Lightning Strikes

How can you defend against the unpredictable?  If fate decrees that your life be tossed before the path of an oncoming storm, a storm of such devastating power that it could tear the very foundation from beneath you, what can you do?

I feel very defenceless right now.  My mind is racing in so many directions that I find myself dumbfounded… unable to really focus or *do* anything.  Not that there IS anything I can do.

Except fear.

I’m doing that in spades right now.  I think it must be similar to how the people in the path of a tornado must feel.  You know that it’s coming – its presence has been confirmed, its path predicted.  There are things you can do, but storms are such erratic, unpredictable entities that you really have no way of knowing whether every step you take will prove to be futile or not.

A storm might deal one home a glancing blow while completely annihilating its neighbour – there’s no explanation for it, no divine reasoning behind… no sense to it all.

But people hope, right?  They batten down the hatches, take all the precautionary steps they know to try and minimize the impending damage – there’s hope even within the fear… to give that up is to admit defeat.

When it comes to life, or the lives of those we love, I don’t think the majority of humans are prepared to admit defeat easily… we’re pretty much hard-wired against it.

I wonder how much hope people would have in the face of an approaching storm though, if they were told that there was NO hope of coming through unscathed.  If destruction was not just a possibility, but a certainty?

I think it would not be fear consuming them, but despair.  Or perhaps anger?  Anger is a powerful emotion… one from which to draw strength.  Although likely just as futile as despair when one is standing in the path of something destructive you can’t control.

I’m feeling all of these emotions right now… fear, despair, anger… and helplessness.  I’m vacillating between those.  Futility can’t come in the door yet because I’m too stubborn to give up hope… no matter what they say a storm will do.

Lightning struck in my world yesterday… a direct hit on the one who’s the foundation in my world.  Its label is Adenocarcinoma, and they say it’s not curable.  “They” use ambiguous words like “manageable” to describe it…

I’m clinging to the vague hope to be found in that… choosing to look away from devastation of the first part.  I can’t NOT hope…

I just can’t…

A Word On Love….

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s not a lot of original thought going on out there… it seems so much easier in this day and age to just come across the thoughts of another and choose to “like” them - identify and claim affiliation with said thoughts; repost them for the masses.

I don’t claim to be different.  I like reading the little things people choose to post… the favourite sayings, quotes, or deep thoughts (whether they belong to the person posting them or not)… and every once in a while there is a nugget of wisdom to be found in the ramblings of those we have connections to.  Something that speaks to us and makes us think.

My cousin posted one such not too long ago… I have no idea where she found it, but I really liked it and absolutely agreed:

On the “Hallmark Holiday” that proposes to make us think about who we love and who loves us, I can’t help but think about all the unhappy people out there… the ones who value themselves so little that they stay, long past the expiry dates, in relationships that should long have had the doors closed on them.

We all deserve to be happy in this life… we all deserve to be valued, treated with dignity and respect, and above all, loved.  If you don’t have what you want in your life, the impetus will always be on you to make a change.  If you continue doing what’s obviously not working, how can you ever expect things to improve?  It’s no one’s job to make you happy but yours… no one is going to step up and demand that you be treated better if you’re not willing to do so yourself.

We set the “price” on ourselves.  We decide our worth… and those around us adhere to it.  If you don’t deserve the treatment you’re getting, then don’t accept it… all you have to do is walk away.

This was an understanding that I was a little later in life accepting as fact than I wish I’d been.  Change can be scary – and while living in a rut is a cop-out, it’s such an easy one that too many people just give in and stay there.  So much easier that, then to make a break and start climbing out… not knowing what you might find once you reached the high ground above.

But you know what you need to know about the high ground?  The sun shines there.  It’s brilliant and warm and you can see clearly – no walls of the rut casting shadows… no more self-imposed “blinders” keeping you mindless of the good to be found outside of the interminable path in front of you.

There’s good people up there too… others who have climbed up out of their own ruts, or those who’ve always had the integrity of self to not allow themselves down there in the first place.

Over the past couple of years I’ve undergone a revolution in my own life.  I went further down a hopeless path than I ever should have allowed myself to go, came to some startling revelations, and made a decision to climb.  I’m standing with my face in the sun now… and that warmth is spilling over into all areas of my life.  I feel stronger and better than I ever have before and want to give voice to that.  I want to write again – I did once, years ago… I had a blog that I loved and shared – I never should have let it slide.  I felt like I had nothing positive to share for so long though, that I did… this blog would be the reincarnation of that one.

Kinda fitting, given the reincarnation of me ;)