When I started this blog challenge, this was the blog day I was dreading.
Nobody wants to rehash difficult times…or dwell. We work hard to overcome them, move past them, and if possible- forget. I also knew that I needed to be able to share without sharing any of the gory details. I can write a mean scene in a book, but I have no desire to openly share the ugliest moments of my life.
I finally realized that every difficult time in my life involves loss….physical, figurative, perceived. But loss nonetheless. I lost two friends in car accidents in my 20s, my grandmother who I adored when she was in her 90s. I lost the parents who adopted me. The dad I knew as an adult was struck down with a debilitating stroke, and the mother I knew to encephalitis. Though they are still physically there, the people I knew are gone forever. I lost friendships. I lost relatives to death, and I lost my birth parents, or maybe they lost me. I almost lost my niece to cancer, but thank God she was spared. And I almost lost love, but love always seemed to come back for me.
I write a lot about Loss because I’m intimately in tune with it. And while I do as much as I can to move past it, it still haunts me. So I try to dwell on what I’ve found instead of what I’ve lost. If I only thought of what I had lost, I don’t think I could get up every day. I try to focus on my happiness and not my sadness. The difficult times are bound to find me, but I’ve been through them before. Loss will find me again, and I dread it, but I can’t hide from it or live in fear of it. So instead – I search for joy, laughter, and love, knowing that I can’t stop the rain.
All I Know So Far 