Long Ride Home (Part 2)

I've had some time to think about you

And watch the sun sink like a stone

I've had some time to think about you

On the long ride home

~Patty Griffin

I've found that time alone can be be both haunting and healing, sometimes it helps and sometimes it hinders. Often it seems that most people are too afraid of what alone time can do, I know I was and still am at moments. I found one of the hardest problems I have had throughout these past couple of months is dealing with and distinguishing past memories. What I mean is this; Memories are a blessing, a gift from God, something that should be cherished BUT the questions, the constant staring in the rear-view mirror, the ability the past has to disable present and distort the future, the what-ifs and whys can drive even the most devoted lives to a halt.

(It truly saddens me to say this...) There are nights like tonight when I'll stay up hours blogging and looking through the highlighted portions of books I have read, hours spent flipping through baby pictures, time spent thinking about 'you really never know how much you'll miss them until they're gone', hours spent saying if I could do it over "I would..." reliving the good times and recalling the bad. Sometimes these moments have just been too much for me to handle, days when I literally couldn't function, for awhile if you did see me out of bed I really wasn't there, and then there were the days I just didn't get out bed at all. So what do I do when life is too much? I try to push the memories to the side (and I am so ashamed for it). Its like I'm not sure what else to do with them, and then the guilt sets in. I feel horrible for it, so I open the flood gates and let everything back in. Its seems to be a reoccurring theme. I can't function, so I pretend like nothing ever happened, I begin to feel bad for living again, the memories overtake me, and once again I can't function.

So I guess 'where I'm at' right now in this stage of my life is I'm still not ready to handle it, life is too much for me sometimes... The view in the mirror keeps me from going anywhere and the road over the horizon is always just out reach (kind of like that picture above). There is the bar in Memphis that promises "Free Burgers Tomorrow." That's how I feel. Everyday I wake up and I tell myself "just get through today tomorrow will be better". But tomorrow never comes. I'm coming to understand more and more just how different life will be but I not sure I'll truly ever grasp that this might be as good as life gets?

"Still, there's no denying that in some sense I 'feel better,' and with comes at once a sort of shame, and a feeling that one is under a sort of obligation to cherish and foment and prolong one's unhappiness." ~ C. S. Lewis

"I may try to protect myself from my sadness by not talking about my loss. I may even secretly hope that the person who died will come back if I don't talk about it. Yet, as difficult as it is, I must feel it to heal it." ~ Alan Wolfelt