In which I wax poetic.

Note:  I debated publishing this as it contains thoughts and feelings that I haven't really shared with anyone, and they're the kind of thoughts and feelings that I don't like to burden people with.  But I really feel that not hitting publish would only further bottle them up, and odds are not many people will read this anyways.  So here goes.

I am worried it's been so long since I have been on here that I'll have forgotten how to use this site.

It's been awhile, friends, and I am sorry for it.  It's not like it's that hard to keep this blog up; I mean all I do is upload a few cute pictures, write a couple captions or stories, and hit publish.  But the last few months, it just felt so overwhelming.  A lot of things have felt overwhelming.  Like getting out of bed in the morning.  Changing diapers.  Leaving my house.  The hum drum hum drum beat of life just seemed to be wearing me down.  And I don't even have that hard of life! 

Please, don't misunderstand.  I'm not saying there weren't sweet moments in each day.  There were, and I tried my hardest to savor them.  But at the end of the day, as I (finally) would lay my head down, they would seem few and far between.  I just wanted to burrow under the covers and hide.  Everything was too much, too loud, too soon.  I would keep trying to motivate myself, to jump back into life with zest, but often would become discouraged.  I stopped posting because I felt like I had nothing to say.

But, here I am, typing away into cyberspace.  What changed?  Today, I received a text, and as soon as I read the words, I felt as though a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  I recognize that's a cliche, but as soon as I read the word, "remission," I felt as though I could breathe again for the first time in ages. 

I didn't even realize the enormity of the worry I was carrying with me.  I am not a worry-er.  I have friends who are, and the scenarios they tell me that plague them often never cross my mind.  Perhaps that is naive of me, but that's just the way I am wired.  But I'm afraid that because I am wired this way that worry is perhaps a foreign feeling to my mind.  Or maybe a scary feeling to my mind.  And so I pushed all that worry I've had ever since my dad's diagnosis away--away and away, until it was just hovering above me, in a big, dark cloud of worries.

Tonight, I had to take the garbage out, and I looked up at the stars as I was walking back to the house.  The skies here have been dark and cloudy all day, and it was raining on and off, but now that it's dark, the stars are peeking through.  There are little trails of the retreating storm clouds left smeared across the sky, but it is clear enough to see some stars.  This is the first cool, crisp, autumn night we've had, and for some reason, it makes the stars seem closer, and yet farther away at the same time.  I looked up at the stars, with their light shining across space to me, and I felt something that felt like eternity.

It's all pretty poetic for a trip out to the garbage, I know.  But I need to start remembering these moments.  The older I get, the more I realize that how you see yourself and see life and all the good and bad that happens to you is all a matter of perspective.  The weight of my worry had blurred my vision.  I was getting so focused in on these things that I had to do just to...I don't know, be normal?  Be acceptable?  I was so worried about these superficial things, and I would get frustrated when they wouldn't get done, or weren't done in the way I wanted them done, because I felt like if I couldn't control at least this aspect of my life, what the heck was I even doing?  But today I didn't look at my day as a to-do list.  I looked at it as an opportunity.  An opportunity to help, to love, to smile, and to chase away someone else's storm cloud.  And hopefully I can see it that way tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

And hopefully I will be writing more again.  Because truthfully, I have missed it.  And it's not so horribly overwhelming as it seemed.