Love in Unlikely Places

This week has pretty much murdered me. As I sit here posting this blog, my eyes are puffy, my nose stuff, and my hair.... actually I showered a little while ago so it's not dirty and messed up. But I'm not kidding about the eyes and nose part....

When most people meet me, I'm quiet and when  I do speak up, I just crack jokes. I'm cynical, sarcastic, and brutal on myself. My best friend has compared the wall she puts up around her heart to the Berlin Wall. I have a wall, but it doesn't have any long-range defense mechanisms. I don't shoot people down when they enter my life. I just allow them to meander across the plain, and when they get to the 'wall,' that's it. They stay there. It's like Rapunzel's Tower. If they choose to wait a few years (or milennia) they might find the secret door. But even then they have to make the long climb up the endless flight of stairs, and yeah... hopefully you get the point.

Anyways, with stresses like losing my college grant due to failing a class, and financial worries, I have really been beating myself up. I have felt totally hopeless, and completely worthless. I get teary-eyed writing about it. I could write all the things, I tell myself, but believe me when I say I hold nothing back in my self-massacre. 

All of the sudden, just when I felt something close to what I was feeling in my darker days a few years ago, I found a light at the end of my dark tunnel. The first glimmer came from my mom, who has become an 'iron rod' in my life. When I told her about my grant loss, I received this text :

"My job isn't to lecture you, but to love you always, and I DO."

That really lifted my spirits, and I owe my mom big. The next ray of light also came from her. While I was at work, she called me, exclaiming that she had found quite a few letters from my birth mother. While she read them to me, I can't explain what happened. I felt a new connection with Tanya. She apparently wore glasses, she was tall, and had had initially chosen to major in psychology and social work.... she later switched to photojournalism, because she loves to write and take photos. I also learned that as a child, I looked more like my father. Through her letters, I felt so much love from my mother by birth, and it has renewed my ambition to find her. 

The last ray of light that led me out of my tunnel of sorts, came from an unlikely source. I have lately confided a lot in a girl at work, Kelsey. She and Kara know how to get me talking. Hah. Anyways, I was having a rough day the other day, and Kelsey offered to burn me a CD of songs she likes to listen to when she needs to think about things. I was so excited, and very surprised when she surprised me with 6 CDs!!! She said she found so many songs and decided to give them all to me. Most surprising of all was when she handed me a letter with the CDs. I read the letter while I sat in my parked car, listening to the music. Kelsey really gave me a wake up call with the way I look at myself, and I felt incredibly touched, as she is one of the people I admire most in my life.

I realize that I have a lot to change in my life. I'm tired of beating myself up constantly and relentlessly, and still not changing a thing. 2011 will hopefully see the end of my old self and the beginning of my new self. I'm terrified, anxious, excited, and interested to see where this journey will take me. I hope to discover even more love in unlikely places.