DevaStatingSL

… and loosen the noose of my past!

This is where I am meant to be. This is my perfect place, where I can dwell in accumulated peace.

Sounds smug?

Maybe it does, but these things have to be fought for. Those who know me, and those who have read my words know how much I struggle with so many things, mainly myself.

Let me try and explain myself (I chuckle as those are probably the words I use most often… possibly too often.) It’s almost like sitting here with the ideas which have been running around in my head for days, weeks even… and I throw them all up into the air and try and arrange them into some semblance of order.

I am back to thinking about time. Perhaps it is my age, perhaps it is also watching how not only myself, but how others are affected and changed by its constant buffeting. Here I sit in the present, in this very moment… and I allow it to bring me peace. I can let the calm enfold around me.

Yet, it was only when I spoke to a friend this morning, that many of the words I said to him suddenly made sense of how I have been feeling. It was a difficult time for him… a time of mourning… the anniversary of the dread loss of a dear loved one a few years ago.

Time moves on. It’s hard to reconcile that things change, yet for there to be space for new things to come I must move away from those moments of past hardship. We can’t be chained to the past. In the never ending tide of time, to remain chained to the past is to be fastened tight to the bottom of the sea while the current smashes into us and eventually drowns us.

I have known too much criticism in my life. I have been left too many times, if not just physically, so often dropped also into the heart-numbing pain of inflicted silence. I sit here in my moment of presence and can acknowledge that I have been abandoned so many times in my life. I have had the boundaries of friendship stifle it to the point where nothing remains. For most people I seem either not enough, or too much for them to be able to continue a friendship with.

When this is from those I have been close to, or who I have tried so hard to be there for, it’s a pain which squeezes my heart in the vice-grip of poisoned failure. I flail. I try all I can to fix things, to avoid that ultimate goodbye which is never said because the silence has already become too solid.

To dwell in this state of failure kills me inside. To stand in the vortex of screamed echoes of my faults and reasons why people cannot continue with me is to shatter my heart and throw the pieces away, never to be found again. THIS is not a place I can remain. This state has no place for me.

The past should be looked on as a book I think. Its words have been written as a record of time, but of time which is no more. It can offer me guidance and pointers… things to avoid, and paths which have brought joy.

One thing I realise though, is that it is no longer the place I reside. To view it with distance lessens the pain and suffocation of any pain it still would hope to wield over me. Things can never go back to how they were and this is both a good, and bad thing. Sometimes, due to the comfort of past closeness, I would wish I could fix things and go back to a happy place of times gone by, to once again find a familiarity which sadly no longer remains.

This is not a reason to fall and cry though. No time should be lost to lamenting this.

I must smile at the positive glittering moments of the presence. I choose now to savour the warm and the fact that unlike some I do have this present moment. I have been blessed with this time. Not all have been so lucky. I can rejoice in those who share my present moments. I am doubly blessed in their presence in my day.

I do not forget that there is the excitement of the future. Some things can indeed be mended in time, with small steps. Far greater than this though, the future holds space. Each moment of the future is yet to be filled. There are new joys to experience and new smiles to be shared. It is only the past which stands still, set almost under a glass dome, where it remains preserved and there to look back on, but it has no place in the present. This is my moment of peace, my moment to cast off sadness and look smiling to tomorrow…. and grin at the prospect of what tomorrow has yet to bring.