be still my anxious heart

i grew up in a military family.  like many military families, we moved.  we moved a lot ...  almost every single year that i was in school.  one time we didn't, but then we made up for that by moving in the middle of another year. i went to 11 schools in my 11 academic years before college.

i left a lot of people over the years, and sadly that became the normal way of things for me.  i remember feeling that if i ever had children i would want them to be rooted someplace so they wouldn't have to go through that.  i easily cry when i see people graduating, even if i don't know them, or when i see the bonds of people who have grown up together ... even if it's on television and i know it isn't real, LOL ...  probably even if it's a cartoon.  it's just something i never experienced.  it has always been the case that when people ask me where i'm from, i don't know.

i could go on and on about the different ways in which this affected me, but tonight a couple of those ways are standing in front of me and staring at me like ghosts with no expressions on their faces.

one of these is the way that i became very quick and good at making friends and at taking people into my life.  i simply had no time to waste, and i learned not to bother with what anyone looked like or from where anyone came.  all people were equal friend opportunities to me.  and i jumped right in.  if i waited for something to grow and for trust to be built, i would never have had anyone.  i would have moved again before i had a chance to know what friendship was.  i am still this way in my adult life.   everyone i meet is an equal opportunity friend or value or gift to my life.  and then i go by instinct, i go by feeling. and i dive in.  and i open my true self.  i open my home.  i open my heart.  i am transparent and i feel free to start out by being me.

the other of these ways is that i separated from a lot of people.  and it always ripped me apart, to part with anyone.  i learned that even with the best of intentions, and promises that we would always remain as close as we were that day, eventually ... i would lose them.  it was only a matter of time, and it was only life.  it wasn't anyone's fault.  they were not to blame, i was not to blame, the military was not to blame.  i got used to it.  that isn't to say it stopped hurting.  i just somehow adapted.

like everyone else, i have lost people who have passed away, and some who have drifted in and out of my life, but tonight i have that familiar sadness of losing someone to a move ... yet unfamiliar because of different circumstances ... and i am not the one leaving ... but i feel that same fear of loss, and the breaking feeling of something like when you rip a piece of paper and then put it on top of itself and rip it again, and then put those pieces together and rip again, and again, and again.

i do believe that we are all connected, and that through space and time we remain together.

yet my heart hurts and it is through a physical ache in my chest and tears and sticky mascara laden eyelashes that i can barely see to write this, because someone so close to me will soon no longer be in my daily world.  or at least it feels that way.  someone who changed my life.  someone i love, in a true heart to heart, human to human, spirit to spirit, #thispersonissuchagoodpersonicanhardlystandit  kind of way.

do you know the feeling of when someone passes away, the sky looks different the next day ... the air looks different ... things sound different ...you wonder how anyone in their right mind can be going through the McDonald's drive thru and laughing and listening to the radio ...  it's a change like that.

i know that everyone is on their own journey, and each person walks their own path.  i am happy for this person's path, no matter where it goes, i am proud of each step and overjoyed knowing of the adventure that lies ahead.  i know peace is there.  i know it is right.  i know it is true.  and i wouldn't want it not to be.

still i lay myself down tonight with eyes that hurt,  a heart that's heavy, and a soul that sighs.

it's just a move, a relocation, and as my oldest son says, "at least nowadays mom you have email and text and skype and facetime and google hangouts..."

and as my youngest son says, "remember what you said mommy.  at the end of the day, my heart looks like your heart..."