I started this blog as a sort of diary for myself.  A way to learn through my own words who and what I am. I am and never was eager to find distinction or even any publicity like others.  It is not my way. I simply got tired of sitting up in bed each night with a cramped hand trying to make my pen flow as easily as the thoughts in my head.

I had promised myself when I started this blog that I would write in it frequently, if not every day.  I was pleasantly surprised with I was honored on Freshly Pressed, but at the beginning it was just a journey.

I suppose it still is that journey. The problem is in the last year alone the journey of my life has taken so many turns and so many dark and narrow passages that it is hard to find the energy to put it in black and white. Putting it in black and white gives it purpose, gives it a realism that I don’t want to face.

In the last year I have watched my marriage take a turn that I could never predict, my relationship with my husband becoming so much different than the girlhood dreams I once had.  I have moved, lost a job, lost a dog, cashed in literally all my retirements, watched my husband struggle to find a job, moved in with my mother, and tried desperately to keep up in a way that my disease and my own conscience could live with.  I have faithfully taken my meds, despite the lack of insurance to pay for them not because I want to, but because I realize with all this change that it is more vital than ever.

I am aware, like most people of my blessings.  I am certainly aware that I have two beautiful and wonderful journey whose life has also changed at the whim of their parents.  I am acutely aware that I have family not only willing to take me and my children in, but support my family in a myriad of ways. I know that even now that one sip of coffee that I crave every morning is provided to me because my own mother has taken over the grocery shopping.

But this journey, this rocking horse that is going out of control, makes it desperately hard to write. Despite knowing the harm, and the very real danger of convincing myself that this life has to have reached the bottom of it’s hell, each month their comes another test.  I try to hold on to the old adage that God wouldn’t give me anything I couldn’t handle, but truthfully it is beginning to come down to his definition being so far from my own as to be impossible to reconcile.  This last year has not made me a better person, but a depressed and oftentimes bitter person.  Even losing your hard earned credit score will do that to a girl.

I pass this computer, also my mother’s, everyday.  I load it up so that my children can play their games on it. I touch it, work with it, and even manipulate it everyday. But there is a lack of something in me that would allows me to sit for ten minutes and continue a diary of events that not only embarrass me, but literally belongs in some War and Peace novel. There is something in me pushing against the very real need I have always had to write my thoughts.  Almost as the depth of fear and despair that I feel waking up every morning controls my ability to type a sentence.

I sat here this morning out of guilt. Not guilt that I haven’t entertained the masses, but guilt that I have betrayed my own muse by ignoring her.  I have walked away from that need to express myself in order to wallow in my own tears. And I can’t find pride in that. Despite the absolute and incredible energy it takes to type right now, I can’t find joy that I am finally writing.  Because tomorrow I probably won’t.  Tomorrow I will spend another day letting myself down.

I recognize that my life will make a turn, that no one, not even God himself can expect me to continue as I have been.  I recognize that there is too much goodness, and faith, and simple beauty to guarantee only darkness for myself.

The one thing I have learned this year is that it isn’t the full story that needs to be bright, or the chapter that needs to be contagious.  It is simply the word that must be focused on, because otherwise there is nothing in life but darkness.  If God’s purpose this last year, and even today, was to teach me that pinpoints of light are just as important as a full sun, I think I have that one. Now if he could only give me about thirty pinpoints at once.