Let me...

today, I am ill.  Tummy troubles.  It makes me remember in yet another way how blessed I was to have John. I keep thinking of things in terms of MOMENTS today.  If I interact with an old flame, and in a single moment, he makes me feel alive and lovely and full of hope, even if it is only a moment, then those things are still within my reach.  Each little annoyance from my days with John, each of them gave me insight into how to love someone in a real true way- a way where frustration and annoyance did nothing to change the love that surrounded everything.  I'd do internal checks now and then...the love never faltered.

A friend of his sent a message to me today, saying that I seem to have some ups and downs, but mostly ups.  He said that he believes John would like that. 

And I keep reading and seeing these things that encourage you to CHOOSE to be happy...what if I could do that?  What if I could find a way to embrace the fact that John is gone, but to cover it all in a cloth of gratitude that I had him at all?  What if I could find a way to feel the emptiness of grief and loss, but simultaneously revel in the openness that these things create in my heart and soul?  At times, I feel like being strong, looking for love, feeling joy...at times I feel like these things are an affront to the love I had for John, to the loss the world should feel, that I feel, now that he is gone.  But really, finding a way to believe in moving forward, to finding someone who could help me feel loved and not so alone...that is completely what John would want.  He hated the idea.  But he accepted it.

I don't think this means I won't cry.  You can't fully embrace the joy and reject the pain...laughter and tears are cousins, the curve and the stick on the candy cane...without the one, the other is only half...incomplete...pretend.  I don't like pretend.  I like real.  And messy.  And overwhelming and strong and crazy and loud...

You absorb the strength of the things you over come...not just the things that happen to you...because things can happen and you can pretend to skate past them like they never were...you can suck in the pain and ignore the happiness and both lose their power.  I believe that is what happened to my mother and grandmother, to some degree.  And their perceptions of love and family and life became destructive and broken, muddied.

So...bring me tears.  Bring me hope, and let it crumble in my hands.  Let me laugh loudly and scream like a maniac.  Let me try and be rejected.  Let me be afraid, because I am trying and will never stop.