Change

Change. 

Change is something I've become very familiar with lately. My whole life has changed in the matter of a month. When I look back at what my life was for so many years, this new life is a little unrecognizable. A big part of who I was and how I lived and what I had to do is gone. For years and years I was a girlfriend/fiancé/wife who lived with and cared for her mother-in-law. So much of my life revolved around her illness and what effects she was having from the disease.  My life was entirely based on the ending of hers. I should stop here and just quickly point out that my husband was always amazing and did his very best to make sure I didn't bear the brunt of the stress of her care. I have no idea how, but he always managed to care for me and his mother.  He is unbelievable and should give lessons on what being a husband and a son really looks like. Regardless though, my life was largely defined and controlled by our situation at home. I realize now that I had  become  accustomed a level of stress that was so high it barely registered. And now all of that is gone and I just can't figure out how to feel about it. I can't reconcile the relief I feel that she is no longer in pain and that we no longer spend all of our free time trying to figure out how to help her with the void that having lost her has left. 

I guess it is a change that I saw coming for years and yet somehow was completely unprepared for. 

I read something recently about how change can look really destructive on the outside. It compared change to a seed that sprouts into a flower. I read how that seed is completely destroyed to become what it was meant to be. I guess a similar process repeats itself over and over in nature (caterpillar to butterfly is one example. We humans are another). The last line of what I read said, "for someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction."  Here is the thing: from someone who is the seed, someone who is experiencing the change, it IS complete destruction. It is painful and unfamiliar and uncomfortable and leaves you utterly different than when you started.

People often ask how I'm doing. I guess the answer is I'm learning to acclimate myself to this new way of life.  I am happy and thrilled to be a "normal"couple and also I am lonely and miss our full house.  I'm learning  to accept the changes and embrace what they will bring. Some days I feel like a plant ready to reach towards the sun and grow and other days, the seed still being pulled apart and wrestling with the change. 

I believe that I am and will be a better person for having gone through this change. I believe that a flower will bloom from the seed's destruction. I believe that Life/God/the Universe is good and that sometimes we go through hard things, but that we are better for them and the world is better for us. 

I'm not sure why I wrote all of this and I know I have disappointed all of you who came to read about running. But, I suppose that's what happens when you have your own blog about life lessons, you get to write about the lessons you learn even when the running shoes are off.