Acceptance...

Time truly is the healer it maintains it is.

Hindsight makes you realise that. Well, hindsight and good friends around you who remind you that things do, and will, get better.

In the last few weeks I have seen a close friend of mine experience the same pain that I felt last year, and watching her go through the same questions and emotions that I went through was quite humbling. If I could choose a superpower it would be to wipe away emotional pain...with just one wave of my magical wand.

Seeing her this evening I can see that she is finally making a step in the right direction. She is far from over it, but there is a glimmer in her again. She is laughing at things and sometimes, just sometimes, she can focus on other things.

Emotional angst is bloody exhausting isn't it? We punish ourselves by ruminating over what was, what could have been...and then there is the age old question of why? Why did they leave? Why did they not talk to me? Why did they feel that way?

Why was I not good enough?
Ouch...

It is bad enough that we are going through such pain, to then completely and utterly blame ourselves for it as though the pain itself is not enough. Let's just make ourselves feel even crappier.
Last year I felt like her. Alas on more than one occasion. However now, I look back and see things differently. I do not blame myself. None of it was my fault...neither was it his.

Now, I am using the experiences of last years blog to write a book. I am doing ok...I am proud to say I am about a quarter of the way through and I am actually finding it very therapeutic. So much happened in the year of being forty that I am now using it as a base to write a novel...some of it is true and some of it will be purely imagination.

If, and it is a very big IF, it ever gets published it is likely that some people will see themselves, recognise their part in my journey last year. One of those people was very close to me throughout that year, however it is only now that I can look back and see things so much clearer and differently.

I admit, that there are occasions when I miss that person; just in general...shooting the breeze with them, laughing and being daft with them...but that is all normal right? I am sure my friend will also miss the person she has had in her life for the past year for a long time to come.

So having written about them in the 'novel' this evening and writing about what was and what happened has brought things to the forefront of my mind again. Yet, I do not feel pain or anger. I am curious but nothing more.

I have met so many other people since and I am on a different path now. However, I am glad he was in my life. There are certain things that he did that changed who I was, or in reality, reminded me of who I was, so actually I am grateful for that.

My friend will, in time, see the same thing. Sometimes things do not work. We can not see why at the time, what outside influences led to the demise of that relationship; what else was happening - however hopefully, one day we can look back and go, 'oh that's why. Ok, I understand now,' and slap ourselves on our forehead with our palms.

I think it is called acceptance. Not just that it is over, but accepting who we are is ok; accepting that we did nothing wrong and acceptance that sometimes people come in and out of your life to teach us things.

I have had acceptance for quite some time now. Yet it was only this evening that I really recognised it. Sitting there on my windowsill with a big 'acceptance' banner around its waist., blowing its own trumpet.

Acceptance is good and it comes to all of us eventually. I promise.