Broken

Well here I am, less time has passed since my last blog posting but still it’s been a few days.  I hope that everyone is doing well.  

I have had the sad duty of watching people break from the first moment the carpet has been ripped away from their feet to land them on their bums in a hard painful crash.  It’s never fun to watch someone break, at least for me.  I know some people get a sick pleasure out of watching others in crippling misery but for me, it affects me on many levels.  

This last month, I watched my sister who has been married for 18 years suddenly tell her husband that she no longer loves him and she was leaving him.  Everyone was shocked especially the husband who had absolutely no clue there was a problem in the first place.  I watched this man, my brother for all intents and purposes break and beg his wife for a second chance.  I watched her turn him down flat and walk away, not caring if the consequences meant that she wouldn’t see her son as much but she felt that she had to do it for whatever reason plagued her.  It wasn’t for me to understand but this kind of thing drives me insane.  

My family is a very strong, albeit strange family.  We have family dinners every Sunday because we are so close.  If we miss a weekend my nieces and nephews struggle to the next week.  Yep, we are not the typical family that only gets together on holidays but we also get together whenever we can.  It is important to us.

Now I got to watch my daughter who is 29 years old get the shock of her life and shatter bit by bit when her life partner told her that she was in love with another woman after 8 years of marriage.  No one expected this at all, least of all my daughter or this other woman’s husband of 10 years.  They totally seemed like the perfect couple, never fighting, and being so full of love for one another.  It rocked my family to the core and as a parent, breaks my heart to see my daughter go through this type of horrible pain.  She is a strong woman and will get through it but anyone that has had a break up knows it won’t be an easy road.  

Now I have seen the grief process impact several of my family members on many levels as I am sure anyone can guess if they guess how close my family is.  I have seen the pain so intense that tears are not possible to be kept at bay as I see the heartbreak overwhelm the one affected at that particular moment.  The pain radiates from the person experiencing it to those around them, making it possible to see the devastation in progress, how each person there deals with it in their own way.  

The pain is a living thing, it creeps out with tentacles to penetrate a person and how strong that person is has the distinct effect on how far they will reach in, and how much damage they will do to the person it is invading at that moment.  It is hard to watch, even harder to share in the experience but I have learned from it.  I have learned from how I react to the confusion, the utter unbelief of the situation but more then anything, I have learned from how others deal with it.

 

I think as a writer, regardless of the genre they write it, any situation being it painful or happy is an opportunity to observe and understand how people work.  It is seeing past the given situation to the core, being able to internalize it and feel it I think that helps me in how to better write.  

This said it has been a tough year for me.  I have let my writing take a back burner in my life because I have been overwhelmed with life but I am now excited to look at my stories that I have started.  I am back to the “Onward and Upward!” thoughts.  I am ready to get busy.  I plan to take what I have experienced this last year and take advantage of it, writing for the pure pleasure of it and see where it takes me.  

I hope that others that might be experiencing life’s challenges take a moment to stop, look around and learn from what is going on in their lives.  Take advantage of the experiences and take the good from the bad.  Find that silver lining and don’t let the difficult things you see win.  Most important?  Find someone to smile at, say something positive too, and just listen to someone.  There are so many broken people these days that you never know when that smile, or kind word will make someone’s day, even in a small way :O)

Happy Reading!