Balance and Purpose

A light morning shower cools the air, Puerto Rico before spring, mid-seventies and breezy. Winter, my official favorite season will end with spring, March 20^th, when night equals day.

Balance on the planet only comes twice a year. Balance of day and night, dark and light, only comes twice a year. Is that a metaphor?

I think it is for the pain-joy balance in my life. Kirt’s death put me in hell. Every day hurt so much that I didn’t really want to live.

A few months into this process I noticed that movies, working out at the gym, hanging with friends, or live music could distract me from my pain. I mean, you know shit like that in your brain, but living the moment is something else.

My brain still doesn’t work the way it did before the DKD, day Kirt died. I can’t concentrate too hard, or too long; it hurts my head. It’s like someone is giving me an electric shock. My memory sucks; I have to write things down. That happened to me before, after Kirt’s accident, I had similar trouble, but it went away for the most part. Age doesn’t help.

Planning my future became habit after I took a sales training course from Tommy Hopkins; thank you, Tommy. Things almost always go better when I have a plan.

I went to the baths in Coamo, a horseshow in Ponce, live jazz in Mayaquez, and the beach once a week. For a couple of hours the pain eased. Someone advised me to do something good for myself every day. Some days that meant I cooked myself a nice meal. I had no taste for food, dropped thirty pounds, but I focused on proper nutrition.

Distractions work only brief periods, so I repeated them more frequently as time progressed. When I didn't, depression visited with a vengeance. The many down periods could only be combated by reading. Early, after the DKD, I slept a lot.

Laying around, reading, my front line defense against depression, comes with a huge drawback; laying around begets laying around, I tried to maintain my workout schedule.

The love of my life died. I am alone, being miserable or distracting myself is not a long term solution. It reminds me of the alert code that played in American airports for years after nine-eleven. We are at yellow alert. This is a yellow alert. I can’t live in the alert.

I need to find a balance in my new reality where I’m not miserable, if I’m not distracting myself.

If what “they” say is correct, I have a purpose. Caroline Myss wrote that we have contracts with God/the Universe.

Twenty months after DKD, I can say that my healing is a work in progress. Carol Myss also wrote about “Woundology” wherein we hang on to our wounds. I don’t think that I’m hanging on to my wounds, but I may not be the best person to ask; who knows?

Long term goals need to be addressed. On my twentieth birthday day I entered into a contract with myself to work hard and contribute to society, and then, when I got old, I would travel.

In two months, I’ll be sixty-seven; suddenly, all I care to do is plan visiting different places. It feels like an alarm went off in my head, but is it really just providing escape, another distraction to prevent me for facing day to day life? 

All I can say is that if it gets me to a better place, “Thank you, God!”