I found this comment somewhere and copied it so I could revisit the wisdom contained within whenever I feel the need. I thought I’d share it here because it may help you, too:
You need to practice acceptance. Carrying all this baggage with you is no way to live. You can put the past away and just bring it out on the odd occasion for an airing. Writing it down does help. What helps more is acceptance. It happened it is not happening now. I am now free to walk my walk, look at the present day, look to the future. The past you describe did happen don’t deny it but do not let it define you. No psychiatrist in the world can help you more than you can help yourself and you do that by living in the present not the past not the future. You live each day as a new day a new opportunity. You don’t need luck you need resolve from within. Use it and enjoy the rest of your life spend time looking forwards not back.
I have almost zero evidence that I was born, had a childhood and left home. There are no pictures save a couple my dad gave me just a few years ago before we estranged. One is of me as a baby in a messy room standing in an old crib and it looks as if I’d been crying.
The other of my four siblings and I taken as a family picture and in it I look about 7 or 8. None of us are smiling and it looks like I’d been crying. Probably because I had been.
I don’t remember that day but that’s because I don’t remember a lot. It’s as if I didn’t form memories for so much of my childhood, so I don’t even have those internal photos to draw from.
The first picture I have of myself in life smiling is my wedding picture. I was nineteen years old. We’ve been together 33 years.
I spent many nights wandering in the dark, alone, long after most everyone had went to bed. It wasn’t safe for a thirteen year old girl to do what I did, but I survived and I had too many adventures to put into words.
And I wasn’t always alone. I was part of an elite group of night rangers who I called friends. We’d coordinate our escapes each night so we could meet up and go cause mayhem across the valley. It was a crazy time to be alive in central California. Most of our parents were partying hard like we were, but we did it our own way.
Hanging out behind Zippy’s waiting for our hook up so we could have plenty of party supplies to last until dawn. Hopefully more if it was a weeknight because we still had to get up and go to school after sneaking back in our houses and crawling into bed with a couple hours to spare before the alarm went off.
Usually we’d just do more lines and stay up until Friday if we could, then we’d ditch and sleep all day so we could party again that weekend. And my god, did we party hard.
Of course we did. We were from the “Rock-n-roll all night and party every day!” generation. It was sort of the anthem for us and at the time I almost even liked KISS (lol).
Nowadays I’m hooked on Rammstein and their new album Zeit which is especially a masterpiece.
Till is a poetic genius and he gets people like me. Hell, he IS people like me! This song resonates deeply given my history of wandering in the dark, and loving (almost) every minute of it.
When I go to rest before the night (To rest) I cover myself with melancholy The bright world doesn’t want to make me happy I must enrapture myself with the darkness It’s the night pregnant with death Which ecstatically makes us sinners Commandments which we ignore Can’t be seen by anyone in the dark
The night is beautiful (Beautiful) I don’t want to go to sleep
‘Cause whenever I’m lonely I’m drawn to the dark The sun death is my pleasure (My pleasure) Whenever it gets dark And the soul gets lost in lust The cold night is my pleasure I drink the black in big gulps (Drink)
When the day has crept into the moon A fever rises in our bones And no prayer and no candles Feign light into our hearts The daylight is no loss The night hold her breast for many Lushes, whores and conspirators Belong to the shadows
The night is beautiful (Beautiful)
‘Cause whenever I’m lonely I’m drawn to the dark The sun death is my pleasure (My pleasure) Whenever it gets dark And the sould gets lost in lust The cold night is my pleasure I drink the black in big gulps (Drink)
(Drink)
‘Cause whenever I’m lonely I’m drawn to the dark The sun death is my pleasure (My pleasure) Whenever it gets dark And the sould gets lost in lust The cold night is my pleasure I drink the black
Rammstein
It’s so weird to look back and think of little ole me living like a vampire and I honestly don’t know how I wasn’t killed back then, given all I did and also given how many friends and acquaintances of mine did die during those crazy 1980’s. I think of them often and wonder how they would have turned out.
We’ll never know, will we.
One thing I do know is I’m sure they’d be shocked to see what became of me.
I named this blog “Scattered Among the Leaves” because it’s the working title I have for a book I keep starting and then stopping. I figure this will get me at least motivated to pick it back up and maybe, you know, actually finish it.
I love fall, too, and I love the autumn leaves and how it feels to walk among them as they blow about on a warm afternoon. It’s one of those things I can recall fondly from childhood, so I cling to it because to be honest, there aren’t many good memories for me from that period in my life. I struggled to find happiness for years after I left the nest, too, and only now do I feel content and whole.
Less scattered, if that makes sense.
I do like to share how I got from there to here and sometimes I wonder myself. Often when I’m out on the dog sled, in the middle of the quiet winter magic, I feel like there has to be a cosmic hand at play here. How did I come through it all to find myself living a life I couldn’t have even dreamed for myself?
There was a time when I didn’t believe I deserved anything good in life let alone that I’d even live to be the age I am now. Yet here I am, and I’m so very happy to have made it to the other side.
Scattered Among the Leaves 