My last words for the week.

Swamped with work and deadlines to meet and shopping to do and bags to pack and bills to pay and scooter parts to buy and rooms to clean and clothes to wash ... *deep beath*

But all is for good reason because we are going away.

So that leaves me with this to say ...

I received a rejection on a partial last night and needed to cry but I couldn't because of an overwhelming ache in my chest. Not an ache. An emptiness. This emptiness made me come up with a beautiful description too, of how it felt (thank you Jen for the gmail chat last night). I said to Jen that my chest feels like there is a ghost inside it breathing all my air. My soul was choking me from the inside out. But this made me wonder ... what do I do with all this sorrow inside me? So, I sat on my bed and continued to read Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson and look at the beautiful paragraph I came across, just when I needed it:

"Our dream of life will end as dreams do end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes. And we will think, All that fear and all that grief were about nothing. But that cannot be true. I can't believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking. Sorrow seems to me to be a great part of the substance of human life."

I looked up from the book and I closed it. I closed my eyes, switched off the light, and sat in darkness. In silence. Listening to the hum of motionlessness. And I thought, 'This is sorrow. I can hear it hum around me and brush against my skin. The sorrow that keeps my senses alive. I will cherish it. I will feel it and recognise it and consider it a vital part of my existence. I will enjoy it as I do the happiness, and then I will move forward. Because without the sorrow, we would never feel the relief. And when the relief comes, so will the happiness. So whenever relief and happiness are ready for me, I am ready for them. And in the meantime, the sorrow can follow me around for a while. At least to remind me that I can 'feel'; that I am human.

That I am me.