And every good stories come to an end.....

I open the book for the last time, only one chapter remains before there is nothing more to be read.  All the hours of taking in the pages have led to this.  It is the chapter that is going to tie all my questions and anticipations together and all the roads are going to come to a head and there will be an apex and the resolution to a story that has captured my mind.  And for a moment I am worried that the end will not be enough to satisfy me or it won't quench the expectation of wanting greatness to a my hopeful imagination. 

As the pages turn and the final picture is painted before my eyes, there is subtle sense of a bittersweet moment coming together as the last paragraph is read.   In one story your eyes are open to a new world or idea and within a moment that world is closed to you, yet you continue to filter thoughts through this newly colored lenses.  

It is like the moment you realize that the only way to truly love the person of your dreams is stop holding on to your dreams for them and let them have their own dreams without being crushed by letting go of it all.   Everything changes because you can never go back to that passionate desire that was beautiful and new but you are better for seeing the world in fresh ways because of dreaming for and with someone out of genuine hope.  It is the awaited chapter of our hearts that when is it ends the story is over so bittersweetly.  Yet despite the disappointment of letting it go, there is quiet part of the soul that smiles because it wants nothing more than for their story to go on and for their dream to be found.  The person we love is a story we want so many to be able to be in and have their lives changed by.   

For the longest time I have been sitting in front of my computer trying to find the words that could possibly describe what I have experienced in the last two months.  Yet I sit here numb, emotionless, and empty.  Perhaps these are the things should be writing about.  The fact that in this moment of profound victory . . . I am nothing.  

For months and months I was in the midst of pain and tribulation with romantic ideas of joyous victory, a renewal of my humanity, and embracing of a God's grace on this imperfect life.  The story played out in my mind day after day of the all the beautiful things that would happen once my ears received those words I fought hard and long to have whispered into existence.  The word that could make me believe that the battle was worth the fight.  Remission!  The word that tote a new genuine joy . . .at least I believed it would.  

So why does it take months for me to find these thoughts, these understandings of what I am really being and dealing with.  How is that this good story is coming to an end ? 

I often envisioned a party that would celebrate the triumph of life over death, a deluge of my gratitude toward those that supported me, and a bona fide joy for coming closer to God and this chapter of being in the thick of life itself.  I prayed to never let go of the love I have for the children I saw suffer everyday or to never again put myself before anything or anyone.  I want to be more than I was before I went through all this.  The end of the story was suppose to be happy and victorious and there was suppose to be a completion.  Yet none of these things have happened.  What I didn't plan for was that life, everyday life, would go on.  

It is easy to want to be something, to be somebody. . . . but it is hard to change.  It is hard to be an optimist when you lived in and with so many people in the face of hopeless odds.  I take more energy to go on everyday when you watch a little child lose to cancer when you are winning your own fight.  It is near impossible to not have extinguished hope when it is hanging on to stay aflame.  It is hard to have confidence in love when it appears to fail.  Too love with everything that you are and in the end realize there is diddly-squat that you can do to safeguard anyone for this world.  That your love for another can not save you either!   Or worst of all is when you realize your interpretation of love is incomplete, unfulfillable, idealistic but rarely acheivable.  That the idea is perfect but the fact that we are utterly flawed allows us to completely want to hoard love and rarely give it freely.  That heartbreak always outweighs the success.  It in this deflating notions that stop everything about me cold.  As the doctors had nicknamed me . . . I have become a machine.

These last few months since Madison died I have become cold and hard, angry and dejected, stubborn and logical and I have lost heart and compassion, depth and laughter, hope and joy.  Is there little wonder why the story is not ending like a story like mine should?  And I know that people can sense this.  I am an emptier version of myself.  So little of what I once was, the promise and destiny that so many thought was there, is getting lost in the this problem of pain.  

Was the battle worth it. Why am I here and why is that beautiful little girl that was full of love and joy not?  Here I sit and I have so many people that don't feel loved by me, that I have injured there hearts, and heart and hope to stop being the machine. This feeling creeps in the dark of night like I am not honoring her life because she would want me to be . . . . the me she knew and saw every week.  Days like these are hard to understand.  The whys and why nots.  After 29 years I am starting to believe I am hopeless at understand love and kindness the way it is meant to be.  

It is always darkest before the dawn. . . . . 

I once wrote that things were about to change.  This story has to change, it has no other direction it can go . . .. because if it doesn't the story will never be a good and it will just end.  I am letting go off this idea of what I want life to be so that His dreams for me can come true. . . . It is hard to let your dreams go when your future was wrapped up in them. . . .