Showing posts with label Grieving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grieving. Show all posts

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Perspective

In addition to cruisingat60 I keep a journal, where the raw, bloody pain goes, the wounds that are so soul-scarring I can hardly stand it. Sometimes I write just a few lines if the day hasn't been bad but I once wrote two full pages when I had a day from the ninth circle of hell. Go look it up. Regardless of how much pain I'm in, though, to try to maintain some level of perspective, I make a point of also writing down five things I'm grateful for that day. On the day I wrote two pages I could come up with only three but thought later I could have at least listed each cat separately to get to five, although it's often stretching it to say I'm grateful for Hyacinth, the High-Strung Cat. Just one day out and she's already a trial. She dislikes change, very much like one of my sons who will remain unsingled-out, so I guess that's proof right there of genetic similarity or whatever it's called.

Yesterday was easier, though. As hard as it was to leave my old home for my new one, as surreal as it was to say goodbye-goodbye and not see-you-later-goodbye to the man I was married to and thought I knew for 34 years, as torturous as it was to realize yet again that my life as I've known it for more than half of it would never be the same, and that every expectation I've had for the rest of it is now like smoke in the wind, there were still gifts all day. These are the things I was grateful for last night:

~ A purple Karmann Ghia I saw on on 6th Street in Bremerton, with a red and yellow interior and wooden roof and trunk racks. Far out.
~ Trees in pink and white bloom everywhere or with that ephemeral green haze that I wasn't sure was spring growth or my imagination and for once I hoped my imagination was failing me.
~ 65! degrees! this afternoon. It didn't last long but I read the number with my own eyes.
~ $3.55 gas at Costco. I don't know about the rest of the country but this is a miraculous price risen from the dead.
~ And finally, Michael, my therapist and friend. He should be first on this list but everything else would have been disappointingly anticlimactic if they were listed after. It was my lucky day, when due to divine intervention or the roll of the dice, I was assigned to him. Thank you, Michael. You did good work. I will miss you.

It's all about perspective. I need to grieve. I have reason to grieve. To keep one foot in the world of the sane, though, I have to look for balance. The journal not only chronicles the grimmest parts of my life, it also prompts me to look for the joyful ones. They're there, no matter how hard I have to look or how far I have to stretch the definition of joyful.