
Lost In Space
You can totally lose yourself , stuck at a standstill mourning a painful loss. I nearly did. You reach a point in that process when you must choose to come back down to earth and join humanity again. You have to make the decision to accept the pain for what it is (or was) and fight with all your strength to not lose yourself also. Piece by fragile piece, step by step each day you can pick up your wounded spirit and battered heart and decide to let the pain go so that you can go on surviving and conquer the pain. You don’t get to decide many things in life, totally by yourself, but this you do have a choice in. You can get up and go on to maybe, one day, thrive.
In spite of the compulsion you may feel in your core to build an underground bunker and seal yourself permanently within it (envisioning yourself happily and eternally withdrawn from the human race, thereby avoiding any possible relationship that could cause you to feel this lingering pain ever again) you know there’s logically nothing to be gained from remaining wounded and hiding from the adventure your life is meant to be. In spite of whatever or whoever hurt you, you owe it to yourself to refuse to allow those events to forever crush and destroy everything wonderful and unique about you. You must not allow another’s opinion or valuation of you define how much you value yourself. You are the only you that you’ll ever have to work with. Work hard to love yourself enough to encourage and comfort yourself as you’d do for your child or friend in pain.
As hard as it is to face, the odds are that we’ll each have to accept painful losses at many points in our lives because it is an inevitable part of our human experience. I want you to know that you, yes YOU, can do it ! You can get through this and go on to laugh again with your whole heart. I know this because I (and so many others) have recovered from some of the most gut wrenching personal challenges,disasters and heartbreaks. Thousands of people decide to take a first step towards healing on any given day and then they take another step deciding to LIVE OUT LOUD every single day, succeeding by taking one step upon the other until they are at the top of their staircase looking back down, amazed they made it up there.
I’m not saying it’s easy, it may truly be the hardest thing you will ever do. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy .(Be nice if it was , huh ?)
Recovering begins with knowing that you can and trusting that you eventually will, (once you’ve allowed yourself the time, space, self empathy and fully accepted all your complicated feelings, and allowed yourself to feel them, however many tears it may take to feel and process your grief. I’m here to tell you (and to root for you also) that you will smile again, you will dance again even though right now that seems ridiculously impossible. So take that to heart and for once be compassionate to yourself until the days come when you will be able to do those things and feel joy again.
Deep pain sucks, but if you feel it now then that means you felt deep love, likely still do and though it is horrible whenever we lose someone we love for any reason at all, still, I would not have wanted to go through life afraid to love, afraid of being hurt so much that I could not love anyone or be vulnerable enough to need anyone. Love is what has made all the pain (that goes along with being among the living) somehow worth the price of admission. Life without the kind of love that trusts and allows ones self to be vulnerable to the one they love would be missing quite probably, possibly the very best thing life offers.
So much of our thinking, speaking, listening, existing throughout our daily life is consumed by all the techniques, inventions, habits, thoughts and actions we employ in our attempts to make our lives safe, or at the very least, safer. While it’s clearly sensible to lock your doors or teach your child how to dial 911 in an emergency we can become so engrossed in trying to mitigate the odds of getting hurt (or losing our property) that we can lose the ability to just relax and fully enjoy the moments life has to offer. We all know someone who has an obsession that interferes with their ability to enjoy their life in some way. Maybe you yourself have an obsessive bent in one way or another, I admit in my case, that a clean organized home has consumed much of my adult life, even while raising 5 teenagers. I can easily see (yet not so easily admit) that this often kept me from fully enjoying the more important things in my life. You can not truly enjoy the experience of having company over for dinner if you can not sit down, relax and visit with your invited guests unless you first have every single dish cleaned and put away. In this and a hundred other ways that preoccupation or obsession robbed me of the value and joy in many things. I still struggle to silence that ‘inner critic wench’, but… what if I decided to accept the messes and to change the effect ‘the wench’ has on me? Could the answer to so much of our suffering be to change our own programming? Do you have some programs that need updated maybe or even removed and tossed entirely?
Most of us take the controlling of our environment seriously as we try to protect ourselves , our loved ones and property. I’m realizing now though that we have to accept that no one gets through this life without going through some destructive soul crushing episodes, so we shouldn’t allow our reasonable efforts toward our valid concerns for safety to suck all the joy and spontaneity out of our lives.We have to accept that there’s no way to be 100 % safe every minute of every day. It is the cost of living.
In the same way, being smart and selective about who you choose to let into your life makes perfect sense in order to avoid unnecessary pain and problems. However, withdrawing into self imposed solitary confinement is counter productive, taking it too far and will only end up causing you to miss all of the upcoming wonderful parts of being alive that belong to your future. We need to be able to bounce back, after allowing ourselves time to heal, of course. If you find you can’t, if you find yourself stuck, Lost In Space, ask for help from a trusted friend, a therapist, a parent, sibling, cousin, teacher, counselor…anyone. We may all rightly need a break from contact with others at many times of our lives but please do not stay in your bunker forever.
The Bible says at Ecclesiastes 3:1 : “for everything there is an appointed time, even a time for every affair under the heavens: ”… 3:4 : “a time to weep and a time to laugh…” 3:6 : “ a time to seek and a time to give up as lost ; a time to keep and a time to throw away;” 3:8 : “a time to love and a time to hate…”
It is never easy going through the ups and downs of life and if you struggle with depression the degree of difficulty probably increases (speaking from my own personal experience) about 33%. You too can go on from there .I promise it will get easier.
As much as letting go hurts , it hurts so much more in the long run to stay in a bad relationship because you can’t comfortably , joyfully (or are too afraid to) be on your own. Not every meaningful love is meant to last forever. Some things can not be fixed by love . But the MOST IMPORTANT THING IS , the next chapter of your life awaits….don’t make it wait forever.
My poem from when I was lost in mourning….and what I decided :
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LOST IN SPACE
In that space
between the space
where promises die
and new hope started,
I lost the love
I‘d been lost in
my will to live departed.
Hanging in that space by a thin..
so thin…
razor’s edge of uncertain belief,
that I’d heal and arise
(but then logic denies
as one wades waist deep in their grief.)
I failed to see
the slow morphing of me
no -
the world did all of the changing.
Or so I thought,
with my heart caught
‘tween love’s death
and life’s rearranging.
Then like Ground Control
to my barely tethered soul
one hope whispered and reeled me back
for sacred breath , the will
lost love would not kill
another victim of its attack.
In that dark void floating free
I began slowly to see ,
I could never lose me.
I was here before love
and here, on solid ground,
I could still choose to stand.
This is my life to live !
You can’t take what I don’t give
nor snatch this heart out of my own hand.
If I loved it was worth it and real,
worth whatever I now feel,
mine to give knowing what I might pay.
I am worn, etched with bruises
from the paths this heart chooses
but I chose to give this heart it’s way.
For the intellect rejects
formulas it can not prove,
but the heart senses more
and is more apt to move.

In that space
between the space
where love dies and is born,
we exist like a beacon
on a foggy new morn.
May we be the light
guiding vessels to shore
and not be the reef they
crash onto once more.
If life’s careless slings
or Cupid’s errant stings
prevent you from loving anew,
then lost love will have won
and then the only one
who will truly
have lost
is you.

Kathleen Hussey 2017
Remember, as long as YOU keep going, nothing can permanently stop you. We all have to get back up many times, the only ones who don’t are those who refuse to risk anything. I’d rather experience everything and lose everything many times over than to live a life never having lived at all. Every experience enriches your life in some way, every person you meet teaches you something you needed to learn, and every day weaves you into the beautiful tapestry you are. Don’t leave it half finished.
