How to put into words what I feel.  How do you explain when sometimes it’s hard to even see them yourself, let alone to describe it.  It’s been an awesome weekend.  A little stressful here and there, but overall, an awesome weekend.  The bro and I were listening to music this morning and singing our hearts out to songs on random when a song came up.  One I hadn’t heard in a very long time.  And it hit me in a different way than it ever had before.  There I was, singing away and suddenly I choked up and my voice cracked and I had to run off to the bathroom to cry my eyes out in private and quickly wash away any evidence. 🙂

It was a song I’d listen to as a teenager, it was how I would define love.  It was a song that for a very long time, meant a lot to me.  Not for the music, but the lyrics.  But then life happened.  Divorce, heart break, betrayal, depression, pain, grief … these things change a person.  Whether you mean them to or not.  Hearing this song this morning made me mourn a little for the girl I was.  The one who was so naive in thinking that love was a fairy tale with a happy ending.  I love who I am today, please do not misunderstand.  I wouldn’t change it, me, or the direction I am heading, for anything.  And in some ways, I do believe I’m still that little girl who believes in magic and dreams, but now that little girl has grown up and has a foot firmly planted in the real world.   What struck me this morning though, was the change in how I took the lyrics of that song.  It used to be that those lyrics stood for how I felt about someone else.  How I’d want to treat someone else.  How they were to be treated as the most amazingly special person because they had my love.  But this time, I took the lyrics to represent me as well.  That maybe I too am the special one.  That maybe I’m worthy of love, not just giving it, but receiving it too.  That maybe love has to be nurtured and earned and tended to over the course of time by both parties, not just myself.

It’s funny how sometimes, life will come and smack you over the head when you least expect it.  It has been a day of introspection.  I’ve had this post saved as a draft and have been adding to it throughout the day.

After talking with a friend, I’ve been left thinking about the course life so often takes.  I have seen some of the greatest and deepest depths of depression.  I have ridden on the wings of the greatest joy and some of the most exhilarating inspiration.  Have journeyed across both rough waters and serenely calm ones. Over the course of time, there has been a balance … of both the high’s and lows of life.  Of pain and joy.  When you’re in it, it’s hard to see the bigger picture.  But when you can take a moment and center yourself, find a bit of clarity to see beyond the storm that rages around you for the moment, you see that it can’t storm forever.  And sunlight will break through eventually.  I’m enjoying the calm waters right now.  The clouds are starting to clear a bit, and beautiful rays of sunshine burst through the clouds.

And suddenly I know what it is.  It is hope.  Actually, it is stronger than hope.  It is the knowledge that there will be more.  Happiness and calm waters and joy are just around the bend.  I may get bogged down, or tossed about a bit by a passing storm or two, but I know I’ll get there.  I know I’ll see it, because I can.  Hope.

Of course, one can also hope that when I do find that bit of calm beach – there will be some umbrella laden drinks 😛