Absent

When a person lives with something for a long time, an addiction, an illness, a child, a spouse, it becomes the new normal. It’s easy to forget what it was like to live without it. When that thing is taken away we are dropped in a whole new world. Maybe a good world, maybe a bad one.  For a time we may be lost, confused and alone, wondering how in the world we can adjust. How we can get back to normal.

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, humans are adaptable. The events in our lives mold us, refine us.  Yet no matter how horrible, or how good, we move on, we find a way to change, grow, and deal with those events. We may struggle while doing this, but the possibility to adapt is there, even while wondering what to do, or how to live with that absence.  

Gradually we remember how to be the us we once were.  The us that lived without it. The person a part of us still is. Only now we’re tempered with the wisdom that life has brought us.  

Lest any of you believe I have lost a loved one that is not the case. For me the absence is a good one.  It won’t be gone forever. It will return sooner than I wish. But for now, I am rejoicing in the me I once was, in the freedom I currently have.