It is snowing big fat lazy flakes, today, this last day of 2005. Watching the snow fall, I feel as though the entire world has been silenced – if I were to open the window, I’d feel a freezing cold draft blow through noiselessly. No traffic noises. No mourning doves cooing. The neighbour out shoveling his driveway would be doing so in silence. The muted world: it’s a little bit mesmerizing and, obviously, not really muted.
There’s a lot going through my mind lately – a lot of things I think I should/could write about it. Much of it involves back-story, though, and I’m strangely uninterested in the past lately. I feel like giving it a cursory glance, reminding myself that it existed, and moving on. Unfortunately, that makes it hard to tell a coherent story here – if you don’t know the players and the plot, how can you follow along? The past is a part of the present in many ways – I am who I am, but what came before me? And then I remind myself that explanations aren’t necessary. That a public blog is public, but the writing has to be for me. Then I choke and don’t write anything at all. Writing for myself means admissions. So, Steward, the answer is that the little short bits are a part of me – they’re my way of blocking the big fat entries that really want to be written but which I’m hesitant to indulge.
For a decade, it seems, I’ve been living under this strange curse. A black cloud that lifts for long periods of time to allow sunshine and fresh air in before it smushes back down to quickly smother that transient joy. It’s not so much that the decade has been doom and gloom, but that it has featured a high level of drama and when the lows came, they were really, really low. Death being the lowest, right? I’ve had this feeling through much of it – a feeling of disbelief. At times, I cannot believe that this is my life – this, all of this, has happened to me. Until the start of the decade, I had a very good life that was only filled with drama that I brought on myself. Controlled drama, if you will. Once the universe started dishing out drama of its own, I didn’t want any of it – but, of course, it kept coming anyway. And it was definitely not within my control. Do you see? I haven’t always been comfortable with death, or joking about my parents’ deaths, or known anything at all about lawyers and going to court and being sued and how to create new rituals or celebrate the holidays without immediate family.
When I meet someone, and they tell me a bit about themselves, it’s easy to think they’ve always been that way. Someone says “My mother is dead” and in some ways it’s easy to think it’s always been that way. Someone says “I can’t sleep at night” and I accept it as a piece of who they are. Someone admits they were abused as a child and I consider that to simply be a fact of their existence. It’s hard, sometimes, to grasp that this – this ‘defining piece’ is not really who they are. It’s not something that’s always been a part of them like the colour of their eyes or the freckle on their thumb. The things that are out of our control aren’t US, but it’s how we end up being defined – and after a while, it’s how we define ourselves, too. If those out-of-control events had never happened – if we weren’t all abused or deserted or adopted or hurt or addicted – what would we be? What would our lives resemble if they followed the plans we created, or if we chose the dramas that happened? Sometimes I forget that they, like me, have knowledge they never wanted, never asked for.
Coffee tells me that the curse has been lifted, and that 2006 will be curse-free. I can dodge the drama and I can evade the black cloud and I can live the life that’s within my realm of choice. (There’s a big story about “the curse” and its origins but I don’t feel the urge to indulge it right now.) In the past few weeks I have experienced a feeling of unlimited joy – good things happening all around, relationships on the road to repair, stronger friendships, new friendships, much laughter. A lot of hope. A lot of ignited passion. Some of it has been within my control – a concerted effort on my part to push things in the right direction. Some of it has been like a million pieces falling into place – I can almost hear the ‘snap’ of the edges popping in where they should, laying out a beautiful road map to more happiness. I expect there will be some struggle and some darkness in 2006 – that’s life, of course – but I suddenly feel as if I’m back in my own life again. My life. The one I get to choose.
Bring on 2006!
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