That Time

I was walking to the train this morning thinking about how I hadn't really written here recently. (I've been keeping up pretty well with my other blogs) I was thinking how I wanted to write a cheesy post about how happy I am. Blissfully so I've been saying.

I was thinking how, I don’t often want to write posts describing my luck in finding a partner who so perfectly complements me, and who so often compliments. But I should write them I convinced myself. And maybe it will help others be inspired to find that in their lives, although I will say it doesn’t always happen and I don’t think it happens often and I consider myself truly among the luckiest who get to find that. Sorry, that's probably uninspiring.

So, obviously I hadn’t written that post yet, I would probably have tonight.

I sat down and looked at this picture. Immediately my mind jumped to a longing, a deep missing of my Dad. We’re so carefree and happy in the picture, despite the crushing loss to the Angels we witnessed that day. I just wanted to sit down and be sad, and of course I wanted to write it out. So there goes the I’m so happy post.

It is that time of year again when the feelings of sadness are stronger, when they come on unexpectedly and linger for longer.

I find myself most of the time living with this kind of foggy knowledge of a piece missing, but my life is full and I’m living well. Then February turns in to March and my head goes back to the time when that foggy knowledge was a strong anxious feeling of an impending loss, and then comes April and I’m back in panic mode and then we reach May and I’m just in a fog of sadness again, I turn foggy.

I know it is coming, and so I prepare for it when I think of it, but I don’t think there is anything I can do except ride with it. The biggest lesson I’ve learning, and it was a hard one to learn, is to just feel. You have to be present to the feeling, you have to let your body and mind succumb to it and it will flow in and then out of you. I promise, it will flow out if you let it. Too many people feel the emotions flow in to them and then shut their body up so it never leaves. It weighs on them, twisting and turning inside. I know. I’ve been there.

The same can be true of good emotions too, feel them, breath them in and let them fill you. The real test is letting them both be inside you at once. I can’t let my blissful happiness and fullness of love leave just because some sadness enters. I don’t have to let it leave. I will be present to them both. Because if my Dad left me one legacy it was how to build a life full of love, love you are proud of and show. He was never afraid of emotions, he once rewound the end of Sleepless in Seattle over and over to watch the end and let himself cry. And boy do I miss getting to tease him about that.