Miscellany

I have a lot rolling around in my head today, some good and some bad.  My brain is kind of all over the place and I’m doing my best right now to make some sense out of it. 

I’ve come to realize that, while I attempt to live a drama-free lifestyle, despite my best efforts drama does manage to work itself into my life on a daily basis – as is really the case for everyone.  Everyone has their own drama every day of life.  I suppose the key is not to feed into it, which sounds good on paper but in practice isn’t always so simple. 

The first thing today was seeing a piece on the morning news about a mother who drove herself and her four children into the Hudson River last night.  One of them was able to escape, her ten year old son.  Her other children, ages five, two and 11 months were not so lucky.  I can’t comprehend this, I just can’t.  And while stories like this affected me before I had a child of my own, they doubly affect me now.  My heart breaks for those little children, it cracks into little pieces at the thought of those tiny lives snuffed out far too soon.  How any mother could do something like that to her children…I just don’t know.  There aren’t words.  Our children trust us, trust us to do right by them, to help them make decisions, to fight for them, to keep their best interests above all else.  And when parents betray that trust, well, they never should have been granted the gift of children to begin with.  I have to trust there is a special room in Hell for those parents who would visit hurt or betrayal upon those precious lives they were given the privilege to raise. 

My inbox at work had become unmanageable at a little over 10,000 messages that went back I don’t know how far.  In attempting to do some housekeeping, I came across the exchanges I’d had with my family last year around this time when my aunt became ill and was moved to hospice.  The one year anniversary of her passing is coming up on the 28^th.  I can’t believe it’s been almost a year already.  I still haven’t reconciled myself completely to the knowledge that she’s gone.  Thinking of those events a year ago unleashed a flurry of unexpected tears today – the hurt, the fear, the pain, the heartache and the loss.  I keep focusing on a mental image of her in hospice giving her son the finger when he wised off to her.  Her personality stayed true to the very end.  And I know she knew we were there with her at the end, that we didn’t abandon her or leave her alone.  And while we weren’t there with her when she went, she was in all of our hearts.  She’s still in my heart.  I carry her with me every day and somehow that knowledge will have to be enough.  I miss her. 

While I found these sad emails, I also found a few that made me happy – those being the messages sent around on April 23^rd of last year when I was offered my publishing contract for Second Chances.  So within the sad, there’s the balance of happy.  That contract was the fulfillment of dreams I’d held close to my heart since I was little, when someone had given me a manual typewriter for Christmas to write my stories on, when I wrote silly stories with Tennille that we stuffed inside a pillowcase to hide from Mom and Heather.  That contract was written proof that I’d accomplished something, whether I sold more than a single copy or not.  I’d moved from the ranks of “writer” to “author” by receiving a two page document stating that someone had found my words, my story worthy of printing.  No matter fame, fortune or notoriety, I had accomplished that one dream that had outshined all the other dreams I’d held dear.  I haven’t found the words to express how I feel about it yet, even after a year.  Not pride.  Not arrogance.  Not boastful.  I can’t define it.  It’s prompted me to put effort forth in an attempt to talk to others about how they can make their own dreams come true, hence my visits to two area high schools to speak with the students about writing, the message not being so much the ins and outs of writing and being published but more believing in your dreams and believing in yourself, something I’m more than occasionally terrible at. 

So call this little collection of thoughts what you will.  I think of it mainly as trying to bleed out a little bit, to release some of these thoughts so I can concentrate on other things.  Nothing overly profound or helpful to anyone but me, but I suppose that’s okay.