The hours of 1:00 - 3:00 in the morning have always been, at least for me, the farthest thing from reality. In these hours I experience all manner of adventure. I speed across Europe through the pages of a Perez-Reverte novel, I stand on my front porch and deliver scenes from Williams, Shakespeare, and Chekhov with performance-of-a-lifetime bravado, I connect to the souls of Puccini's greatest operatic lovers.
But the biggest adventure I undertake in these hours is the exploration of my own mind. While the day is in it's stride there is little time for me to examine my own feelings toward the occurences I experience. But once everyone else is well into their REM cycles I get to stop working, worrying, or whatever it was I was doing during the day and take a look at myself. When I do this, I almost never find what I expect. I usually find that my heart has been screaming out, begging me to pay attention to issues that I've been brushing aside, deeming them 'too much' to handle.
Tonight is certainly one of those nights. I've been scared out of my wits for weeks and keeping it a secret from myself all the while.
To understand this, you must know that I come from a family of brilliant, beautiful people who have their feet planted firm in the values of love, faith, and humility. You must also understand that this family was broken a year ago with a divorce that shook the ground and tore down the walls of our world. For the past year (and the past three months in particular), I have carried my unreleased grief around like a weight over my shoulders. I thought it would go away if I focused my efforts on making sure that everyone else was hanging on. Tonight, however, my grief unleashed itself. The physical symptoms that accompany severe emotional fatigue hit me head on and for a moment I was truly lost. This went on for some time, feeling like it would never end, and then, finally, when there were no more tears to be cried, I experienced that strange sensation that always follows so much sadness. The feeling that there was laughter inside of me, coming up through my chest and threatening to escape, making light of my pain! This completely bewildered me. How could this be, that not a moment ago I was in what felt like my darkest hour and now there is some seemingly irrelevant warmth inside of me? The answer came to me as if the laughing feeling itself had supplied it: I have no reason to be weary. Life is not ending, it is merely changing. The memories I have of a family that was still in one piece are still mine to treasure. Those memories of the moments that shaped me cannot be taken away by this small bump in the road. If anything, they can only be strengthened by this. And love for a person does not end because you're not as close to them as you once were. It can only be strengthened by the challenge.
Now, as I approach this new life of mine with a brand new outlook, I finally understand that we really have very little control over the things that happen in our lives. What we can control is the way we let them effect us. Sometimes you find strength that saves your life when you didn't even know you needed it.
