From the minor endings like the TV shows I love coming to a series finale, my favourite fragrance finishing (ooh alliteration !) and having to stop wearing Fit Flops after donkey's years because they're not suitable for work. To the biggies - going back to work and not being around all the time for my boys any more. Taking care of Neo in the full knowledge that he is old for a cat and all the pills we are giving him will only hold off the inevitable for so long.
Maybe it's the end of the long days and the slow progress towards Autumn and Winter. That inevitability of the nights getting darker a bit earlier until it's clearly a different season. I've been teaching yoga in the evenings and it's still light outside when the class finishes. That won't be the case for much longer. However it does mean I get to teach by candlelight again and that is magical.
Then I think about how I've coped with relationship endings. My first marriage ended a long time ago now and I barely recognise the woman I was then. We had been so unhappy and he kept telling me to leave him. One day it was completely clear to me that it was time to leave. It seemed so obvious that was the right thing to do. It was painful and difficult and the fallout went on for years. I had been thrown out of my family to be with him and yet they took me back when I left. I waited every day for 2 years for the pain to stop. I'm not sure when it did, but it must have because I'm here now.
In a very sad episode I lost a friend for a few years because he was in a relationship with someone who was toxic and unkind. I couldn't bear to see him being mistreated and we lost touch. I told him years later that I was always his friend, but I just couldn't be around her and he opened up that he hadn't been happy. Being a friend sometimes means having to be brutally honest and that isn't easy. I wish I had checked if he was happy instead of taking myself away to avoid her.
The finality of losing Soraya has been the most difficult ending - obviously. It has tested my mental strength and pushed me to the limits of my patience. Someone asked me how I manage to do so many things and I smiled and shrugged. The truth is I keep 'doing' because if I stop and think it just hurts too much. If I start to cry I might never stop. There are things that help. Music, yoga, running, swimming, cuddling Neo, Hubbie, my boys, friends. I am very lucky.
Eventully I hope to think less about what is ending and instead focus on what is beginning.
No comments:
Post a Comment