Looking on

Wanted: Someone to kick my butt every time I make a promise that I don't follow through on.

In February, I made a promise that I would keep up my blog, The Songs of Spring, by writing at least weekly entries. And if I missed a week here or there, I'd make up for it the following week.

Well, my last entry was at the end of March, and it seems that since then I haven't been very productive in keeping up this space. I have excuses, but it would be silly to bore you with them, so I won't. In this case, an apology is a waste of time. What isn't a waste of time is picking up where I left off, which is just writing when I need to - when it makes sense. So, right now. At this very moment.

The last couple of days have been very difficult, and they've made me think a lot about what is important in life.

Everyone who is alive has loved. If you're lucky, love is something you're born into. If you're not, it's something you must struggle to find in the most trying of situations.

I was lucky to be one of the former.

Even in the most difficult times in my life, I've known that love was somewhere to be found. And it made the tough things just a little bit more manageable.

But love also has its own troubles - as often as stories will tell us that those we love live on in our hearts even when they aren't of this Earth anymore, no one will tell you that life after loss is easy. The love that we feel for one another makes letting go that much more difficult.

I don't have to let go of anything right now, and when that occurs to me, I'm incredibly thankful. It's a comfort to know that at this very moment there is stability, that what (or rather whom) I know and love will continue to live, breathe and feel.

One day, though, and who knows how many days from now that one day will be, you and I and everyone we know will have to face the same thing: that emptiness of letting go of something beloved.

It will start with a shudder, and a feeling of confusion. Then it will transition into emptiness, of deprivation and even deeper confusion. A complete envelopment in the tragedy of the world. Why do we live to be tortured like this? But in time, those questions give way to new ones - What's next? What's past? How can I reconcile the two and make something impossible and painful into something beautiful? If we're wise, we find the answer. And we move on.

I guess what I'm trying to do right now is find the answer to that final question before I go through all the prior traumas. It is my goal to come out the other side of life's troubles as a stronger person.

I can't make sense of where I am in life right now, but I want to. I've been busy, been shying away from breaching this huge subject. It frightened me. My writing has suffered, my clarity of mind has dwindled.

So next time I break my promise, someone, I beseech you, kick me to get involved with this blog again. This is one of the only ways I've been able to find clarity in my life, in myself and in my future. And right now, that's what I need.