It's all about thoughts. And memories. Getting stuck on them. Not able to escape them. I love embracing my thoughts after not being able to spend enough time with them. I hate them sometimes...angry because they overanalzye or because some of them are useless and waste my time or lessen my character. Today I'd like to celebrate beautiful memories and thoughts. The sad ones too.
I'm living with college freshmen girls this year. Everyone knows that in the first semester of school, most anyone who was in a relationship before school, breaks up with their he or she...or they get broken up with. I've been preparing myself mentally (as well as stocking up on some sturdy tissues) for the day one of my girls comes to me in tears because it happened. So I dwelled for just a little while on that particular letdown in my own life and though it was sad, I found a few things worth celebrating along the way...
I had fallen for a boy who hadn't fallen for me. I had been told he wanted to dive in and call me his, yet after a long while he bowed out. I had foolishly kept my hopes high. I had invested too much emotion in something that was not going to happen. I had wrongfully idealized him. I selfishly wanted him.
He told me over the phone it wasn't going to happen. We hung up on a note that sounded pretty, yet on the inside, in that place where your dreams, and reality meet, I was being taunted by heartbreak. My heart felt hunched like Rick's withered shoulders in Casablanca as Elsa walked away from him for the last time.
I hung up the phone and walked into the kitchen to find my mom because I didn't want to be alone. Quiet tears were sliding down my face. They felt like weights, pulling on my face, my heart, my thoughts. My mom turned around and because she is wonderful she simply knew. And without a word I cried and she wrapped her arms around me and for the first time in my adult life I sobbed into someone else. I can't imagine what it was like for my deeply empathetic mother. To hold a precious, shaking and sniffling part of her world. To watch me hurt so deeply. In that moment I have never been more grateful for my mom and i have never been in so much anguish. Simultaneously. Beautiful. Broken.
I think it's possible to celebrate sadness...or maybe I'm celebrating the fact that it's ok to be sad. For a time at least. And I think it's always ok to celebrate the role of a mother. And here's to embracing heartache for a time then slowly letting go of it. Ready to embrace new things.
