Rediscoveries

Saying goodbye is never an easy process. The feelings of empty abandonment. The pretending that you don't care. The anger and frustration of not being in control. The projection of that anger onto the one making the decision to take a different path. It's all designed to appear as though you are the rejecter; to push them away.

Letting go is another form of "goodbye." The only difference is that you are the initiator, the one who decides to make the separation. You are setting yourself free from the obligation of having to maintain a dual existence. You may need space. You may need to become someone else. You may want different things out of life. Or you just may not be able to handle the intensity of the other person's soul.

The process of "goodbye" is one that I probably know a little too well. I learned the stark reality of this with my biological father at four years old. As a child, you don't realize that separation is not your responsibility. You just feel the heavy weight of "what did I do wrong" slam itself into your heart. It doesn't matter that they're the one that has issues; serious issues. Or that if they stay they will continue to rob your innocence and damage your existence. You don't understand that darkness exists within humanity. You black out the bad times and remember the good ones. They're supposed to be there. They're supposed to show you that you mean something; that you're worth taking care of. They're not supposed to vanish without warning.

That vanishing shakes your faith in what exists and what is possible. You learn not to trust. Not to try. That effort is useless, because you can't depend on anyone or anything to be real. You can't depend on anyone to stay. So you begin to absorb yourself in things that aren't real, or so it seems. You begin to attach yourself to those things that don't seem possible to actually grasp. You become a dreamer who constantly finds ways to reinvent what you do see.

What's within lasts forever. Ideas, concepts, dreams, wishes. They're mostly static. Only we have the power to change them, set them free, tell them it's time to say goodbye. If only the pivotal people we encounter along the paths of our journeys were the same. No. People are quite different from the world of wishes and dreams.

We encounter these pivotal people to wake us up to a part of ourselves that needs to be revealed. Some say they're part of our same soul family, perhaps even our twin soul, with an agreement made between each other in the spiritual realm to lead the physical manifestation to their purpose. Yet, the physical manifestation is just that. Physical. Bound by the limitations of what can be seen and touched.

Bound by obligations, boundaries, necessities, change, the need to grow, the desire to pursue, run away, avoidance, conflict, histories, self-destruction, disorder, self-doubt, metamorphosis, and countless other roads we've all travelled. Those are the roads that bring us to each other, bring about the "goodbyes," and if we're lucky enough, bring us back to each other.

If they don't come back, all we can do is remember and smile in reflection. Be thankful that we had what we did, that we gave, that we had the chance to love, that we danced. It's the ones that always come back that expanded our soul. Yes, they tore at it too, but in a good way. They helped us create ourselves. Unknowingly. Unwillingly. Effortlessly. The rediscovery, the return, happens when we're finally ready to embody their gifts or it's our turn to give them something back.

Of course I have three of these, since all good things come in pairs of threes. The first was a ray of hope's light that brought happiness and vigor back into a wounded child's spirit. The second was a spunk of tender energy, containing a sense of familiarity within the eyes that didn't need words or an explanation. The third was an unplanned surprise that danced in the shadows against a sweet, gentle music that only two halves of the same soul can make.

Rediscovering all three has shown me that they never really left in the first place. Never lost, they were within all along.