Otis Sings the Blues

It's the kind of day where the clouds are dragging their underbellies, bloated and gorged with so much rain.  Waiting for you to walk outside and literally, rain on your parade. It's the kind of day where moping around in the pajama bottoms of a past lover and listening to Otis Redding seems like a normal moment. No matter how much effort you put into trying to force a positive outlook on each day, it just doesn't seem to make a difference in the way the world treats you. Or responds to you, because the world really knows that your heart is just as heavy with grief as those grey clouds above you. Will it get better one day? Everyone is quick to assure you that this will pass, that something better is looming around the bend, that surely you will get through this heartache in the blink of an eye! And while their chipper and upbeat words bounce lightly off the heavy armor of sadness that shields you, you still search for that little ember of hope you are certain must still be within you. Except that right now, it's been snuffed out. It's been extinguished by the anger and selfishness of the one who ripped your soul to nothingness. You wonder if it will ever be lit again - you wonder if your life will ever be your own again. Because right now, control does not belong to you. Everyone else has some hold of the reigns of your life and you are powerless to do anything but slump back and watch.

Of course, no one really wants to deal with you and your heartache any longer. Three weeks is more than ample time to pick up the shards of your shattered dreams and get back to it. You're supposed to posture that you are content and happy and cool with the crazy that is still your daily life. As if this upheaval is just a little blip, that it's just as easy to dismiss as a common cold. You wish that it were just so simple, and that with a little confidence you could just stroll through your days like some happy go lucky child, carefree and delighted. Why can't someone just tell you how to do that, and you will follow protocol. You realize the only safe haven you have for your feelings is right here, where anyone reading can flick through to the other posts of happier times in your life. Then you realize that surely no one really bothers with reading this anyway, and feel a moment of calm that you can vent freely and no lectures or advice or well meaning words will flood your way. Perhaps there is something to this little piece of anonymity....