I'm sitting in the living room of one of my sister's homes. It's quiet, my daughter is sleeping and I'm alone with my thoughts. It's no secret that my sister isn't fond of this state so she is happy celebrating her birthday today at her other home in her favorite state! Bare with me as I digress a moment in order to move forward, for this is not about my sister or even my cousin but about life and death.
My sister has this wall of windows that over look a pond and it's a very rainy morning here. I woke up to a flash flood warning alarm on my phone but right now it's almost as if the rain is so transparent, so cleansing, almost majestic. The fall colors a beautiful display of death. Everything I see is void of life. The browns and oranges of nature while they are my favorite colors, also represent that the grass and tree leaves had to die to survive the elements that are too come. Sadly I'm sitting here this morning because one of my favorite people, one of my greatest motivators and supporters lost her oldest son to a coward over his cell phone and his wallet. His Mom is my first cousin and her baby was only two and half hours into his 21st birthday when he was robbed of his life.
There was a vigil last night and services yet to come. More family will travel in as the week goes by and the holiday passes so that we can say a final goodbye but in death there is always life and this is the purpose of this blog.
I started this blog Jan 4th 2012 on my birthday and I wrote for a year never missing a day more as therapy for myself that I just happened to share with the world. Since that year ended I've only stop by my blog for brief visits and I've realized areas that I stopped growing, places that I died in long ago but never said a final goodbye so those parts of my life have become toxic waste on my inside. I've spoken candidly about the dysfunction that was my marriage, the abuse in my life, the rape. There is more than enough to fill my book and yes it's still a work in progress but coming very soon. Still I digress which is what this is about. If you don't continue to find a way forward you end up stuck in what has died. I use to believe that if I didn't try harder, fight longer and love more that someone else would get a better version of my husband. That I had invested ten years of my life for someone else to come live in the house I built. Wow, was I ever wrong. I wasn't moving on from something great and solid but broken and continuously self destructing so it didn't matter how fast I tried to put him back together he would always find a way to tear it down with his wreckless lifestyle catfishing to feed his greed. You can't receive love from someone that doesn't love themselves. The person I met outside my home 10 years ago never existed, anymore than who he pretends to be. I don't say this with anger or regret just awareness that I spent so many years trying to remove his mask. See I didn't want to face what was wrong about me so I pretended that this couldn't be who he really is because I wouldn't pick a man like that to love. I use the word is instead of was because he didn't stop being who he is. I was the one to change.
It wasn't about him. It was about the lack of self love or lack of understanding what love is. When all you've ever experienced was loud and chaotic; it is hard to adjust to silence. My cousin said yesterday at her son's vigil. "I hugged my son this morning and by night God was hugging him." Life is just that fragile so like many it takes a tragic life altering event to wake us up. To force us to live again. For me I choose to die in a marriage, Jesus choose to die for us, for others its a job, your children, your parents, the loss of a loved one, your addictions or the opinions of others that's holding you back from living. I charge you with the task of going to look yourself in the mirror and identifying where you digress within.
While my cousin shouldn't have had to die so senselessly, the reality is we all must die. His Mom said "God only wanted him here for exactly 21 years" and those almost 200 people that gathered last night in a bitter cold rain, showed what a great impact he made during his time on earth. I'm sitting in the same spot as I finish this entry and the sun has come out and the ducks that live in this pond have started to move around; they are making noise, talking to each other. This represent that even when everything around you has passed on that you must keep living. So today I open my blog back up so that we can talk about forgiving our past in order to live in the present and participate in the rest of our life. Today I digress no more.
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