It’s been a week of rain, as I write this I can hear it is once again pouring, I’m writing this in a stream of consciousness, and it seems apt that almost every day more rain falls to wash all the things away I no longer need to carry, no longer need to burden myself with. 

These posts serve to help me see how far I’ve come. I have learned that change happens when we look at each day as an opportunity, win or fail, the next is never a guarantee, happiness sometimes only a crevice of joy, but each precious.  

For as far back as I can remember the be all and end all for any woman seemed to be to find some man, settle down, cohabitate in some fashion or other for the rest of time, anything less made you weird, undesirable, there must be something wrong with you.

So, three years and four months ago, this post was me. It was the beginning of who I am today, the epiphany happened quietly, no fanfare, no charging out the door into the big bad world with a shiny new me. No, in fact, everything went on as normal, I plugged away at my dismal call centre job, wishing maybe someday the building would cave in with me in it and put me out of my misery.

It was a recognition of a change I envisioned for the first time inside. A possibility, a sense of something lying dormant that I had thought I could never have or be, a person I thought was beyond, not possible. 

Drafted March 23rd of 2015 these ideas were but dim lights off in the distance and seemed a long way off. 

Still wandering around the after affects of yesterday’s epiphany. Well, it was an epiphany of sorts. Not beaming with joy, but a revelation at the very least.

Just this morning you know Mom, sifting through the overnight Facebook feed, and low an behold I came upon this excerpt -‘My Dinner With Andre” – reminded me of why that movie remains on my Top Five Favourites. Even though I’ve only ever seen it once, it imprinted something on my psyche and I’ve always meant to go back to it again, revisit this Cinematography conversation over dinner.

“They are both the guards and the prisoners. They built their own prison, and they guard themselves“. [from ‘My Dinner With Andre’]

It does make you wonder though if maybe he’s right. You see that sense of blind obedience at play in most metropolitan areas, that zombie-esque nature of the many is rampant in all large cities today. I think the reason I’ve always loved that movie is that I’ve had those conversations with people, rarely though. I suppose maybe the first philosophical parlance I first took would have been with you.

I was just this morning you know reminded that I as well needed to embrace my inner child, and by doing so embrace as well that tiniest of beams of the light, so as to keep it safe through this dark age of self-righteous indignation and greed.

Stay still long enough to allow wisdom to seep into ones pores.

I’ve also learned this week that it does me no good to dialogue away all this that I’ve learned. That with enlightenment comes the recognition that saying a thing, has less power than doing a thing, or being a thing. Just be, without any expectations. Now THAT is the challenge.

I WANT so many things but desiring that which is not is an exercise in denial. The grass is always greener, as they say, wherever you are not.

I’ve been I suppose distracted a little this week, not sure why. I’ve been thinking a lot I guess about what I should be really doing (in between calls on Saturday), and I realized that when you were 47 you had 7 more years to live. Course you didn’t know that at the time.

So it’s going on 14 years now since your death, and now that I find myself seemingly perhaps astray, I am reminded that life is precious. Why not just be? Why still remain within the cave with everyone else, watching mere shadows on the wall? Why not engage in life, and once again embrace wonder and joy? Seek knowledge, and stay still long enough to allow wisdom to seep into one’s pores.

I know Mom, yes I was always fidgety. I remember you telling me how when I was small I was always doing something, rarely was I still. Alone together, in that dinky little trailer that hot and sweaty summer of 1968. I would imagine it would qualify as your very own “worst of times, and the best of times”. I guess like my Irish Lake. I remember you telling me of how often you found yourself, head in hand, sitting just outside the door on that tiny bottom step, with tears running down your face.

You must have felt like you’d completely lost your way. Hundreds of miles away from home, with a small child that scares the shit of you, heartbroken by a man who one day would become your heart AND soul.