LOVE AFTER LOVE
by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/04/21/love-after-love-derek-walcott/
I remember clearly the day I had just had a “scuffle” (putting it mildly) out on the BLM with a former partner. I took my dirty, dusty, bruised self in the house to clean up, and when I looked up from the sink, into the reflection in the mirror I was struck. Like shocked struck.
“WHO ARE YOU?” I asked the reflection, out loud, which was quite loud in the empty house. “This is NOT you! You’re not an angry person who HITS! You’re not this person you’ve become! You promised yourself you’d NEVER be that person! You laugh! You find the good in bad times. You encourage others! You don’t scream and berate, you don’t drop to the lowest of levels to make your point. You’re better than that!”
I stood there and stared at that person. The disheveled hair, the dirty face…the tears. I made a decision right there that things were going to be different from that point forward. I had been putting some things off in my life that really needed some taking care of. I was letting others be responsible for my well being, my security, and I was resentful of them for not doing their “job”. In that moment, I know it wasn’t their job, it was MY job.
I cleaned myself up and made a promise to me that I was going to make the change. The next day I looked up what it would take to become a Surgery Tech. I looked at the schools, at the pre-reqs, and I took action. I was in school 3 years total and I achieved the goal. It was hard, it made me cry, it made me question myself. I made the choice to leave the partner. We are both good people, but we weren’t good for one another. We didn’t bring out the best in one another. We didn’t take care of one another like we should have. So, off I went, Oso and Rock in tow, and did the hard things. Because if we try, we CAN do hard things.
Never let anyone tell you you can’t do the hard things. We only get so much time to get our goals achieved in this life. We weren’t given a blueprint. We ARE the blueprint. The clock is ticking. Get to feasting on your life before it’s too late and you starve.
A very good friend recommended this book to me, and I’m ever thankful to her for it. I’m recommending it to all who don’t think that the body doesn’t keep the score. It does.
https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score
~D.
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