The Cracks

“Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen

I left my marriage of 23 years and thrust myself out into the real world because it was necessary for my growth. Still, it has been so very hard and painful to let go of what you thought your life might be, what you tried so hard to pretend it was, what you so achingly and desperately longed for it to be. That is what I grieve today and have a hard time letting go of. I never counted on feeling so alone that it shakes you to your core, but I’m learning. It’s not a graceful process and I’m a curiously SLOW learner. I still find myself smiling at all the right times no matter how I’m feeling on the inside. A china knock off smile.

When you’re alone and grieving, it can easily get the best of you. Still, you have to let yourself go to that place and lose it. To that sharp edge of your darkness and light, where there may be a big crack of despair. It’s like walking a tightrope above a deep and dark abyss in the pitch black while trying to hold a candle to light your way. Jump in and feel it all. Lose it. You have to move down and through it to come up and out on the other side. I’m slowly learning, ever so slowly, that if I avoid or ignore that space, it just grows deeper and wider and will start to suck me in. I’m starting to learn to let myself go to that space and not turn around and run desperately looking for the light. To sit in that space and feel it. It sucks but is so necessary for our survival and it’s only going to make me stronger. The secret is not to dwell there. This I know all too well. Experience it, feel it, acknowledge it and then pick yourself up and keep going. Your life depends on it.