It's Been A While

It's been nearly 3 months since I last posted.  The major things to catch everyone up on is that Spring semester is over by a month now and I'm glad for it!  That was a long semester.  I ended up passing my math class which means I never have to take another math class again (YAY!)  I actually passed it with a whole grade better than I thought I would, so that's cool.  I did what I set out to do when I signed up for my first math class; I made it through every single one of my math classes without having to take any of them again, which is not the standard at UVU, so that's an achievement of it's own.

My Rhetoric and Grammar classes went well.  What I know is that I don't like rhetoric and grammar can go to you-know-where, which is pretty much where it's going now days, anyway.  Seriously, college grammar is an unpleasant way to torture oneself.  Truly unnecessary in my opinion.  If you can't tell, I'm really glad this last semester is over.  The classes were difficult, my work schedule was not pleasant, and I came out of something in December that truly messed with my mind and there was no time to "work through it" before Spring semester started and so I was working through the residual emotional stuff the entire semester.

All in all, I'm in a great place right now.  Truly.  I:'m going to Iceland in November with my best friend and I can't wait.  My cat has survived her boosters and being spayed, so she's a strong one and I'm glad for it because you all know I haven't had the best luck with kittens.  I live alone which is so nice, and my best friend lives right next door and we have lots of fun all the time.  

I've spent so much time thinking about what I've wanted to write about, and true to form, the thing that is inside of me that I need to "write out" of me is difficult to say simply.  So, I'm just going to write and hope it is cohesive.  

This last winter lasted forever and it really took it's toll on me emotionally.  The thing I "got out of" in December and that followed me all through this last semester was another really deep betrayal and it's really messed with me.  I've been angry.  I'm sure you've noticed it in the timbre of my writing.  And I will never understand why this person did what they did to me, let alone the man I spent a good amount of time loving and how he betrayed me as well.  The thing that happened to me has no rational explanation and in trying to rationally understand it, well that's the thing, how does a rational person learn to understand an irrational thing?  It's a mind-trick, over and over again.  And I've spent a lot of time obsessing about it.  And I'm done obsessing.  

Yesterday I came home from work and I started thawing out some ground turkey and I got an onion out and a cutting board.  I was dicing the onion when I cut a portion of it unevenly, so I went to correct the cut and I put my entire hand underneath the onion and sliced down and cut very deeply into my finger.  My neighbor-friend was talking to me when it happened and she saw the whole thing and she covered her mouth and screamed.  I immediately pulled my hand back and looked at my finger which hadn't started to bleed yet and I told my friend, "It's okay, I just nicked it."  And then blood just started pouring profusely from my finger.  I put my hand under cold running water and the water ran red, at which point I calmly said, "that's not good."  My friend was pacing and asking if she should take me to the hospital.  I told her that wasn't necessary, because it was just a little cut.  She told me she would get me a towel and I thanked her for that.  I pulled my hand out from under the faucet thinking the bleeding would stop.  I watched my hand as blood ran down my wrist and forearm and elbow.  It wasn't stopping.  My friend got back and we decided that maybe I should have it looked at.  We ended up at the hospital and in true form when I am afraid or nervous, I was cracking jokes right and left with the staff and we were all laughing as I was holding my hand up clasped with a towel. Long story, short (too late), the emergency room doctor ended up poking and prodding and causing all sorts of discomfort before he determined that my fingertip could just be glued and stitches weren't necessary.

What does any of that have to do with winter and obsession, or even the color pink?  When I got home from the hospital last night and I was laying in bed thinking back on the day, the shock wore off and it occurred to me how bad the situation could have been.  Had I cut a little deeper, the situation could have been so much worse, I could have chopped the tip of my finger clean off.  And that's when it occurred to me that everything I'd been obsessing over up until that moment was really quite unnecessary.  Since I got out of this "thing"/situation in December that I was in, I've felt like the betrayal I experienced took a piece of me.  And that piece, I didn't think I would ever reclaim.  And that is what had been making me so mad.  What I realized is that in the case of what I escaped from in December, I can reclaim that part of me.  I can take it back.  But, the incident that happened last night, that could have literally resulted in a piece of me being separated from the rest of myself and that would have sucked big time and would have been instantaneously more painful than the entire betrayal leading up to December and the residual anger that's occurred since then.  Good Heavens, I hope this is making sense.  

Betrayal is cold like winter.  Betrayal blocks out light and peace and happiness and it can last as long as the night for a child who is scared of the dark.  And in that dark lies obsession, a drive to understand what we will never understand because we aren't meant to understand it.  That obsession can blot out the morning when clarity does come because we don't see the blessing before our face because we want to understand the betrayal, so we are blinded to the joy.  That's where I've been.  My pink has been muted and made dingy and it no longer radiated light.  But, I saw the red last night for all that it was and it was cleansing.  I didn't lose my fingertip and I'm really happy about that.  And while the pain of accidentally cutting into my finger was blocked until I had a doctor poking and prodding at it, once I felt it, while it hurt, I was glad to feel it because I could feel.  How is that for a metaphor?  The physical injury to my finger last night acted as a ginormous metaphor for the last 2.5 years of my life.  And while I've been more open to feeling this year, with pink being my theme, I was only dabbling.  

For the first time in a very long time, I'm back.  It's been growing delicately, but I've got a new drive and a new passion.  This is my year to radiate love and life and I haven't done that for years.  It's scary, but it's good too.