I love the early morning.
Even before dawn has a chance to light up the night sky.
I love the silence, which surrounds and envelops me while Life Partner sleeps, anyone, who might be visiting is asleep on the third floor, or even when I travel away, friends or family members sleep on into the morning. It is as if I, and I alone own the new day. It is a time just for me.
Cats are hunkered down close by as I sip my coffee and reflect on past feelings and future plans.
The New Year is on my mind as it beckons just two days away. This past year, like so many others, has been filled with personal, political, and professional happenings, accompanied by so many emotions that I am finally allowing myself to feel. It has been a busy time, and as I reflect back I realize how quickly it has all gone by, or how moments are already forgotten, or stored away to think on for another time. I am already making travel and presentation plans for 2013. I wonder where I will be this time next year, or what I might be working on professionally and psychologically by then. This cycle, marking time as I do from year to year, is constant and reassuring as I bid farewell to the past, and move on towards the future. Life changes and shifts, yet all the while remaining the same in so many ways. Reading over past blog posts I am reminded how my psychological issues seem to change ever so slightly, and I almost feel as if I have not moved beyond anything at all.
I don't think I will be making any resolutions for this coming year, just two days away. For, lately, I think of life as a continuum, continuing and flowing from one moment to the next, in and out of days and months, and into yet another new year. I am grateful to continually uncover layers of my Self in therapy, allowing me to see more realistically who I am, what I am capable of, and most importantly understand more clearly what I feel. I do not fear grief as much as I used to. For, I realize it will always accompany me as I leave behind then, or move beyond now. For example, this past year I have said goodbye to my son the child, discovering him as a man. I have bid farewell to the perception I had of myself to uncovering someone I am learning to like, worthy of making an effort or taking a stand for. Letting go of perceptions and expectations of friendship, or the notion of family.
With each farewell, letting go, or moving beyond, there is some sadness in the loss of habits and illusions created to defend a seemingly defenseless and lonely soul. Life is, as one of my advisors used to say, "All about grief." And as I allow myself to become more and more aware of my feelings, my experience of joy and happiness is deepened as well.
And ... well ... my lonely old soul is just not so lonely any more.
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