Landslide...

“What do you want from life, Pam?”

I just sat there and looked at him. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I had no answer.

The fact that I had no answer embarassed me even more.

What? Someone asks me what I want and I don’t have an answer….Everyone is supposed to know what they want.

I looked at him.

“I want my children to grow up to be happy, productive adults.”

He looked at me again, his eyes daring me to look away.

“I realize that. What does Pam want for no one other than Pam?”

I was busted. I couldn’t fool him.

I just held his gaze and as the tears began to flow, admitted, for the first time ever, through two husbands and countless, beautiful friends, he was the first person for me to answer honestly.

“I don’t know.”


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I had that conversation back in January after a very dark, very long December.

I’ve been doing fairly well since then. I’ve coped. I’ve managed. I’ve laughed.
I’ve lived.

And, yet, through it all…

I’ve been haunted by that question for six months now.

And, it’s time I quit hiding.

Honestly, know what I want?

I want to live on a lake.

I want to have horses.

I want to sip coffee on my pier each morning and watch the sun come up.

I want my two dogs there beside me, and I want them to follow me to the barn as I
groom the horses.

I want to have all day to commune with the peace and beauty that surrounds me.

I want to be surrounded by the amount of love that is inside of me…

I want that to be shown to me by someone else.

I want someone there with me, to share it with.

Trouble is, I just don’t know who.

The real kicker is, I may never know.

For, you see, I am bound by fear.

I am scared to let anyone in, because I’ve struggled so hard to have my life neat and tidy…

No one around me equals no one to disappoint me.

No one around me equals no hurt.

No one around me assures that I never suffer again.

No one around me means that no one else suffers for my weaknesses.

Because, at the end of all my soul-searching, I find that I am tired.

I am tired of correcting all the world’s problems.

I am tired of constantly making things right for everyone else.

I am tired of facing this world, isolated and alone, every day.

And, I realize I want to change.

But “change” and “Pam” do no belong in the same sentence.

I am near incapable of change.

I fight it.

I hate it.

I will put myself near under to try to prevent it.

Although I need someone to step in and tell me to rest and let them handle it, there is a part of me that identifies that as weakness…

I cannot allow anyone to see me as weak.

So, I trudge on…

A mass of confusion…

A mass of hurt…

A mass of regret…

A mass of uncertainty…

But, most importantly, within me, lives a mass of hope…

And, as long as hope is there, I can face it all.

Even a landslide.