Do you see the sadness
That’s hiding behind my eyes?
The pain that I carry
The weight that’s heavy on my soul

Do you sense the burdens
That so many have placed on me
Do you feel how spent I am
What is it you think you see?

Every day they need me
To be strong for them
Every day they bleed me
Or do they feed me, instead

Life is so complex
And needs are an intricate mess
Where do they end and I begin?
I’m not sure I’m doing my best

Each day I press on
And do what they need from me
Each day I’m closer to death
And in that space I’ll breathe

Some burdens I embrace
My beautiful children four
Other weights I’d discharge
The ex I showed the door

The career that used to hold me up
No longer holds such sway
I will continue as long I must
Until that far off imagined day

Do I hold on just for them?
If I let go would they succumb?
I used to know these answers
But now I feel so numb

I suppose for them I’m alive
They motivate me to survive
But as I pivot to the empty nest
I hope I’ll learn to thrive

All these years and all this time
I thought I was teaching them to fly
But life is so much more sublime
Turns out they were teaching me the why

Somewhere in between
The novelty and the comfort
The feeling may arise

Before complacency arrives
Or boredom finds its root
Lies the space
Where love can grow

It’s not a guarantee
And can quickly be pushed away
Or spoiled and corrupted
Confused with something else

When novelty is present
Often mistaken for chemistry or lust
When complacency has arrived
It may feel heavy with obligation

Somewhere in between
This precious thing is found
In the space away
From the stimulation and excitement

Lies the space to breathe
The space to feel
And then the space to know
Is this person worthy of the gift I wish to give

Love is a verb
Often confused for a feeling
Love is a gift
It’s a decision made in the gap

In the space we draw breath
Where we know without doubt
The gift is one we’re ready to bestow
The feeling that arises is the desire to love

The space away from the person
We’re growing closer to
Is where we understand the depth of our emotions
And where we fall in love

Without the space, the budding relationship is buoyed up by things that don’t prevail
Passion, novelty, curiosity
Once those fade, without space, the relationship and the desire to love will diminish and over time be doomed

I’ve been looking for him for years. In the deepest corner of my heart, I believe he existed. That he was out there looking for me on some level, whether conscious or subconscious.

To allow him into my heart, my soul, I will need to let go of some things to make room. Like a dusty old attic room with sheets covering the aging furniture, there is not enough room to simply let him in. Twenty something years ago I would have gladly taken him in, letting him fill the corners of my mind and heart with his presence, his essence, and never looked back. Perhaps I would’ve lost sight of myself in so doing, but I would have been happy.

That was not meant to be. I could only hope that we are on parallel journeys, with similar outcomes, that would place us both together at the same time.

I know in time our paths will cross, a bit of chance, a bit of serendipity.

I need to make more room for him. I will clean the dusty old attic and get rid of the baggage I’ve been holding onto all these years. The baggage that both simultaneously leads me to him and keeps me from him. Am I ready to let go? Am I ready to let him fully and completely move into my soul?

My brokenness leads me to him, and for that I am strangely grateful. Without it, would I know who I am? And would he know me?

One moment, relatively content 
The next, depressed 
Sinking, flailing, lost 
Devastatingly bereft 

This darkness that surrounds me 
Feels like an old friend 
A comfort in the sorrow
Is joy around the bend? 

Its been so very long 
Since I’ve felt the warm embrace 
As I age and years pass by 
It feels like some sick race 

Has my mind forgotten 
How to feel the joy 
The simple pleasures gone 
Perhaps the feeling’s coy

In the abysmal depths I dwell 
Sadness lingers far too long
Never known this well of tears 
It’s horrible and wrong

In some strange way it’s penance
For all the tears suppressed 
The feelings ignored, pushed down 
Now beckoned at my behest 

Is it me that calls them forth 
Or some deep part sublime 
Not the broken shattered ego 
But the part that’s beyond time

When everything began to fall apart- to really fall apart- I intuitively knew that it was time that I learned how to be still.

