not being the family I’d planned we’d be?  Will it give him character or will he blame me?  Will he be sober as the judge or could he become a drunk too?  If there is any justice on the Earth, he’ll turn out for the better.  I have to have faith that real love in whatever form it comes will be sufficient.  Some people never have any real love in their lives and they sometimes turn out okay.  My love for my son is the most real thing in my life.  It has to be enough.

Even our best laid plans fail.  I’m done with planning for awhile.  I’m walking down this path – we’ll see where it leads.