A new look...

Yes, you will think you have arrived on someone else's page, but you really are in the right place. I was tired of my old look and wanted something radically different and chose this, because I liked the font and the plainness of the page. Right now I like having no picture and just the title and the simple dots. Sometimes I want change, because I get tired of what I always look at and I need something new to invigorate me. Blogger doesn't have many templates to choose from and this is the best one I could come up with. I think it will do nicely.

I have been up most of the night. I woke up very early and had no sleep left in me. There was no sense in staying in bed, because all I would do is lay there and think about stuff that would bother me, such as my past sins and other evils. No, I'm joking, but only partly so. I don't know what would happen if I laid awake in bed at night, because I never do. I avoid that at all costs. In the past I used to think about very sad things, but I haven't given myself the opportunity to do that in a long time, because I get up the minute I wake up and I don't go back to bed until I'm literally keeling over from sleep.

Past sins are the thoughts that come and haunt you in the middle of the night when your defenses are down and when you are at your most helpless and not able to fight a good fight and resist the harshness of your most cruel memories. And everything you think is tainted by the deepest color black and honed to the sharpest cut to make the deepest wounds. It's an onslaught of negative memories that make you cower under the covers and want to hide your whole being in shame.

The worst thing you can do is lay there like a helpless victim and let it wash all over you. My tactic is to get up and escape the darkness and the thoughts and to find the light and some distraction for my mind. Now I've gotten to the point where the negative thoughts don't even have a chance to enter my head, but I open my eyes and am beside my bed and the next second I am in the living room with the lights on and then in the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee and to light a cigarette. Immediately my thoughts turn to the upcoming day and the things I will do in it and how exciting those will be, no matter how small and simple, and I don't spend a moment pondering over my past and the "evil" deeds I've committed in it.

You can either forgive yourself or put your deeds in the context of the time and place and circumstances in which they happened and learn to live with them and I think I have done the latter. It was not so much a question of forgiveness as of understanding. The understanding it takes to only take your share of the responsibility and not a portion more than that. To leave the rest for the other people involved, whether they accept it or not. You can't make people accept their responsibility, you can only take on that bit of it that is your own and learn to live with that.

It can be infuriating to see how people avoid taking the blame in a drama in which they played a major role and in which they had many of the most important scenes, even after you left and they continued to star in their version of the story. In the end, you can only feel pity for them, because as you grow and gain understanding and insight and wisdom, they stagnate and flounder in their repetitive motions and scripts and scenarios, bound to make the same mistakes over and over again. Not that you are suddenly faultless, but at least you try to improve and discover somebody else than who you were when it wasn't working.

Life seems to be a long journey leading up to graduate school. I am now studying for my master's degree in living well. Which is the best revenge, isn't it? Living well is the best revenge.

Now, I'm not claiming that I'm living the optimal life, far from it. I have a way to go yet. There are many things I'm not doing yet, adventures I'm not having, chances I'm not taking, places I'm not visiting. journeys I'm not making. But it will all come in its own sweet time. I'm playing it safe right now. Exploring minimal ground, just base camp and its immediate surroundings. I'm not going anywhere where I can't retreat quickly inside the walls of my apartment. Even more so now that I'm single and this place is so dear to me.

I should add, for all clarity, that what I talked about here is not my second marriage, but my life in the States that lasted 22 years and that was a very important time during which I had two children, a house, 2 cars, a dog, a cat, many friends, a husband, and a heartache. I have divorced that husband, remarried, left the States, lost my son, and gotten divorced again. Now I am single like I ought to be. Finally, I'm on my own. A single, solitary human being. Autonomous and independent and not yet lonely.

Ciao,
Nora