So, I'm done with work at 10:30 today. I'll wipe my desk with an alcohol wipe, shuffle my papers into neat piles. I'll backup my files and shutdown the computer before pushing in my chair. I'll look around to see that there's nothing I've left undone, and I'll walk out of the door, one of the final chapters to life as I know it right this very minute. I am sad to leave a job that became such a family to me during one of the roughest times of my life. I am a bit apprehensive to leave a job that showcased my proficiency with little to no effort. But, I know we were given life not to merely survive, but to thrive. I must move forward.
I convinced myself after my second interview that I wouldn't get the job. I knew I was among the last they interviewed, and I was certain that my interviewers' minds had been made up before they even met me. As I prepared to go to work afterwards, I sent messages to my loved ones, telling them so. Imagine my surprise when, just hours later, I would be invited to join the company.
So this week has been a mess. The last six months have been a mess. Hell...the last year. Two years. Damn, how far need I go back to righten that skewed root? When's the last time I felt perfectly healthy? When's the last time I felt like I was kicking-butt at life? It's been a while. I've seen so clearly where I want to be, but it's been a lesson in patience waiting for my idiot-ducks to line up and stay put.
Tonight is Relay for Life. I'm really not wild about going. I don't know if I'll stay for the Luminaria Ceremony, as that pretty much just seems like a torture that I don't need to withstand. It's not that my mother doesn't deserve the tribute, for few had her strength of character, but I pay tribute to my mother in my heart and in my memories...countless times a day. A manifestation might be my undoing.
Nick asked several weeks ago how I was doing with everything. I was able to tell him, "I miss her constantly...but I've decided that that's ok. I probably always will. She was my best friend." I've found that trying to do away with the heartache has been my downfall, coping with the pain has helped me to live again.
I received a bit of unsolicited advice a long time ago—and since I've already gone
there:
unsolicited advice!=welcome...ever
The individual questioned whether or not I was spending enough time alone. I think I can safely say that until you've watched your loved one suffer and fade away, come home from the hospital to find your husband has jumped ship, and miscarried more times than you care to think of, you really have no idea how to define the term "alone". You can be in a crowd and be alone. I don't know how many times I'm sitting at a traffic light and it hits me..."I'm so alone". In three months' time I lost the two people who ever truly knew me, don't talk to me about being alone. Just don't go there. Again, ever.
But my heart has begun to open anew. I am building stronger relationships with my dear aunts, who have always been back-up mommies, even if Brenda says she doesn't remember giving birth. I am in better contact with
dear friends from days past, I feel myself exposing more of my delicacy, trusting those in my life to protect me as I do them. It has been an exercise in vulnerability.
I have been swallowing against the tears for the better part of a week now...endings and beginnings on collision courses. As I told Brenda, I'll start Tuesday with a new life...which is more than a little daunting. Fresh from divorce court and ready to put it behind me, I will start job training. I told her she should have a cold
Woodchuck waiting for me Tuesday evening, as she has off from work next week and can't, as she mourned, hold my hand and walk me to the door on my first day. She replied in warning that while she could spend a good part of the day catching a woodchuck for me, it
is her spa day, and she wasn't sure how cold he'd be.
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