Prisms

As the year draws to a close it’s time to take stock and take inventory of all that’s past.

About a year and a half ago I felt as if a bomb had detonated internally that set off an explosion of emotions affecting my role as caregiver, son, friend and lover.

It was as if everywhere I looked all I could see littered before me was the damage; like shards from a broken glass, no longer able to discern if it were half empty or half full before the blast.

At the time I wondered how I would survive it all, was I strong enough? Was it my fault somehow that I’d attracted so much negative energy into my life?

And as I look back through the kaleidoscope of compartments that I’d lived my life at the time, coloring my world from light to dark there was alot of fault to go round but now I realize that dwelling on assigning blame serves no purpose.

So, as much as I twisted and turned from relationship to kinship, after l looked past the hurt (real or imagined) and disappointment (past and present) what was obscured was the love that should have colored it all.

I firmly believe “that which doesn’t kill us, serves to make us stronger” and I’m still here.

The ‘who, what and why’ of what’s happened aren’t as important as the lessons learned.

I’ve made mistakes and now I’ve made amends.

I’m reminded of the words of a kindly doctor whose books are prescriptions for how children’s (and the child in us all) should heal our lives; “No matter where you go, there you are”.

I remind myself moving forward that there will be bad days but at any moment I have the power to ‘start my day over’, to change my mindset and make my experiences work ‘for’ me and not against me.

If I can accept the negative that comes into my life then I also must embrace the positive that can be made manifest through thought and action.

What I’ve learned is to embrace the life that I have and not covet the life that I thought I’d be living. I can’t long for the fantasy of what might be because then I’d miss the reality of what’s happening in the here and now.

My time here is hardly over, if anything it’s just beginning as I enter my fourth year of caregiving.

On the eve of 2014 my life might not look like what I thought it would be but when I open my eyes each morning who I see reflected back at me through the looking glass is someone that is finally at peace with his time in this place.