I feel like everywhere I go there is a kind of sadness hanging over us all.... just living in shock over the events of the past week and I think we're all starting to worry a little about what the hell is coming next......?
More shootings?
More unexplained mayhem?
For me, personally, it's just an added layer of sorrow on a holiday season that was already shaping up to suck. Just flat out: suck.
But seriously... *why*? Because my husband left me?
What a first world problem that is - right? No one died. By comparison, my problems are minute, insignificant and totally superficial when you take into account the holiday season for some.
My Grandma say's that "life is for the living". Centuries of Jews have faced persecution and genocide... and yet: they sac up, buck up and move on. My Grandmother and her friends are a joyful people. They are kind and generous and they learned to love and *live* in spite of the atrocities they have seen in their lifetimes.
They learned to thrive in spite of the bad. They learned to live in the good. They learned to be grateful and make the most of things.... now, unlike my Grandmother I'm not going to start hand washing and re-using tinfoil, nor will you open my dish towel drawer to find a pair of my over-sized, beige 'silk' underpants with the crotch cut out for polishing the silver.... for a start I have neither silver to polish nor the beige panties... but you get the point.
All this horrific sh*t on the news and scrolling my facebook feed all. day. long. I'm like a sponge: just soaking in the sorrow and the misery and the death. Frankly.... I felt bloated by my own emotional turmoil, I wasn't aware I could even take more on. But the truth is... I can't. This b*tch is capsizing under the weight of all of this and starting to lie face down, ass up and I'm struggling for air.
So ENOUGH. I will pray for the families. I will pray for those beautiful children and the teachers who shielded them. I will donate whatever monies I can. I will think of them, pray for them, cry for them.... and then I need to *live* for them.
I can't change what happened... none of us can, though I'm sure all of us would if we could. What I *can* do is not waste this holiday season crying in my own f*cking soup over Yoga Girl and the half-a-man El Capitan turned out to be. I can't put those children back in their parents arms... though I long to. I can't help that mother get one more hug or one more kiss from her child...... though I would trade everything I own to make it happen if it were possible.
What I *CAN* do: is live.
I can not waste this time by harvesting my broken heart and dwelling in the fields of pain which grow from it.
I can not waste the hugs and kisses and smiles of my beautiful children by thinking about how it should be different - that we should be in our home home, in our beds.... in our life, changed forever by betrayal.
I can not waste the precious minutes of this life by wishing they were different.
Instead, I can thrive where I stand. Grateful for what I have.
I can accept what I have lost and realize that I have *not*, indeed lost everything.
I can spend more time on hugs and kisses and giggles and love.
I can live.
and I should... because there are 18 sets of parents who cannot do that. Right now. Today. Tonight.
It can be easy to lose yourself in your pain... I've been doing that for a few weeks... thousands of you have ridden that wave with me and for that... I am incredibly grateful. Really.
It feels like a betrayal to the human spirit to be joyful at this time in our country. As though, if we all lay down in misery, joining hands with the families of these tragedies, that we will be helping them somehow. But, the truth is: we will not. We should pray and donate and continue to act in kindness and compassion.... but we should also be living in joy in our lives grateful and not wasting precious time that could be taken away.
I cancelled several TV interviews and the book signing that I was supposed to have next week... it seemed wrong to me to carry on with them. Our own town was grieving, as I said, I have friends who knew one of the Oregon victims. That weighed on me. Going ahead with things didn't seem "right" for me... and the second shooting happened and I was very glad I had made the choice I made.
There will be a time for a book signing - it's already on the calendar for January... and I'm thrilled and excited and proud of myself... but I feel like that will be the time for that event... not now.
NOW is a time to re-think the future, make plans and act on them. I still need to find a job - one that pays with benefits... any of your hiring? lololol
I need to find a way to co-parent in a situation that looks more like me parenting and him babysitting. I'm not sure how to make that work... but I will. I will because it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing for the children. I will try and try until I have to quit and try something else.
I have started to think about my "future home". I'm planning out what colors I would paint the rooms... I want a purple bedroom. A purple bedroom with a wrought iron bed from Ikea - curvy and curly and girlie. I want a dresser - a dark color. I want my own bathroom. lol
I want the children to have their own rooms.... The Girl could have her kitchen back and a pink room with butterfly and fairy accents.
The Boy could have a whole new room - perhaps a Halloween themed room? May be a Jake Skellington theme? But... a "big boy" room.
A smallish house with a small kitchen with a pantry with a door that I can paint with chalk-board chalk like they do on Good Luck Charlie because The Boy noticed that the Mom on that show is always writing funny notes and love notes to the kids.
I want my own chalk board door to write love notes to my kids on.
I'm not going to get that living at the bottom of this well of emotional pain and anger ... drowning in self-pity. It's wrong and it's selfish and if anything happens to us down the road I'm going to hate myself for wasting this time.... and truly. the only way to honor those who have died is to *live*.
Is to truly live.
So... my posts are going to change because I can feel the rock of anger and hurt breaking inside me and I can either let it float around like shrapnel- killing me slowly.... or I can break it up and force it out.
The truth has never changed... I still have so much to be grateful for. So much to be thankful for.
Life is for the living....I can either choose to live in bitterness and anger, or love and joy.... I prefer the later