LJI: What comes after "the end"?

[bewize]

This has been a difficult year.

Turmoil. That's the name of the game.

Beginning. Middle. End.

A sick father. A dying father. A dead father.

An infant. A baby. A one year old.

Post-partum depression. Relationship turmoil. Emotional disconnect.

A friend. A liar. A heartache.

This is how my year is gone. Beginning. Middle. End.

Of course, it's not over yet. I'm still here. Still standing. Still fighting the good fight.

But, y'all. I'm tired. And sometimes, I cannot help but wonder if I'm fighting battles because it's important to win them, or if I'm fighting them, because that's all I know to do.

Sometime in the past months, I've gotten... numb? Calm? Resigned? Resolved?

I don't know what it is. I don't know what it means. I do know that the fear I had is gone, though.

I see things more clearly now. The fog is lifting and the great unknowable future looks less foreboding.

This year has been fire. I've lost many things that were important to me. My people. Some of my freedom. Friends that I valued. Pieces of inner-peace. Certainty that my relationship would hold firm. These things have burned away in the ashes of this year.

I spoke to a friend about this recently and she commented, "I know you must be so upset... but you don't sound upset."

That's what I found in the fire. The truth. And the truth is, I'm not upset. I'm not feeling like I've lost; or at least, I didn't lose more than I gained.

Underneath everything else, I found myself again. The ME that is actually ME. The Me that stares down the Future and feels nothing but a firm and unshakable belief that I'll weather those storms, best those demons, and land firmly (if not gracefully) on my feet.

I spent ages trying to figure out what came after "the end," because I wanted a pithy title to this post. I googled. I asked the Facebooks. I got lots of great suggestions: postscript, epilogue, coda, aftermath.

But, in re-reading my post, I realized the answer all on my own.

"What comes after the end"?

"A new beginning."



This entry was written for therealljidol 01.01: ""It's hard to beat a person who never gives up." If there is voting, I will share the poll. Thanks.

Comments

[alycewilson]

My sympathies for a very rough year, and my admiration for your resilience. As someone who's had a rough past three years, I can sympathize with this. The most important thing, as you say at the end, is to continue to find a way forward and maintain positivity.

[bewize]

I'm sorry to hear that you're having a rough few years. That's hard.

Onward and upward, and, what I say a lot is, "Six feet up is winning."

[alycewilson]

Not nearly as bad as some people I know, and I'm grateful for that. This winter was weird, though. Our cat died of cancer, which brought back grief for my mother like a scab being pulled off a wound. Then a week later, we had a bad storm that knocked out our electricity for several days and had to stay with a friend. It felt so disconnected and depressing. I ate my feelings, gained another 20 pounds, and am just now finding my way back out of the hole.

But there have been a lot of positive moments, too! I'm grateful to my son, a never-ending fountain of creativity and source of joy.