Mind the Gap

Life. It’s full of what we don’t expect and can’t predict.

Lately I’ve been fighting a few things in my life. Some of the them are life circumstances that have arisen. For example: after returning home from a nice week long vacation, I had to re-adjust to normal life and work. I started a second job. Then my dog needed some dental work. I knew she needed a cleaning, but a routine cleaning turned into a mass evacuation of her teeth on the left side of her mouth. (Poor pup now only has her canines and a few teeth on the right side.)

Then there are world things: the ongoing ongoing ongoing Covid pandemic, the situation in Afghanistan, half of a dozen political and social things I should care about in the United States, and, well, it goes on. Like so many other people around the globe, I am exhausted from living in a heightened state of emergency since late 2019. And today I found out my 11 year old nephew has tested positive for the Covid-19 infection. Too young for the vaccine as of yet, he is still old enough to be infected and, well, I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen. Obviously. But it is the not knowing, and fearing, and wondering that I’ve been doing lately about everything that is getting to me.

And that brings me to the emotional wilderness I’ve been traversing lately. I’ve been depressed and sleeping, or laying around trying to sleep, a lot lately. I haven’t been writing. I haven’t been creating. I haven’t been….anything. I’ve just been existing. Outside of work, I haven’t done anything. I haven’t even managed to get to the grocery store and restock groceries. And there is a widening gap in my life, a gap needing to be filled with expression and joy and good things. But all I have are bad things and an empty gap.

I need to get all of this out of my head and put it out there into the world. I need the catharsis of writing it down and sending it to whomever will listen. (Thanks for listening.) I also wanted to let anybody else out there struggling to know that they are not alone. I am sending this signal up the proverbial tower and broadcasting it into the ether in the hopes that someone will pick it up and be encouraged. As much as I crave encouragement myself, I know there are others who need it, too.

Realize that you do not struggle without hope, without companionship, and without an end. Someday, this pandemic will recede. My pup will learn how to chew without all her teeth. The rest of it will work itself out. Life will continue. It will get better. It may of course get worse first, but that is life. Like Bilbo Baggins says of adventures, life is full of “nasty, uncomfortable things that make you late for dinner” but sometimes that is just what makes up the everyday-ness of life. It can’t all be roses and butterflies. Sometimes it is rain showers and frozen mud. The Doctor once said that life is “a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”

While this blog may linger, and I may not do anything creative for a while, and there may grow a gap, know that I am still living life. I am waking up, cuddling my tooth-deficient dog, being the best husband I know how to be, and going to bed to try again but better on the morrow.

Every single day I have been alive, the sun has risen again. My life is trending towards its betterment. I have endured some tragic, terrible, wonderful, euphoric things. I will again, until it all ends. I am invested in living life with all it brings.

Remember that everyone struggles; freely give grace and love, especially to yourself. Sometimes adventures grow you into a person you never thought you could be. Sometimes life’s pile of good and bad things make for a much greater existence than you ever thought possible. Where I am, the sun is setting. May it ever rise again. As you take your next steps: mind the gap.