use your words

The point here is to see the beauty in the everyday monotonous things of miraculous significance. I want to highlight those things here, in this space made for me and for you with pictures and words. I need to highlight the beautiful things here.



Then at the same time I spill all my angst here because even the pain is somehow mysteriously beautiful. I always hope my heart-words run across your screens and then they travel through you and remind you that your thoughts aren't lonely and neither are your feelings, no matter what they are.



Sometimes it's really hard to see the beauty through all the pain, isn't it?
Sometimes we're just holding on and there's nothing left, no eyes to see because the world or life has shut those eyelids like the slam of an angry door.

My whole life, I've felt the emotions of others intensely. The shock waves of sorrow never have liked to skip over me, or maybe I just didn't know how to regulate them. It was too much for me as a child and so I learned very early how to shut down. I vacillated between overwhelming feelings one moment and the next moment...nothing. And then, starting in my twenties I learned that alcohol was the best off switch ever created. I don't have that anymore and so today, as I hear bad news and choked on words over the phone, more than once, I'm feeling. I'm hearing the words and I'm feeling.

Some days are just hard and the shutting down really wants to happen. It no longer makes me think and think and think about how drinking would be really nice, but I'm still trying to find ways to numb, sometimes almost frantically. We all do, we have to shut down sometimes, to some extent. And so we can, for a while, I think.

Or we can't. Because there are husbands and children and friends and jobs and deadlines and messy houses.

And this is why there are words, like lifelines that reach out and connect the weary souls that just can't do it anymore but have to...the words are like the swelling wave that lands the boat, finally, on the shore. At least until the next wave comes to pull the ship back in and under.

Words from a book by a writer who has felt this very thing. Or an email conversation that hits the places that need validating. Or a blog post by a friend who just randomly wanted to say something that ends up flinging open your heart's eyes like a plastic shade rolling up--snap!

Words.

I'm not really getting to any kind of profound or meaningful point. I just really really needed to step outside of my prone-to-numbing self, to say some words, to read some words, to keep going, to keep feeling. Because sometimes there just are no words.