Thinking over the past few weeks, I am trying to reflect and "make sense of things". I am not sure I can get to the root of my emotions today.
So, of course, I turned to google and searched, "complex emotions which would reflect joy and sorrow in the same moment". I found "saudade". I will start here, although saudade is not exactly what I am feeling.
Inwardly, I feel it expressed as if I were poised on the brink of something great and indescribable, and I arrived there from enduring a long, hard journey of joys and pains. Yet the moment is full of sorrow and yearning, and the lingering memories of the joy that was once had.
There is a sense that there is still good to be taken from what is necessarily left behind. It is the sense that who I am now is not because of what I experienced and endured, but a reflection of how I chose to see each moment; Those small tastes of joy, only now reflected in a new perspective encased by sorrow. It's a feeling of being compelled into a new being, with a new understanding, and becoming someone new and whole because I was broken down. Everything had to crumble in my life, and I needed to be ripped apart at my very core, and I had to start at the beginning to rebuild.
In rebuilding it was necessary for me to make a choice: I needed to redefine and carry a new vision of what the future holds and who I am in this world. And I couldn't have done it without both the joy and the sorrow. For both are motivators: Joy motivates us to continue forward, and sorrow motivates us to refigure and refocus. I needed to decide if I believed in the pursuit of joy.
Again, I am sad. I am sad because of who I have lost, and what they represented. I am sad because there are those close to me who don't support me and believe in me in this moment because I have chosen differently. I am sad because I am alone. And I am sad because the moments of beauty and wholeness with each is gone and there isn't peace and unity where there once was. Now things stand in a different light and we are poised against each other.
Maybe that moment of wholeness wasn't real, but the sense of beauty was. It can be a stepping stone to greater things. Sometimes this is what becomes truth: I chose one way, and they chose another. We diverged from the same path and sharing the same moments. I am certain there is not a deeper sadness than this to me. This is the ache and longing for better times and distant memories laced in the knowledge that such beauty can be rebuilt and sealed, but not likely with those same souls. And this because of our choices. This is the deepest sense of loss to me.
Yet, again, these inner yearnings and senses are indicators to me that life is meant to be lived, and progress is meant to be made. Joy is meant to be sought and eventually retained. How could I know to seek deeper and binding things if I did not experience the glimpses and the subsequent losses of those possibilities? If I didn't feel them and mourn them?
Now is a time to rebuild and redirect my life in a manner that would bring me closer to where I want to be, and more particularly, who I want to become. Because that will determine where I will end up.
There is a power given to each of us which endows us to become our own creators. We have the power to create our own realities. That is to say, the way we choose to live and think has the power to influence our circumstances. Those realities can be full of loss and brokenness, and a sense that nothing really will be all that we want it to be; or they can be full of overcoming, forward motion, contentment in each moment, and an accounting of our blessings and progresses- a belief in the possibilities before us.
Here's an interesting aside: outward success doesn't necessarily describe the nature of the person within. Life is too complex and full of many different seasons.
Right now life is in transition for my family. I don't feel to note every single change and transition because the impact of each is so unique and complex. But, my heart is broken, and so is my home. There is not enough of me to go around. Realistically, the goal is to survive these moments of transition in relative contentment and peace, which is greater to me than fighting for the perfect outward image. The only way to rebuild is for everything to be torn apart, and slowly rebuilt in orderly fashion. This is my moment of crisis; if I am seeking to rebuild something sturdy and lasting, that process will wisely be slow and meticulous. Each step and decision must be accounted for and checked against the history of experience. And before rebuilding can begin, healing and introspection must take place.
And this last piece I am adjusting to: I am realizing how much I have changed over the past four years, and how much those changes have necessarily displaced me. And I experience the joys and sorrows of every moment, past and present. I am grateful for my growth and my inner healing, but I am sad for who I am losing and the reshaping that is about to begin.
Letting go is hard. Holding on to a belief in greater things sometimes is even harder. My task is to do both and find myself somewhere beautiful on the other side.
