Forget You

Quote of the Day: 

One of the keys to happiness

is a bad memory.

~Rita Mae Brown~

Current Local Weather: 

150% chance of ice storms on the outside. 

99.9% chance of warmth, calm and beauty 

shifting from the west moving on towards the inside of my heart.

99.9% Chance of a break in all things bad from yesterday 

carrying over until all the tomorrows to come.

Currently on my iTunes: 

"Lost in the Light"

Barchords

Bahamas

Currently Reading: 

"Hope Dies Last"
Studs Terkel

**For my new, old friend, Tim.**

Dear Friends, Family and My Family of Friends...

Have you ever had a song break your heart? A musician? A writer? An artist? A man? A woman? Anyone? Have you ever had to forgive someone that at the time, didn't seem forgivable? Did you ever want to "Forget" them...but just couldn't? Did you ever want to say..."Although there's pain in my chest, I wish you the best...but I'd love to Forget You...oh, I really hate your ass right now" Cee Lo couldn't have said it better...

However, as the quote of the day says, "One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory." Forgetting, er, rather...unremembering, is sometimes the best remedy for everything that ails you. But forgetting anything isn't an instamatic super power that has been granted to many of us.

I've recently reconnected with an ex. But this wasn't just any ol' ex...this was one I was deeply in love with. One that helped me in so many ways, if I began to tell you about it all, you'd get bored with me and stop reading right about now...This hasn't been an easy reconnection, though.  Seamless isn't something either of us know. There are those lingering feelings of...do I still have "those" feelings for him? Do I still want...this...the "thing" that broke my heart and left me for a pile of nothing on the floor? I had to stop before I began. 

This "thing," I had to remember, is not a thing at all. "It's" a person. A very kind, warm, open and friendly...and HAPPY....person. What truly broke my heart was the idea that what we "had" was over. I felt lost. And I felt that way for a very long time afterwards...and although all seemed lost, the map to find something in the space that was vacant, to occupy it again, turns out, wasn't too far away from where I was standing. 

After many discussions and conversations, we both realized that there was definitely something more at fault than any other thing...that huge thing known as "miscommunication." 

We realized that we had to be bigger than our selves and learn from what had happened months prior to our renewed discussion of all things, "WTF."  We learned many, many things but the one thing I walked away with was this: 

Sometimes you have to realize that the pain you go through has a purpose. Pain is one of the best educations anyone can receive. Sometimes you don't realize it at the time, but after it's always clear. 

I was talking with a friend this morning about how music has a massive effect on everything I do. (I know, duh!?!) In all seriousness, music sits on the edge of gravity for me. Sometimes it's the only thing separating me from the clouds, sometimes, it, itself, becomes the cloud on which I sit and observe life from. Sometimes, it is my soul, removed from me to teach me about myself. Music is not a misnomer, or a background color in my life, it is my life. It is everything to me. It is my living color, it is where I stand, it is who I am in so many beautiful ways. Music has the ability to break you into a million pieces, but as I told him, I'd rather feel the pain and live with the limp and scar than cast it and "fix" the piece it broke away from my soul. 

There's a "new" (new to me) band out there by the name of Bahamas. (pronounced Ba-hahm-ahs) They have a tune called, "Lost in the Light." I think this is one of the most soul-filled and alluring tunes on forgiveness, losing love and love lost and found and lost again, that has ever been heard by man. Please, listen while reading the lyrics below. 

I'm lost in the light 
I pray for the night 
To take me, to take me to 

After so many words 
Still nothing's heard 
Don't know what we should do 

So if someone can see me now, let them see you 

It was my greatest thrill 
But we just stood still 
You let me hold your hand 'til I had my thrill 

Even countin' sheep 
Don't help me sleep 
I just toss and turn right there beside you 

So if someone could help me now, they'd help you too. 

They'd help you to 
See you through 
All the hard things we've all gotta do 
Cause this life is long 
And so you wouldn't be wrong 

Bein' free you and me on my own! 

And I held my own 
Still I rattled your bones 
I said some awful things and I take them back 

If we would try again 
Just remember when 
Before we were lovers, I swear we were friends 

So if someone could see me now let them see you 

Let them see you 
See you through 
All the hard things we've all gotta do 
Cause this life is long 
So you wouldn't be wrong 
Bein' free here with me on my own!

Where my words miserably fail, this tune picks up. I believe that the friendship and new facet of love that this man and I share is so much better for what we went through than not. It's allowing me to learn that not all love that is lost is a lost or just cause. We all have to learn this lesson at some point or other. We all have to figure out that our belief in love is there for a reason.

I might be in love again. I might always be in love. Of course, one can always hope that it's always there or always a possibility. Otherwise, what's the point? It's not just in existence for sex, for pain, or for pursuit of the almighty ending to our perceived fairytale life. 

Love that is lost is there for our benefit. I've learned to love regardless of being hurt by even my own words and hurting someone else through them. I've learned that there is no "perfect" fit for any one soul, especially mine. And believe me when I say, that's no easy pill to swallow. There are only two people that can learn to love through understanding, forgiveness and allowing each other the freedom to be two within the relationship that makes them one. Thank you, Alfie, for writing and singing beyond the skies, beyond any cloud I've ever sat on...thank you for your tune "Lost in the Light."  

I hope most of all, that through finding a new friend in an old lover, that every one that has gone through this can find it in their hearts echo the line (as the tune says) "I swear we were friends before we became lovers." There is too much pain and too many ice cold shoulders rubbing against the sustainable warmth that is easily found inside each of us to deny ourselves the happiness we deserve. The point of loving is to love with reckless abandon. To love someone so very much that when others see you, they see them, too.

