Just Rolling With the Punches

 I am a rock.

I am an island.

And a rock feel no pain.

And an island never cries.

--Paul Simon

 I have had to evaluate and re-evaluate myself more than I'd like to in a month's time.  Do you ever have everything hit you at once?  If things came, say a month at a time, they would be easier to handle.  So, I am an emotionally drained shell of a person that wants to hide under a rock in order to recuperate.  It's hard to recuperate in the open when another punch comes out of nowhere.  Where are these punches coming from?  All directions.  There is not one specific thing I can mention here because most of these issues are resolved unto themselves.  There is time needed to heal after a person goes through something emotionally traumatic.  I have barely had enough time to heal from issue number one when two through ten comes barreling on me.  I am trying my best to keep my blinders on and trudge ahead since there are no rocks nearby to crawl under.

At times like these, I think of the esoteric poet Emily Dickinson.  I have an insatiable need to read about the lives of poets, sometimes more than the poetry that made them famous.  I can't help but identify with some personality traits or threads that run through their lives.  With dear Emily, she was incredibly shy.  Well, it's hard to be a parent and still be shy. However, there is traces of shyness that will always run through my soul.  Emily never outgrew hers.  When her friends came to visit, she sat in another room and spoke to them from there.  Otherwise, she wrote them letters.  She felt the depth of their caring and friendship, even from such limited association.  She wrote the most exquisite poems on love, yet never had a beau. Could it be the fear of being hurt?  Yes, sometimes the fear can be more intense than actually being hurt.  That doesn't make it an easier emotion to deal with.  It's easier to have an ideal in place, rather than deal with harsh reality.  So Emily rarely left her house.  Some days, I don't blame her.  In order to interact with the human population, it's great to have a fortress guarding one's heart.  When there's an attack, there's no casualties.  You don't feel pain so intensely.  So since I had no fortress in place, the attacks caused some injuries.  Like all injuries, they need time to heal.  I need time to rebuild, but not in an Iraqi sort of way.