My current state of discombobulation…

April 22, 2013 by My Spoken Heart - Andrea Crowell 18 Comments

I have been suffering from bloggers block since my recent move… and now I am in the position where I have put off doing a post long enough that I feel a bit overwhelmed. I have many ideas swirling around in my head. So many in fact that they kind of get all meshed together tumbled about until they are an incoherent blob that I cannot seem to unscramble. It makes me think of trying to undo scrambled eggs… once the yolks and whites are mixed there is no turning back unless you start over with new eggs…

So I think I shall start with my recent move: the actual move itself went really well. The problem is that even though the new place actually has comes in with larger sq footage the layout is very different and it seems that I actually have more furniture than I realized and I am not sure where to put it all. So all in all the new place is still feeling very unorganized and I have much unpacking and setting up left to be done. I got the essentials done and then kind of hit a road block… so I sit and stare at it feeling bewildered and wondering “now what?” One step at a time it will get there and it will feel like home… eventually!

Truthfully I have been feeling a bit off kilter, especially since the sorrow of Boston, and I know that many of you out there are also experiencing this. I have fought with myself on this. I was already feeling off, trying to re-establish my sense of balance. A lot has changed in my life in the last month. Not only did I relocate to a new dwelling, but my eldest daughter and her family relocated, it’s strange not getting my little daily visits from my grandbabies. Plus my son had been crashing at my place for the last few months and he is now in Northern Alberta. So it is just me and the 2 youngest on the home front.  And then there is Boston… I find myself in a place of strange detachedness.  I have a hard time coping with such things… and to be honest right before my move a girl in our community went missing and roughly week later was found in a neighboring community dead, and although my family and I did not know her, many people we know did and I know how they have been affected by it. So I was already in a state where I was questioning humanity. I often find that I do not know how to deal with these types of situations. Emotionally they wipe me out. I no longer watch the news, or read the paper. I just can’t. I react strongly, or not at all. I do have the ability to push these things away – put them on the other side of a wall so that I look at them from afar. It’s a coping mechanism I have learned over the years, otherwise I become enveloped, and overwhelmed. If I allowed myself I would spend my days crying over all the hurt in the world. But what good is that? I am then rendered useless and cannot even supply myself or my kids with the basics. So I swallow it, push it down and away. But every once in awhile I get blindsided by the cruelty of this world we live in, and I get the wind temporarily knocked out of me. I am resilient and always find my way back but it still causes everything to kind of shift into slow motion for a moment or two.

I no longer try to understand these things. I can’t. I try not to let them dictate how I live my life, or how I raise my children because I cannot protect them all the time from everything. Sometimes we find wisdom in unlikely places, like Finding Nemo…

Marlin: I promised I’d never let anything happen to him.
Dory: Hmm. That’s a funny thing to promise.
Marlin: What?
Dory: Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.

Not to say I live pretending the world is never cruel, but I am also well aware that it is a beautiful, amazing and even giving place to be. But it seems that there is bad along with all the good, darkness along with all the light, and perhaps these things exist as they do so that we can appreciate the good stuff. So we can revel in the moments of joy, celebrate the moments that actually make sense, and learn to seek and give love in a world that can feel so cold and apathetic.