I feel like I can breathe a little better today. Not that this cold has abated much, but for some reason, some things feel lifted. And then on the drive into work, I felt a new purpose.
I think I got it because last night, I finally listened. Sometimes She has to smack me a little to open my ears, but smack she did, and ears, they received, finally.
Yesterday was the final day of feeling low, feeling done, burnt, used, worthless and hopeless. I started to doubt things that normally, I hold onto for dear life and keep my life worth living. I started to lose faith. Faith in life, joy, strength, and even in me. In all of it.
And then I got a text message. Four, actually. From my best guy friend in all of college. Randomly. I had messaged him online probably about a week ago, as his Facebook page had vanished and I wanted to check in. Last night he messaged me about searching for jobs and how much he missed me. He invited me up to his place in Maine for this weekend but left the door totally open understanding if I was already booked, but wanted me to know how much my presence in his life was missed.
He made me laugh and smile more than I have in awhile. Genuinely.
It was in that moment of genuine happiness at being so loved (and by someone who's been with me through some of my lowest points in life, some of my worst "me" times where I hated myself, and yet he still stuck by me through it all. But vice versa too...) and in that moment, I had another moment. A moment of true deep realization, hitting me like brick (Her smack).
I realized, that yesterday, I woke up to another text message. From someone I still call my baby brother, down in Florida. A friend for more years than worth counting, who has helped my marriage so many times in our early years, that to this day my gratitude is immeasurable. Just a hello, replying to a text I'd sent a good week prior.
And I had gotten an email mid-day yesterday as well. From a former coworker and good friend that I think I haven't spoken to or heard from in about five years! One of those "hey I saw your name and thought I'd give your old email address a try just in case, how the heck are you???" kind of email. We emailed back & forth a few times yesterday and it was really nice to reconnect like that with him.
But it wasn't until I got the four texts from the friend in Maine that I saw the coincidence of it all. That I saw her face right in front of me, smacking me, without seeing a thing through my actual eyes.
My moment of realization last night was this - when my friend from Maine texted me, he was actually the third. To me, three is a big number in regards to coincidences. Maybe you could have two, but once you hit three, it's no coincidence, baby.
On a hopeless, a doubting my faith day, I woke to a message from one old friend. Midday got a message from a second old friend. And finally just before going to bed, I got the third message.
I guess you could say, "I got the message". Old friends out of woodwork expressing love and that I am missed when I hadn't connected with each in quite some time, all three pick yesterday specifically to find me again? And three no less, one for each part of a day. Dropped in my lap. I was blown away when I realized. I immediately turned on my bedside light and wrote about it in my diary.
As I was writing, the words kept coming out wrong. I had been trying to write as if for some blog, as if for an audience, and not simply to write it down. Fail. I know better than that. That I need to write simply because I NEED TO WRITE, not because I have some need to be read. And I need to remember that better, I think.
So then this morning, in thinking of this new Tumblr blog I have begun, which so far has only served to mirror THIS blog, I had a new idea... People tend to read blogs that have a theme. A friend has a blog about his transgender journey, and he has a ton of readers. His blog has a theme, something unique and an idea behind it that stays stable, consistent. And I thought, what if this Tumblr of mine had a "purpose", a theme, a consistency that this blog does not. Perhaps I do have a need to be read, as well as to write. And why can I not have two ways, to serve each of my two needs, but separately?
I started THIS blog as a diary, a journal, a place to dump some emotional diarrhea. So why do that on two blogs? Serves no purpose, really, right?
But then, my name is HOPE. I've always wanted to be hope for others, I've always felt my name is part of my purpose. Ever since meeting a boy at age 16 who was blown away that my name is what it is, who did not believe me when we were introduced. He literally demanded my drivers' license to prove my name, because for him to meet someone who was really named HOPE in that moment of HIS life, would have been too coincidental for him to handle right then. Because all he needed most in the world at that exact moment in time? Was a little hope. And there I was. (She smacked him too, apparently) :)
So I think maybe I'm going to keep this blog as my soul's place to purge its whatever. But make this new Tumblr thing all about hope. One for Hope with a big H, and one for hope with a little h.
Tumblr will have none of my whining when I need to vent, that's what this place is for. But when people search by keyword on Tumblr looking for hope, the idea of it, I want to be there for them, I want to serve my purpose. If I could so much as help one more person, like the boy when I was 16, to just get through that one moment in time, that one day of doubt like I had yesterday, then maybe I'd get to give back.
To give back what I was given yesterday. I was given back my hope, by sheer "coincidence" and my goddess. She reminded me why I believe in Her. Not a "God" or diety like the Christians have. But a mother. To me, She is the combined total of all the energy in all of life in all the universe. Energy with a balance weighing to the side of good, of love, of hope, of joy.
If each human being has a soul and a consciousness, just in the one tiny bit of energy we each get to have inside of us for our lifetime, then I believe that if you take all those tiny bits of energy and combine them, the likelihood of that combined energy having some semblance of a soul or consciousness is high, since even a tiny bit does. The combined total of all our bits would have an impressive soul, it seems to me.
I believe that this is our Source, this combined energy. Where we came from and to where we each return at "death". And the closest word we have for such a thing in our language so far is "mother".
Unconditional love and support, wishing us only that we find joy, happiness, that perhaps we learn and evolve, but only in that we are then more able to love each other and find contentment and satiation in our connections to each other, to ourselves and to Her. (I only call this energy a "she" because that is the easier pronoun for me to connect with)
Funny, too, that I have a highly private name for this "goddess" or "mother" figure of mine, this persona that I give to my source energy belief. Until today, my name for her has always been intensely private. Still is, but with the feeling of renewed purpose and hope in faith that I was able to receive last night, that carried into today, I almost feel like her name is soon to be released. That maybe others need a name for this source, too. This "not God" higher power to believe in.
Because the "God of our fathers" has become an idea of man. And in the moment of becoming something belonging to humans, it immediately becomes flawed, imperfect, tainted by our insecurities and our battles. It becomes laden with our desires and our present needs, and loses it's wholeness and balance. For we, we are imperfect, we are not whole.
But my source has not these failings of people. She has only love. And my connection to that love was finally restored again last night. But only with the balance of being given the weight of new purpose. A bargain I am willing to make. A deal I am willing to take. And I am grateful.
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