The first real signal from my heart/soul/consciousness that NOW IS THE TIME came shortly after the breakup. I used to listen to music routinely throughout the day. Every time I got in the car it was on, and at night I’d listen as a way to drown out my tinnitus before falling asleep. Suddenly, I could not listen to music- ANY music- because of the deep, searing pain that it would cause. I found myself driving in silence, glad for the time to be alone away from my children and conversation, allowed to feel whatever I needed to feel, with only the small chance another driver might see me looking forlorn and tear-stained. No one I knew would see me and ask questions, thank goodness.

Eventually music would come back in to my days, but the desire to learn how to be still remained. What does this look like? How does one go about “learning how to be still”?

True to form, because of my over-analytical nature, I had to research this first. In fact, I spent countless hours researching this subject, many more hours than I have spent meditating or taking walks in silence or doing anything without somehow splitting my focus. If I was washing the dishes, I was also listening to a podcast about something – how to heal from a breakup, how to meditate, etc. But at some point you have to stop studying and you have to start doing. At some point you have to stop avoiding being with yourself and you just have to do it. And so I did.

At first it felt strange, like I was wasting time. There were so many more important things I could be doing with my time, and my mind felt the need to remind me. I was determined though, as if something more fundamental than my mind was making this request of me now. The chaos inside of me seemingly had it’s own life sustaining energy, but something else was pulling me in a different direction. A direction I had never tried going before, one that intrigued me. What was down this road I was embarking on?

Now that I’ve made these changes to my routine and they’ve become habit, I am getting used to the space. The voice inside of me that used to cry out “You are not done!” “Don’t forget to do this!” “You need to clean that!” and the penultimate “You are not enough!” is much quieter now. Perhaps it is still there, but it holds much less sway than it used to have.

All of those past behaviors feel like a madness now- a compulsion. Listening to that voice every time it summoned me, as if I was possessed. At the least, it was a compulsion to stay busy enough that the even more destructive voices stay pushed down. A compulsion to run away from the silence, because what dark voices or emotions would emerge if I gave them the space to come up?

Spoiler- there were no dark voices that emerged. There were some emotions that I needed to feel, but they were nowhere near as scary as my mind had made them out to be.

As I sit here writing this, I’m enjoying the sound of birds singing outside my window, and I know that this new way of being will remain with me until I die. I am pulled into the present moment, reluctant to let my mind resurrect the ghosts of the past or to conjure up catastrophic monsters looming in the future. Right now, in this moment, I am fine. I am safe, my children are safe, my dogs are safe, and I am happy. My career is going well, and the only person that I need to be “enough” for is me. I am enough, and the present moment is abundant.

Of all the emotions, sadness sticks around longer than we’d like it to. The dark clouds overtake us often out of the clear blue sky and bring us to the depths of despair as quickly as a storm moving in.

Have you ever embraced it? Welcomed it in, acknowledged it, and given it space to do what it needs to do?

I’ve been in this storm for over four months now, allowing myself to cry, but more importantly, allowing myself to feel. Because that is what has been missing from my life all these years. For some reason, I know that sadness is the gate I must pass through. Grief accumulated through the years and suppressed, hidden from, and ignored. There were times it broke through, like when my mom died suddenly, but mostly I managed to keep it buried under a shell of hard work and ego driven career success….while on some level I was suffering and not having the faintest idea why.

Now that the clouds are beginning to break, I want to thank Ryan for breaking my heart and cutting me loose to face this storm on my own. I never would’ve faced it any other way. We weren’t right together, but for a moment, we were both sheltered from the storms of our lives in each other’s embrace. For a moment, life was a little less lonely and a little more exciting.

Glimpses of sunshine peek through now and again, and I’m beginning to feel the warmth emerging. The sadness is purifying me, cleansing me in a way I never imagined possible. Each tear releases a tiny bit of the pressure that’s accumulated over the years. Each tear cracks the door a bit wider to a different kind of life, one that I’ve never experienced before.

As I peek through and feel the radiance of what’s on the other side, I suddenly understand where all the beautiful sad songs, stories, and poetry come from. The “tortured” artists are teaching us to embrace the pain so that we can feel the entire spectrum of emotions. Joy and bliss are on the other side of sadness and grief. Contentment is earned, and no one reaches it without passing through the crucible first.