For everyone of those moments that I was sad there was a good moment attached to that feeling…
For what it is worth, I am happy. Stuff is not all I want it to be but I can make do. The world of opportunity that everyone talks about is out there, I guess I never really wanted to believe all that was possible. My mother passed up her change to get known and make money. I think most of the reason was fear, one that goes un-named for the most part. I see it as the fear of other people, I was brought up with the ‘do it yourself, no one else will help you’ philosophy of life. Parts of it hold great wisdom, the rest of it is buried in the fear of other people.
This sounds sadder then it may turn out to be, so sorry for the misleading title.
But I have come to realize that I have been holding myself to invisible standards. I have an old e-mail account that I just haven’t gotten around to clearing out. Well I had some time and felt like being nostalgic, so I read a few of my older e-mails. To my surprise they were well composed, had properly used grammar and they had concepts that I now claim to be new revelations.
I truly have been the one that has set me back, I could blame it on the training that no one is out there to help you and you have to struggle by yourself, that I received from my mother, but the truth of the matter is time after time I choose to allow my potentials to fade away. It felt like the only thing I could do at the time.
A lot of it was the subconscious continuation of my conscious decisions. I did not want to feel anymore, so I stopped doing the things that I loved. The pattern of shutting myself down and removing myself from the things that I enjoyed slowly took away my abilities because I lacked faith in myself to be able to live up to my potentials.
For the English Essay that I pulled parts from, I read two books. Dance of Anger by Harriet Learner, I recomend it to anyone struggling to feel any emotion (this recommendation includes you SG.) The other book was Life after Loss by Raymond Moody and Dianna Archangel. At the end of the book it says: the normal duration of grieving takes about six years (different for everyone) and at that point you are either where you started or you have transcended because of them. For the most part I see myself as transcended with the help of the struggle, but there are parts of me that are just returning to the point where I learned that I had lost my nephew.
The next chunk is me and my life, I will take it the way that it is dealt.
May Dana and Cathy know that I love them and miss them. May they know that I long to see them again. May they rest until that time comes and we can sit and talk about all that has happened since I last saw them.
-NK
