Hello, It's Been a While..

 

 

My daughter Amanda and I brought a picnic lunch out to Mill Bridge last Sunday.  I've posted a photo, as well as a drawing of this particular bridge in the past, but I have childhood (okay, 'teen'hood) connections with it and have no qualms about posting it again in a new season, for a new reason.  As you can see, the leaves have all but completed their life cycle year.  Oh, we still have a few colorful surprises around corners here and there, but for the most part ~ Fall has officially fallen.

While there's indeed a bit of a chill in the air, the sun shined bright most of the weekend, and the skies were a deep, inviting blue.  I'm afraid I've spent most of the last few days kept up inside, getting things done around the house and finishing up important tasks...  Like more papers that I have put aside and ignored for too long.

Reason being is, I've had a bit of a time lately, coming to terms myself with all that has transpired in the last nine months.  Which, if I look carefully enough, hasn't really been all that eventful with regards to the separation.  Other than the financial challenges, nothing really has changed for us.  That's how little time our family had together when he WAS here.  One day a month, if I'm not being clear enough..  It's been long enough now, that I honestly cannot picture in my mind what it would be like to have him here again.  When he does come, to pick up or drop off the kids, I am always ready for him to go.  Please do not think less of me...  I can't explain it.  I do not miss what we had, because there is nothing to miss, really.  And yet, the stresses of being a single parent, not loving my job as I once did (a whole new burden to carry), other family issues, bills piling up and still the guilt of letting go has had me more than a bit off balance emotionally.  I know, you thought I was sure.  I did, too...  A momentary lapse of reason, I'd like to call these last couple days.  I'm sure once again.  I was always sure, I just second guess myself more often than not.

I do not like or enjoy hurting people.  I do think of him, lying in his cot style bed separated only by a curtain in a tiny, shady apartment he shares with three other cooks from the restaurant where he works, tears in his eyes for the very first time (the man hates criers and always hated my tears ~ even yelled at me for them, but he now knows how it is to feel), missing his family and wondering why I changed the way I did...  And this thought keeps me awake some nights. 

I have weighed the options in my mind, searching the right's and the wrong's and the reasons.  I've thought about how easy it would be, to go back to just going through the motions each day.  Married yet alone, 'loved' but never feeling loved, wondering yet unable and unwilling to hope, losing myself again...  Wait, how and why would that be easy?  Because I did it for so long, and while I was never really happy, or truly in love with him, I was never UNhappy because I never allowed myself to be.  When those thoughts slipped into my mind, it swiftly pushed them away.  Now that I am allowing myself to feel again, and to open myself up to new hopes and dreams and possibilities, I am also opening myself up to more failure and loss and realities.  And that, my friends, can be frightening...

Those papers, the ones that needed adjustments and signatures...?  Well, they're finally done.  And my new life... Well, it's just beginning, and tonight I'm feeling good and right and sure about that once again.  And it feels good to know.

This life changing event has taken up more than enough of my journal space these last few months.  I feel it necessary, to record my thoughts and anxieties concerning this piece of my life's puzzle.  I do look forward to a time when I can focus on less strenuous things, like picnics under a scenic bridge and bright, sunny skies.  I know that now, I am able to find beauty and love and warmth in things that for far too long had been forgotten, and I love that I can live my life true to myself and to my heart again.  Wherever my heart takes me, I'm ready and willing to make the journey.  Crossing bridges and building new ones.  Because I can. 

How can I not?

Love to you all... and prayers for those who need them ~

Michelle