By Oh boy oh boy oh girl…..
Ever been in love? What a feeling it is to have, to experience and to totally enjoy.
Why even ask the question? Am I asking you or am I asking myself? I rarely use my blog posts to ask myself questions though I do and have quite often aired out my thoughts and feelings from deep inside of myself. Why so? Because, I originally called this blog “Random Thoughts”.
To the point of feeling in love or falling in love or experiencing love, I am certain many of you have enjoyed the bliss it brings with it. I am speaking from a place of what can be called, expanded emotional existence in this life of ours. The expansion came into to play when I went through some very dark years, years where I did not believe in the world or the words people had to say. I call them dark to make a reference term that may be understood more clearly. In reality it has been anything but dark, enlightening beyond words, beyond explanation. The expansion of my emotional self was born out of these times and has not been of my own doing. What I mean by this is that I did not sit down one day and decide to do some meditation and then enlighten myself beyond and to some place of super-hyper emotional well being or anything. I felt dragged downward and I have felt that life was very tough to participate in and to be involved with. I withdrew would be the simple way to explain it.
Why even begin to share some of this with you?
I share with you and put this article out there in the public domain via the world wide interweb to shed light on these things for those who may feel they have lost their own voice or may be scouring the internet for encouragement, inspiration or a simple pick me up. The value in my own story is that there is always something new ahead and there are many times we will not understand what is happening and we will not understand WHY!
To keep it short on the issue of where I found myself at is that I have had the misfortune to sit graveside on two separate occasions and bury my two sons. Darra died of sudden death when he was 15 years of age one night in his sleep. Patrick as a toddler of 1yr and 4 months walked his way into a swimming pool and drowned. For me it was the nightmare of nightmares that would not end. My son’s deaths occurred within 2 yrs and 6 months of each other. So, basically within 3 short years I went from super de duper happy go lucky and fun loving to bitter down in the dumps. It only took the first shock and tragedy to collapse me and then the second whilst making attempts to rebuild myself to floor and shatter what was left of me. These episodes of stretching of my emotional self really did do a number on me and my emotional well being and were two complete wrecking ball whacks to the mental health also.
I write and share some of my personal issues here in my blog to shed some light of where I have been in terms of tragedy. I understand what it is like to question every single ounce of life itself. I am also aware that there are many people out there in our world who find it hard to pick themselves up from where they are and what it is that might, only might be going through their head right now today.
I write to you today about the emotional stretching of how it got really bad for me for some time and then I can sit here and write about what it is to feel love. To enjoy it and to feel what it means to me. The stretching to the left so to speak in times of darkness and grief has also allowed me to experience the heightened greatness of feeling love and beauty on the opposite side to the right, again so to speak.
I know love exists in the world, I can feel it and I can experience it. I feel it from my partner and I feel it from my children, I have experienced it from my family and my friends. I do agree that having been stretched emotionally into a place of grief and bereavement that there is the possibility that I now experience all of my emotions to a deeper or “stretched” type of feeling. Call it level or plateau or whatever you will. The point is that it is possible to overcome our severe tragedies and it is possible to experience the look of love from our partner. The love we see in the eyes of our children. These things are real and can happen for us all. I never did think I would ever smile again in my life back when I was sitting graveside or on a dark night when I sat alone and looked back over pictures of my deceased children. I never thought that I would ever hold my children again and feel love. I never thought that I would sit and hold Patrick’s mom (my partner) and feel love ever again in a peaceful moment. I did not know that my stunningly beautiful daughter would bring so much joy to my heart.
Funny thing about when I post or write about things is that I only feel comfortable to write about that which I have experienced. Can I be convincing to you through a blog post?
I have experienced these feelings of love. I am enjoying and can openly tell you that I never ever thought I could return or go beyond where I am now today. What was holding me back you may ask? I was not ready – good answer. I was holding me back, afraid to feel the nice once again because of fear – good answer. I was and have been preventing myself to be too overwhelmed with emotion because I have seen how hard I can fall when things do not work out – good answer too.
These fears inside of ourselves can prevent us from experiencing and enjoying so much of what life has to offer us. I know only too well what it is to be drowning, to be drowning in sorrow. I know what it is like to struggle to come to terms with something in our lives and I am totally aware of how hard it can be to deal with the reality that can be present in our lives. These are some of the reasons I write about love to you today.
How many of us have ever considered that “All we need is LOVE”?
Imagine for a moment every baby that is born into the world is deserving of love and that they cry for food and to be held. They can be clingy at times (for sure) though all they want and need is a little love. You and me, we all began the same way when we were born, in need of a little love. As we grew we began to understand some false narrative that we didn’t deserve love or we didn’t need it to survive. It is the nicest form of existence that I have ever experienced and I am not in any way ashamed to share this with you. This is not a “Valentines day” post that I forgot to post either. I am simply sharing with you that I am in love and have been for quite a long time and when these feelings are reciprocated and felt back by me through my children’s eyes or my partner’s love, it is how I can share with you that the hard dark times do not last forever. I have walked though the fires of hell and survived, I even more recently been at the point of drowning and very nearly dead and I am here to tell the tale.
What is it that keeps me going?
The new heightened sensitivity that I have been given is allowing me to feel some of the most beautiful of what we have in life. The awareness that comes with being open to receive love is magical and I am certain that there are many people in our little world that think they will never smile again, I am aware that many people suffer in silence through their own trauma and the way in which it is possible to really believe that life will never be good again. This is why I am writing this post tonight, to encourage you to take my word for it that all will become better once we begin to understand that it may never be the same again and we begin to see that things are ever changing, just like how I went from very happy and fun loving to bitter and broken. Changes are happening all of the time. We simply need to see that we can have a beautiful life even though we may have had to struggle to stay afloat. Nice and beautiful does exist and are very possible inside of your own life too.
For some back story you can find my memoir TWO sons TOO many on Amazon.
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It may not all happen for you over night. It will happen once you have a willingness to keep on going!
A.McNallyauthor.com 