embrace

Those of you that know me well know that I need to express things to help me process. Sometimes it is verbally, sometimes in writing...this is one of those times.

In friendship you embrace pain with all the good. In relationship you absorb people into yourself. Even if only in some ways, they come in all the same. It's good that they come in. It's what relationship is about...letting people in, embracing them, inviting them into your life. they always bring much that is good, very good in fact. But the goodness and the pain are drawn in with the same embrace. If you bring someone in, let them in, you necessarily displace part of yourself. you expand and stretch and squeeze to make room for them. All of this is very, very good. And even in the midst of the pain, you would never wish it gone. you would never trade it. So when friends go away, when they aren't present in your life anymore it's like losing a little piece of yourself...like losing a piece of something seperate from yourself, but something embraced, accepted, wanted. A little piece of good is taken...and it isn't clean. it isn't like a piece of a puzzle that is removed easily. It's like roots from a plant pulled out of the earth. The soil has made space for the roots to be, to grow and when they, twisted and spread, are pulled up the soil is turned and broken.



These are some quotes from A River Runs Through It that describe a bit of how I'm feeling right now...

"Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted."

"...as the moon lingers a moment over the bitterroots, before its descent into the invisible, my mind is filled with song...." (look it up if you want to know the rest)

"And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding."


...goodbye.