A Phoenix Rising from the Ashes

A Phoenix Rising from the Ashes

I love but a ghost, a figment of my imagination.

Somehow the pain of the needle was nothing compared to the pain of loss and suffering I have endured thus far in my life.

It started early on in my childhood and it seems to have followed me like a sad, lost puppy looking for his home.

I want to absolve myself of it.

I want to bury yet. I want to find it a home.

Better yet, I want to set it on a raft and let it flow down the river.

I want to bid it a beautiful and glorious farewell as I wave and watch it disappear.

Tears of sorrow will be shed, but also tears of joy.

I cannot carry it anymore. It needs to find another home to care for it and feed it because I am growing weary.

It’s time to let it go, because I am ready to start my life over again.

I am ready to give life another chance.

I am ready to be vulnerable again. 

Maybe this time I will have better defenses.

I’ll know how to throw a few punches.

My Phoenix

I look at her curiously. 

How she stands so poised with her beautiful, strong wings spread out like she ready to take flight to a new wonderful and magical place.

The curves and the lines, the colors that melt together around her body tell a story.

A story of tragedy, of love lost, of life lost.

The question now remains: How to rise from above the ashes?

That will be the story of my life.

The one that is still untold and only just begun at my ripe age of 33.

I contemplate the loss I have had in my life. Somehow what I have lost more recently pales in comparison to what I lost when I was younger.

The recent past -

The fire. Everything gone. All the music. All the books. All the wedding gifts.

 My engagement ring.

My marriage.

The distant past -

Leaving my grandmother in my homeland.

Wish I could have spoken up sooner.

Wish as a little girl I could have said how much I love you.

But maybe I was too scared or I didn’t know how until it was too late.

And when you lost your words due to your stroke, that pain was too great for me to bear. 

Somehow I could not speak either. 

It is as if I became mute and had to carry your pain with me all these years.

But now I want to set it free.

I want to set you free. I want to let you go up to heaven where you belong - 

A beautiful violin-playing angel among the stars.

Now that I think of it, I don’t believe I actually ever uttered those words to you -

That I love you.

It’s funny how most of the stories about love and loss are about lovers or spouses lost.

My story now is about you, my grandmother, who is woven into the very fiber of my being.
The woman who was my first introduction to the world.

She was the one who at a young age taught me about love and life and all that is beautiful in this world.

At a young age I was separated from you by a war that I did not endorse, that was out of my control.

I was lost, confused and angry and couldn't understand why my parents took me away from you and separated us. Why they took me away from my homeland.

 You showed me the beauty and ways of the violin. How she sang and told her story without any words being spoken.

I decided then and there that is how I want to communicate with the world, a world that didn't understand me and I world I didn't understand.

I may have lost you in this world and in this life, but you will forever live on in the music that emanates from my violin.

I don’t think there will ever be a love greater than our love.

I am blessed to have had it for the few short years that I did and I thank you for that.

I’m sorry I didn’t say it when you were alive that I love you.

So now I am left at a crossroads with no idea where it will take me, with no idea of my destination.

Maybe the point of this journey is to find a journey to be on in the first place.
Maybe there is actually no destination and instead of wasting our lives constantly trying to seek it and attain it, 

what we are really supposed to be doing is to just be living the journey. 

Because exploration should never cease. 

Maybe in fact it doesn’t cease when we die. 

Maybe our soul goes off into the universe and continues to explore, continues to create new matter:
New beginnings, new planets, new worlds.

Aren’t we all just a form of energy created from the universe?

I am ready to accept that challenge.

I am ready to pick my journey instead of trying to find my destination so early on.

We think that if we attain our professional goals, or find the one who we want to marry, or if we have a family, that we have reached our destination.

But why would we think it needs to stop there?

Why do we stop exploring?

Why do we stop really living?

Why do we just settle for the status quo?

Love is Pain, Love is sorrow.

But Love is beautiful.

And we cannot appreciate Love without loss and sadness, and

We cannot appreciate life without love.

My Phoenix

I look at you in the mirror every day.

You are a symbol of Strength, of Determination, of courage.

You represent my Willingness to go out into the world and stand up for what I believe in.

You give me strength to go out into the world and declaree who I am as a human being.

I have been on an incredible journey which I hope continues.

That journey hasn't been easy and has been painful at times.

Brene Brown said something wonderful.

She said,

"Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage.

Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they are never weakness."

We are so afraid to be vulnerable because we might get hurt in the process. 

But then I ask you, if we are afraid and hide from the truth, are we really living?

Are we really reaching for our full potential if we do not make ourselves vulnerable?

Because I fully believe we cannot grow and achieve enlightenment if we are not vulnerable to the world.

We stunt our growth and become complacent.

We settle for the destination rather than the journey.

My Phoenix

She wants to seek the truth. She wants to be courageous.

Even if that means she has to be vulnerable. 

Even if that means she might get hurt again.

Because without vulnerability we cannot truly live. We cannot truly be who we were meant to be.
Without vulnerability, we cannot love. 

I am ready to spread my wings and learn how to fly.

I am ready to see where this journey will take me.

My Phoenix.

She will rise from the ashes and fly again one day.

Just you wait and see.

Miracle - KT Tunstall

A Sky Full of Stars - Coldplay