Baby, Life Goes On

There is so much to say, and I would say it if I felt compelled.  But I don't.  Some musings are best kept inside of our heads, or shared when we feel it is necessary.  I guess these things I can share, though:

I finished a rough draft of an essay.  It's the first I've written since I wrote for the L'Abri blog back in April.  I've been working on it since I got back from L'Abri, but haven't had the drive to complete it.  Tiffany's desire to compile a book of memories from Spring Term '09 has been the push, and I've stumbled ahead, using writing as an excuse for therapy.  Oh, to have an outlet such as this.  To create, to meet with our Creator on such an intimate level.  

I'm over halfway through reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.  How to describe this prose?  Creative nonfiction, yes.  An account of death, certainly.  A portrait of a marriage, of a woman (who happens to be an iconic American writer) recording the year after and the years leading up to her husband's death.  I can't say that I've spent much time extracting lessons from her words save for this: "That I was only now beginning the process of mourning did not occur to me.  Until now I had been only able to grieve, not mourn.  Grief was passive.  Grief happened.  Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention."

I realize that I have only begun the process of mourning.  Up until this point, I have been grieving the loss of L'Abri.  I believe that I was grieving well.  As for mourning I'm not sure.  I reckon that reliving my term through pictures, music, and writing may or may not be healthy.  The writing, yes, I believe is healthy.  The music?  Sometimes.  But the pictures, sigh, they only serve to rip open my hardly healed wounds.  After so much talk of living in the present mine is being swallowed up by the past.

And the future.  This not-knowing business gets old quickly.  Though I do know now what I want to do, getting there is most of the battle.  Except to say that it's time to declare my own independence, to see that life goes on and it's up to me to go with it.