Oh Pandora - Shut Your Box

To be abundantly honest - I write these posts in a vacuum of sorts. As I have always done in my life - I spew out words when I have nowhere else to go - a place where what I will get back is not a piece of advice, pep talk or other that might occur if I even tried to explain out loud to someone what I really feel - which under normal circumstances I fail miserably at. I write as if nobody but me is reading it - assuming no one is really bothering to keep up and not really understanding the medium well enough to know if anyone out there might see it on a regular basis. I have no reason to think otherwise though I admit the odd time I have shared a particular post more broadly - through social media - and I don't really know what prompts this gesture - other than like the rest of the population one sometimes feels the need to be heard. It was and is not my intention to catalogue this journey for any particular reason - but the side effect of allowing the universe to receive it - is having people I love feel pain and helplessness when they open this Pandora's box of my thoughts. My situation is obviously not new information to them - but sometimes what I've said is felt more deeply than others - even to Kirk who resides at the same address. But late last night, his daughter Miranda called me from Toronto in tears - to tell me she loved me - that she wished she could be here and wished she could help ease us through these next stages. Miranda was and is such an unexpected gift in my life - not the daughter I never had - but the daughter I get to share with her own lovely Mom and Dad. I am so deeply proud of her and spending time with her and her loyal and loving husband Nathan this fall was a respite from it all - five days of normal life - a holiday from all of this that I will never be able to thank them for. Ditto my time with Kirk's son Aaron, his amazing partner Shannon and their sweet wee boys. I know what I have shared is not a comfort - it remains difficult for certain people to read and more importantly to know that they can't wave a wand and make it disappear - though I know they dearly wish they could. But I have gone so far past the days of "How are you?" and "I am fine"...I am belted in to this journey - this telling of tales that I know are so far from comfort sometimes. I feel the twinge of their reactions - but not enough to take it back because it is impossible for me now - it has to be done. Every painful word recorded - every fear, every thought, every joy, every apology - a commitment to myself that for once, I am keeping. Not because it doesn't hurt, but because I don't know how to do this any other way. So to add to my list of sorries is a big one to whom these words have wounded in some way big or small. There is simply no band-aid big enough to cover my chattering heart.