Your assignment for this week is to find the person that hurt you and forget them. Forget them as you knew them or as you remember them. Forget you, too. Remember this...remember that you've forgotten them as they were, remember them as they are and remember you were there too. Help them through all the hard things we've all gotta do when the opportunity to love again finds your soul. 

Yours in Difficult Lives, Loving Life and Living as though I've Forgotten It All Just to Do it Again, 

Cicily 

Shadow Days

Quote of the Day:

Grief does not change you, Hazel.

It reveals you.

~John Green~

Current Local Weather: 

100% Chance of Showers. The lighter side of 

revelation only to be seen through curtains of tears.

Currently on Spotify: 

"Shadow Days"

John Mayer

Currently Reading:

"The Fault In Our Stars"

John Green

For Kathy, Wes, Matt, Jenny, Jordan, 

Penny, Steve and everyone else that is now a bit too lonely without her.

Dear Friends, Family and My Family of Friends, 

This is probably the hardest blog I've written to date. I sent my mother a sympathy card today. I could barely pick it up at the store, I could barely write in it to send it. I did it anyway. She lost her best friend last week. I lost my "other mother." The only way I can even pretend to deal with anything like this is to write about it. So please, bear with me. 

This blog isn't all about the fault of grief or the way it molds and shapes and changes the way you look and see and feel day after day as your soul absorbs its damn impact, it is about the way that letting go of the soul that once was is more about letting go of an idea and opening up to a new one. 

The concept of letting go is one most of us have to learn despite ourselves. Truth be told, I've always been the kind of person that deeply mourns when someone leaves my space. Sometimes, I mourn the loss of company and the natural "high" a friend's smile or laugh can bring to you just by taking up relative space...sometimes I mourn the loss of my own space. (We've all been there...own up to it. As Ben Franklin says...Fish and relatives smell in three days) But mostly, I have to just call myself a "people" person. I'm happier with people than without. I'm happier when my tribe is all around me, whether they like it or not. That's why I started a writing retreat program. 

**God Bless the survivors of my first retreat...**

Selfish, really...Those retreats gave me the perfect excuse to have a week long house party with accommodations fit for kings, queens and those miscreants known to the civilized world as "writers." There should always be a purpose and reason to everything you do and betcha by golly wow, there was a very deep purpose to my retreats. There still is and they'll be back up in business before any of you can say, NANOWRIMO! 

But that's neither here nor there. I regret most that I didn't have one last fall when my ill-health took me down yet again. I had to cancel what was going to be my last one for a while. My mother and Kathy arrived in Denver anyway and came to see me at the hospital. Just like mothers should do. But Kathy wanted so badly to be at that retreat house...to just go...I wanted to help her get down her stories about "Cluck..." and all the characters from day one in her life that gave her reason to laugh and live. I'm so honored that she shared so many of them with me and that alone gave me reason to love her even more. They will always remain with me. 

But learning to let go of the physical being, not the metaphysical that can be held in the palm of your hand...not the memory...as that will live on for as long as your brain allows, but of the body of another person in the forever of our eternal todays and tomorrows and yesterdays isn't something I'm very good at doing...at all. I've had to let go of all grandparents, too many friends, pets....and now someone so close to me, she was a very essential part of my soul and a very large part of my funny bone. How do you get rid of a bone in your body without having chronic or even phantom pains? How do you get rid of the feeling of loss? Is it ok to just let it go? It will be ok? Right? It doesn't matter how you cope with this, it is what it is when it is...what it is. And Kathy wasn't an "it." She was the only one that could even come close to being a mom without being a mom. 

As I do with most of my coping skills, I set the "it" that's plaguing me, to song. I am just one big, phat episode of Glee away from having my life on Broadway/T.V.  But everything is better when set to song. Everything is much more understood when you can sing about it. However, when trying to find the tune that could only deal with this kind of marrow-level loss of the soul, I found one that dealt more with letting go in the way I would expect Kathy to do and certainly in Kathy's honor and it seemed to fit. John Mayer always seems to have the right words even when they're not always immediately fitting. He's the pair of jeans bought at the boutique store that you pray, will your ass and hope to fit in time for a date on Saturday, and it's only WEDNESDAY!... Three days to lose that extra 10 lbs...but then remember that you've never been a size 8 but who cares, you'll squeeze them on and make it work. 

I picked John's tune, Shadow Days.

This Kathy, is for you. Your Shadow Days are over. Thank God, you're living in the right place now. There is no pain. There is no loss of feeling...there is, I'm assuming and let me know if I'm wrong, chocolate that doesn't hurt your sugar level. And thank God for your comfort...for the level of living you're finally in, it's right. Hard times always helped you see...you were always the good soul that learned to let all that bad shit go and taught me and everyone else in your life to let it, whatever it is, go, too. And with a smile and a laugh that infected even the most resistant. 

Did you know that you could be wrong
And swear you're right
Some people been known to do it
All their lives

But you find yourself alone
Just like you found yourself before
Like I found myself in pieces
On the hotel floor

Hard times, help me see

I'm a good man with a good heart
Had a tough time, got a rough start
But I finally learned to let it go
Now I'm right here, and I'm right now
And I'm open, knowing somehow
That my shadow days are over
My shadow days are over now

Well it sucks to be honest (honest)
And it hurts to be real
But it's nice to make some love
That I can finally feel
Hard times, let me be

I'm a good man with a good heart
Had a tough time, got a rough start
But I finally learned to let it go
Now I'm right here, and I'm right now
And I'm open, knowing somehow
That my shadow days are over
My shadow days are over now

I love you, Kathy. The world is with you. Always has been. 

Yours in Love, Loss, Living for Laughing with those you Love, 

Cicily