I’ve had so many things swimming around in my head the last month or so that it became impossible to try and write them. So many thoughts, so many things I felt like I could have easily written about:

-Whether passion and security/stability are mutually exclusive, and if so, how can you possibly choose between them?-The death of my beloved Gilmore a little over a year ago.
-Love. What it means. How it feels. The different kinds of love, in my eyes anyway 😉
-More on love-what not being loved feels like, or not feeling loved anyway.
-Survival, and how I lived to tell about two abusive relationships

And numerous other things that I can’t think of right now.

What brings me to the keyboard today was the apparent seamless transition of fantasy into reality, and then back again, and how the spell of the fantasy wasn’t broken. At least to me. I’d never experienced anything like it before. I wonder if it will happen again.

I admit to living in my head; probably more often than I should. So then it’s no surprise that, I guess, I have a “rich fantasy life.” And that fantasy life includes thoughts of the life I might have led had I made different choices. I was lucky enough to get a tiny glimpse into that fantasy life, and the way it seamlessly meshed with everything at that moment literally took my breath away.

I wish I could speak in detail about the incident; but to do so would violate all sorts of tacit private agreements. I can only hold the memory close in my heart and reflect on it from time to time. I can smile to myself with the knowledge that the reality would be every bit as fulfilling as the fantasy, and wish and wait for another opportunity for the worlds to collide again.

An excerpt from ‘The Secret to Letting Go of the Past’ by Kimby Maxson via Elephant Journal, 5/11/16:
“So how do we do it? How do we let go (of the past)?
The secret is, we don’t. We don’t let go. We loosen our grip. That is all.
We accept that every experience that we have ever had and everything that we have ever done or that has been done to us and every person we have ever known, every place we have ever been, every decision we’ve ever made and every thought we have ever had is part of who we are, and whether we understand it or not they all serve a purpose.
So we don’t force it. We don’t insist on letting go. We don’t forget the past. We don’t silence the ghosts.
We acknowledge and honor everything that is our past, we forgive ourselves and others, we take a deep breath and we slowly, simply, loosen our grip, finger by finger, thought by thought and what’s meant to slip away will, the rest we embrace.”

Sayeth LJG~This begs the question of how to let go, or to even loosen the grip just a little.  Or what about when you think you’ve let go…and then the person or the feeling comes back. And you’re helpless.

So are these the things to embrace? What if the things that keep coming back also hurt? Are we meant then to embrace the things that hurt??

Seems counterintuitive.  But it happens.

I sit at work wondering what, exactly, I’m doing here. Not here at work; just HERE in general. Existing. Living.

I love my job; I truly do. I have a passion for the work I do, and I want to be successful. But in the face of what seem to be insurmountable odds, it dawns on me: I am tired. Actually, I’m exhausted.

Not from the job, but from the fight. Or all the fights. My entire life has been a fight, a swim upstream, against the flow and the established “status quo.” And I am so tired of fighting for everything. My heart is heavy on a daily basis; not just for the community I serve, but for myself. Because I know I no longer have the fight in me. I simply do not have the energy.

I am tired of being told I am strong and I will somehow muddle through this. I have been strong my entire life. I’ve had to be, because the only person I’ve been able to rely on is ME.  I am tired of friends who say they’ll be there for me…and then they aren’t. Especially those I have humbled myself before, and made myself vulnerable by asking for their ear, their time, companionship-anything, really-and been ignored. This only reinforces the knowledge that I have made no difference or impact in anyone’s life, and I will not be missed when I gracefully exit. This strangely is a comfort to me-because no one will hurt or even miss me.

I suppose this would be the part where I list all the things I’ve had to fight for, the struggles I’ve endured alone. But I’m even too fucking tired for that. And to what end? What good would it do?

My only regret is that I have never known love. I have given love, generously. But I have never received it in return-or received it in a way that I felt it. Anyone who has claimed to love me has not really loved ME. It’s what I represent, or what I can do, or something. It’s never me and who I am. Finally, finally….my heart is broken beyond repair.

The thing is, I don’t want to go on another 30 or 40 years-being this tired and being alone.