"and God help you if you are a phoniex
and you dare to rise up from the ash
A thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying past." Ani Difranco.
dear Anna, I am praying for you and S. much love.
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right now, my life is like a very chlorinated swimming pool; everything is "blue", i am pained by a constant stinging in my eyes, and moving forward means extreme, considerable amounts of effort, just to go verrrry slowly.
according to those who are closest to me, i am handling this terrible ordeal "well". they attribute this to my zen workbooks, my attempts at mindfulness, my recent addiction to deep, calm-guaranteeing breaths.
those are all effective things. but i know otherwise.
prayers from new york, oklahoma, washington, texas, southern california, pennsylvania, hawaii...and a dozen other places i can only guess at. THAT is why i have this extremely rare and uber-precious serenity. i can feel it, radiating out from you, approaching me, enveloping me in more love than i've known since my father hugged me in 1998.
i am honestly overwhelmed at your gift to me, kindest strangers. i want you to know:
for the positive comments left on any surface that would hold them...
for the hundreds of "missed AIMs" on my away messages...
for the heartfelt GMails to a weeping suitablegirl...
for the dozens of prayers offered...
i am humbled, i am grateful, i am awed.
my immutable and consummate gratitude to all of you is deeper than the well of heartless emotion from whence this horrid situation emerged. amor vincit omnia. you all proved it to me again, when i finally lost hope in it, when i doubted it for the very first time. i don't know 95% of you, but that didn't stop you from changing my life for the better, when all i expected was worse.
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there is one of you who just knocked me out with sweetness and light.
i have never experienced anything like the actions of this extraordinary human being, and as this blog describes, i have been the recipient of some rather fantastic "presents" in my far-from-boring life.
i was alone, you stood by me, though you don't know me from eve.
i was screaming, you heard my anguish, and came running.
i was defeated, you convinced me that lost battles did not mean that war was over.
i was treading saltwater, you jumped in this dark ocean of tears, to fish me out and help me to safety.
i was about to dismantle this blog, you showed me how it was a beginning, a blessing, a solution, not a problem.
i was certain of nothing, except confusion, despair and pain; you gave me love, hope and compassion.
i was faithless, you reached within, to hand me strength and courage, to promise me that love will conquer all, to remind me that some things may just be meant to be, psychotic, meddling hackers be damned.
when G-d put angels on earth, it is not surprising that he would let them live somewhere that was just like heaven. as i type this, with a different class of saltwater streaking my face, i have never meant these words more than i do now:
THANK YOU.