Happiness Reclaimed

There was a very long time in this second life that I truly doubted I would ever feel happy again.  Joy was elusive.  Contentment seemed like a dream of an experience I would never live again.  The bitter, broken, burned up remains of my heart and soul sat soaking in a pool of loss and resentment.  I was a shell of myself, empty, my innards piled  on the sidewalk for the whole world to see.  Happiness became something that only others could feels.

My friends…I’m feeling happy again.

There has been an internal shift in these past months.  With the move to my new home.  With the anniversaries behind us.  With the sunlight and garden soil and lake water and long evenings.  I have started to feel whole again.  To feel my strength and resilience as part of my core being.  To feel like this is a life worth living.

It started, at first, with a few moments of light that would peek through the fog.  Then those moments began to stretch and weave themselves into my existence until the days started feeling lighter and softer.  The flashbacks started to taper off, and I could go days, weeks without the tortured memories overtaking my consciousness.  I don’t have them much anymore.  I started to notice that I felt GOOD, and if a random someone asked me how I was, I no longer had to fake a presentable attitude.  My mind feels clearer.  I actually have hope, most of the time, enough of the time.

At some point in the process I read something from someone, that compared picking up the pieces of your life to a mosaic.  Your heart, soul, mind, body shatters into a millions little pieces and you must collect them back up again to survive.  So you have these shards filling your hands, and you begin to lay them down.  There is no way to put to put them back quite the way they were…so you create a mosaic.  And it’s different.  It may not be what you expected or wanted it to be, but it is beautiful and it is complete in it’s own ways.  It’s what is.

So, for me, at this point in the process, I’m good.

I’m figuring it out.

We’re going to be fine.  (And it’s a privilege to be able to say that.)