Birth

From the moment we are born, life is at times harsh, cold, every breath hurts, every tear is like liquid fire from your eyes and you in the midst of all that pain you long for the warm embrace, the shelter, the protection of those who hold unconditional love for you. Sometimes, that person is your mother, your father, adoptive parents, relatives, grandparents, or friends and sometimes, you are so very lucky to find that in a partner. Regardless, there is someone, somewhere, who no matter how hurtful you have been, how angry, how much you fought against their ideals, their principles, even their unconditional love, it remained.

At some point in your life, you will be made aware that not all love is unconditional. There will be lines crossed, feelings destroyed, emotions hid, mistakes never made right and that person, whom you so believed held such unconditional love for you, fades. Fading is somewhat misleading. To fade is to slip away, like a mist, a shadow, something translucent and painless. Sometimes, I believe most times, the fading is gradual. While gradual, it is never less painful, or damaging to the outside world, it seems to be the natural course of things. A person, tragically enough, becomes accustomed to this fading. She finds herself dealing with the cards that were dealt, internalizing each painful moment as the color of the threads that held her to this one person, began to pale. Strand by strand the ties, the pieces of one another that bound them to each other, turn gray and weakened under the constant strain and hurt and yes, even anger.

The years passed. The colors of their life continue to dull, there are moments of great joy, those bursts of sunshine that mask all of the pain, loneliness, and guilt. A child was born. She became her mother's sole reason for breathing. She became my reason for living. Had she never been born, I wonder how my life would have been different. Would I be sitting here, a few days shy of my 35th birthday, writing about her birth. A beginning that made every ending in my life worthwhile just to make it to that point. 

The hope remained, that with enough time, enough encouragement, those strands of our lives would come back into focus, the color would bleed back into them and once again we would be whole. 

Unfortunately, not all dreams are realized, sometimes wishing for your heart's desire is truly hopeless. Those fibers, those once strong bonds that held them together, broke.

I wish I could say that I was innocent in this ending. Perhaps, had I not waited for change to come, but sought it out, confronted it without anger, without resentment, without utter desperation that the years had brought, things might have been different. WE might have avoided this ending.

Too much time has passed. Too much pain has filled every corner of our hearts, too much anger and bitterness slip from our tongues, and somehow, the ones we used protect, we now hurt and ravage with cruelty. 

As I have said, I have not been innocent in this. I have learned many things. That things are not always black and white, love is not as simple as they portray it to be in the movies, and when you feel that you are your lowest point, that there is possibly not one person left in this world that could lift you up, change everything, ease the pain, calm the chaos, and somehow turn your life right side up.....he walks into your life.

More to come tomorrow....time to go snuggle and wrap my arms around my little one and hopefully dream good dreams.