6/5/2016

Life is Short

 

I just woke from a short nap, having fallen asleep at the same time as my daughter did for the night. I woke and mindlessly my hand fell upon the soft curve of my 50-year-old bosom. I realized that it will not be round and wrinkle-free forever. I was suddenly struck, NOT by how short my first 50 years were, because they have been quite well lived and feel like they lasted an eternity, but actually struck by how quickly the next 30 years might go, give or take a few years. For the first time I can remember it occurred to me that I might not be ready to depart this life in 30 years and how fast they might blink by.

I have never really been much fussed about it because I really believe that we will be living on beyond this life and that there is a reason for everything. I have even sometimes welcomed any early departure that may come after some of the nightmares I have lived through.

 

Whatever the Pain, We Can Move Past It

 

A couple years ago, the family court process ended here, removing my daughter from my peaceful primary care, and placing her in the care of an angry and deceitfully vengeful soul. This left me to fend for myself, trapped in a land that I had previously been promised we would leave to return home to the States. The Murphy’s Law set of circumstances that led to the actual end result, I will leave for another time. Ever since then, needing to maintain a situation for Daughter, so that her father would be unsuccessful in his campaign to separate her from her mother, and under regular threats of being dragged back to court toward that end, I have flirted with the lack of desire to be around on the planet. I had been sort of not really worried if I were to be taken out by anything accidental, or something otherwise perpetrated by the Ex. The bleakness and apparent finality of the justice system decision here were hard to get past.

 

However, Daughter is okay, for now, being too young to really understand what happened or that there is anything really wrong. She goes to school, and loves it. She goes back and forth between us, though not so much with me now. Her father refuses to let us maintain a regular flow of conversation, only letting her Skype with me one hour (or less) every nine days a fortnight that she is away from her mother. She is generally oblivious to the cycle of abusive anger and control that continues in the incredibly war-like state that her father maintains between her parents. She is a really smart, funny, and sensitive girl, and one day she may grow and be able to perceive her own truth about what really happened here to her and her mother, and who she really is.

 

Determine to Make Use of Your Life

 

In the meantime, little by little I have filled back in the strength of the idea that I am here in this life for my daughter. Also, I have begun to fill back in the power of the idea that I may have something creative and good left to share with her and with others. However, it does seem to me that I might not be able to really LIVE as much in the next 30 years as I did the first 50 and that I ought to get a move on if I am going to make these coming years count.

I have all this forgiveness I have to learn how to give, loving I still need to figure out how to do, creating I still need to practice, healing I still need to share, and adventuring I still need to do. It all has to happen while I have my mind and my body in tact, or it won’t count when I finally have to shove off this mortal coil.