Back to Basics

Events, ideas, circumstances and situations

All the aspects of my life I have categorized into the different shades of gray I wrap my past history in, are the process of coming undone. I have built myself upon these observations of my life and for the moment I see that for the most part it does not serve me in moving forward.

My life is colorful.

"I forget this, and as the days pass and the memories fade; my life become fragments of moments much like a black and white photograph.

Frozen.

Unchanged.

Colorless.

I forget that I have a choice available to me in every second to re-write my future by allowing myself to re-write my past. In this I dont mean convincing myself that I lived another life other then the one I have experienced thus farinstead allowing myself to experience the life I feel I have somehow missed by discovering that is exists

Here

Now

Today.

I went camping this past weekend with one of my sisters, my brother, my brother in law and my nieces and nephews. I am thirty-three years old and this was the first time since I have been about eight that I have gone on any type of family Vacation.

My parents werent with us, my other sister wasnt able to go due to her cancer treatment and my other brother in law couldnt get the time off to come with us. We were a big mis-mash of odds and endscoming together despite all that was missing to create a new definition

We went back to basicsand in that rebuilt and re-created a new definition of family.

I always felt a bit cheated that I didnt grow up like other people did. My house was not one to bring strangers into; for fear that my Father would have a mental breakdown. My Mother was so absorbed in keeping the fragments of my father together that often she wasnt able to give all of herself us they way I though she was supposed to.

My family did not reflect anything close to the gleaming white toothpaste smile families that decorated the television nightly.

My family was real.

We struggled, we had issues, we had illness, we had near death, we had sorrow, we had anger, we had laughter, we had funwe had all the aspects of what I now understand defines a family.

We had love.

Every member of my family held onto my sanity, carefully not to let go of the last mental strands I hung upon as I rappelled deeper and deeper into my heroin addiction through the years. My family would always race to my aid to help me dig out of the hopeless depression I would find myself buried beneath due to my mental illness.

We all ran to my sisters aid when her picture perfect life, manicured lawn and white picket fence no longer held the pieces of her sanity together. We all took another look at our piece of the family puzzle when my other sister was diagnosed with breast cancer this past November.

I believe the biggest struggle I have in this life is coming to terms with the reality that with all I know, all I think I knowit all really amounts to nothing. The recollections of my life I have hung onto have kept me stuck in the realities I created them out to be.

Colorless.

Unchanging.

Frozen.

Life is not like that. My life is not like that. My life has never been like that.

Yet at times I still lose myself in the beliefs the past is the past and it cannot be undone. One of those faulty beliefs that obviously still resides within me despite the volumes of truth that shatter this belief.

At the end of this weekend as we cleaned upthe kids kept themselves occupied by creating a talent show.

With a picnic table, a CD player and a Hanna Montana CD. They shattered the beliefs I clung to in regards to my past.

My 6 year old niece Madyson.

My 4 year old niece Penelope.

My 5 year old nephew James.

Bopping around awkwardly on top of the picnic table, moving and shaking themselves to the beat the best they could with no sense of rhythm. Screaming, laughing, smiling and singing along with Hanna Montana at the tops of their lungs

"best of both worlds"

Echoing throughout the pine trees that filled the camping area.

We all sat in chairs in front of the picnic table, clapping and cheering them on. My eyes filled with tears at the absolute beauty in the moment realizing how lucky I was.

How blessed I was.

I finally came to understand that those frozen black and white photos of my family I held in my memories had no place in helping me to rebuild the life I choose to live now.

Thats what I missedthats what I could never find. I was so consumed with what my family wasnt I never had the understanding of what my family was.

Ever-changingthe colorful display of our lives wrapped brilliantly in a rainbow of Love.

Fallbrook Kitchen Remodeling