Freeeeeee

As of 6:19pm last night, I am officially FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! for a whole month. Quite liberating, in fact.

Saturday we're heading out on our trip. I've been thinking a lot about how I've gotten to where I am today, and how things often fall into my lap in a way. Not that I've never attempted to work towards obtaining the good things in my life, but I just never really feel like I'm working all that hard to get anywhere. Yeah, there are some work struggles, and inner struggles, but it's like the past was so much harder that struggles these days are scarcely that.

Stepping stones, I guess, stepping stones. I started out a scared, shy little person, left to her own devices after just a few years of life, and now here I am out in the workforce, married, on vacation, pursuing the rest of the country for a time. Friend of mine last night asked me why I occasionally feel sad, and I said I did not know. It's become an acceptable part of my life, one that I allow to pervade my being now and again; otherwise, it digs itself into a small place within me and festers until it is unbearable. Acknowledging it as a part of who I am and taking the time to nurture it seems the quickest way to feel the sunshine so warmly yet again. I will not deny, either, that the sadness is comfortable in its familiarity.

My friend made a fairly casual remark which I found greatly insightful. She said something about how childhood can stay with you. While I'm aware that one's earlier years can shape a person, I hadn't really thought of the healing that must go on forever from a traumatic childhood. It hit me that perhaps my sad moments truly are about nothing current. I remember reading once that people often remember trauma or start recovering from it once they feel happy and safe. It's a conundrum of sorts: "Wow, I'm so happy! Why am I so sad?" Perhaps, then, the sadness that lingers within me from time to time is the little creature I hold so dear to my heart, the one that remembers the loneliness, desolation, emptiness, pain. I liken this little person to Samantha, the little girl I saw in a haze several years ago. I did not know then who she was and an inner voice told me I'd be her mother one day. Thinking of it literally, I wondered over it, having already determined that I did not want children; yet each time I dated someone I inwardly wondered if perhaps she would in fact one day exist somehow. Then, too, I've occasionally wondered if she was a manifestation of an inner desire to have a child, despite all my outward protests to the contrary. Knowing that Dale does not want kids, either, however, I'm all too content with my decision and feel rather secure in our agreement.

So on occasion, I've gone back to the possible future ahead of us. Accidents can happen, so I've been told. And I do not know what the future truly holds. Yet in the past few months I've wondered more and more if perhaps the inner voice had nothing to do with the concept of a nuclear family; perhaps she is not meant to be a physical part of our lives at all. There have been times in my life where I have seen things that later happened, but this has always felt different. For so long I thought it was because it concerned me personally, and until then I could not remember anything that would eventually happen to me personally. My own life was a mystery, revealed only in time.

Who is this child I foresaw, then? Why was she so real, so tangible? If I'm honest with myself and look upon my memory of her face, I can only think that she is me. She is the sad child I once was, and with my adult knowledge and reasoning powers, I am in fact my own mother, nurturing myself and comforting those times of sadness when she comes out with tears in her eyes, afraid and unstable and full of wonder about the world around her despite the desperate uncertainty. I have become the person I always needed to teach me things that my faith could not show me directly.

Samantha, then, is that sadness which I hold dear, for without her, I would not exist. And rather than hold her in a prison for eternity, I've chosen to allow her the sense of freedom to be herself; I hold her upon my lap when she cries out, and hold her in my arms when she's most vulnerable. Is that not what an adult mother does for her child?

Today I'm not sad, though. Reflective, yes, but not sad. Another friend of mine - I believe I can call her more than an acquaintance now - seems to have been placed in my path almost as if by planned chance. We had a most interesting conversation recently, concerning faith and science and a number of other intellectual subjects. During our discourse, it struck me several times how much I enjoyed talking to this person, and how like-minded we are in quite a number of areas, yet still different. Being at a point of near-stagnation due to such levity being present in my life, I found it comforting to know that my brain is still so capable of learning and philosophizing with another human being.

True to form, that side of me which seizes hold of such encounters began a journey into the maze of twinkling lights and dizziness. I saw this person fade in and out of existence before me as I pulled back into the familiar realm of theory, discernment, and spirituality. This does not happen often and I revel in the abstractness of it, for my life now is so steadily based in what people consider reality.

Methinks I'll go for a walk and seek out some heavy cream, if it can be had in the town's store. Just baked some blueberry muffins and brewed a pot of tea, and the thought of a small side of cream is so luxuriously appealing that I have yet to touch my breakfast without it. Besides, this is the first day of my vacation, and the sun has decided to come out for the first time in days.

~nv