Life’s unkindness





Our experiences  are the blocks from which we build our self, our life, our paths. They will take up a certain amount of space and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. It is our job to choose where and how we place them. We can carelessly abandon them for others to trip over. We can throw them into the paths of others with destruction on our agenda. We can place them, calmly, kindly in the best possible manner to allow us, and others, to keep moving forward with minimal difficulty or upset.

Recently I experienced an awful trauma. The unexpected suicide of a dear friend. In my house.

The process of grief has been exhausting. I think I have experienced every emotion on a looping carousel for the last week. Rage like I have never known..... I’m not brilliant at expressing anger but this event has unstoppered a furious, molten stream of repressed frustration in me. It is scorching and terrifying. I have struggled to ensure that is aimed away from others and vented in a relatively harmless way.

I have also been overwhelmed by a blanket of sadness (that seems like such a surface deep word but it is accurate) that has washed colour from my world and bleached joy to a faded watermark. Again, I have fought my own depressive demons and sought out laughter, colour and vibrancy. I have re-tinted the dulled and kept the blanket tucked in and prevented it from leeching colour from the lives of others.

I have felt hysteria. This I have allowed to spill out more. I have intertwined it with dark humour, silliness and satire. I have used it to prompt laughter in others, to create joyful, lasting images instead of those that haunt my group of friends when they close their eyes. Now they can see some laughter and absurdity there too.

I have felt unexpected, overwhelming joy. The wave of kindness, compassion and companionship that has poured out of so many people has carried me such a long way in this process. I never expected to experience happiness at such an awful time and yet I have made the best of friends, enjoyed the most precious of moments and see the most beautiful side of humanity.

I am so very, very grateful

James  was 35. A friend and trusted member of my close circle. To lose him has been painful in a way that cannot be described fully with words. I have only animalistic sounds and the instinctive convulsions of my body for that.

So why gratitude?

Because he showed me how very MUCH I want to live. The clarity this has afforded me is almost blinding in its diamond like brilliance. There is so much wonder in our world. So much beauty. So much joy. We can choose to seek the dark corners and scurry amongst shadows on the peripheral of humanity or...

We can step into the light, bright, happy day to seize  the luminescence and reflect and diffract it so that it spreads, so that it chases shadows and demons from our door.

Be a vehicle for the positive. Life is all too short.

I owe it to James to live my life beautifully

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