In The Distance...

I have always loved T.S. Eliot's quote, "What we call the beginning is often the end.  And to make an end is to make a beginning."

Oh how my life has been filled with a thousand ends to beginnings!  Many scattered throughout this blog.

I have shared my friends Lacy, her brother Rob with you, and how we soared upon our horses to escape the horrors of violence with alcoholism we had to live with, making us adults way before we were supposed to be adults.  The bond we three shared was deep, wrapped in our even deeper loving devotion to our horses.

One day beneath the same tree where we found all that change after swimming with our horses a year earlier, we spread out a map of the United States on the ground in desperation.  We had decided to take our horses and ride to a place far away in the distance where we could finally be free of the violence and hate.

I will never forget this moment beneath our comfort tree.  

"Adelaide, look," said Rob.  "There are too many towns jammed close to each other all the way till Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Nevada!  We've gotta go where there aren't any people around for miles."

"I know, but we have to make sure we choose a green area on the map in those states so we have grass for the horses, and water for us all to drink."

"I wonder how many miles we'll travel on our horses each day," thought Lacy outloud.

Rob enthusiastically said, "Well at least fifty or even a hundred!"

Suddenly, on the map I noticed a huge wide open area with lots of green in east central Wyoming.  "Hey look!  The ONLY little town in all THAT space is this tiny Sweetwater Lake!"

Lacy and Rob really liked the sound of the place too, and we decided with a name like that it just had to be our shining light in the distance.  So Sweetwater Lake, Wyoming would soon be our new home...our beginning of the ending we sought hard to free ourselves from.

With an ink pen we mapped out our route for riding our horses on backroads to keep anyone from finding us.  

Oh, did we ever come close to leaving too!  

How close?  At 3am one morning we met at our comfort tree on our horses carrying everything we could in backpacks.  We were DOING it.  Only none of us had considered checking the weather first.  

Just as we were ready to leave on our beginning, a very intense thunderstorm with high winds struck.  Out of concern for our horses we realized for their sake we had to get them back to their stalls.  Sadly, we had to return.  No one even knew we had ever left.

Eventually, it was due to the deep abiding love for our horses we reluctantly decided the long journey may bring harm to them, and this was just something we would ever risk doing.  Sadly we had to cast our dreams for our beginnings aside.

Often as we rode together, we wondered if the distance beyond our shared sorrows could ever shine a light into our lives.  Would we each ever attain peace, love, and happiness?

Regardless what happened to us though, we promised to stay close and be best friends forever.  Only all our beginnings and ends soon took us far away from each other, yet never can take away the shining treasured memories of what we shared in the very dark midst of hell.  

When I was staying at the Orphanage, my fellow 

"adults before our time" in kids bodies due to what our adults did to us and I would lay in our beds imagining if the distance beyond the living hell our adults kept us in would ever mean one day love could be ours to actually hold in our grasp and keep.  We younger kids even dared to believe in finding love and happiness oneday.

Of course the older kids said we younger ones were filled with shit because THEIR hearts had been shattered so they no longer held hope anymore.  Soon we all were shattered when the kids were all sent to foster homes, and the Orphanage...our separate peace...closed forever as all were scattered away forever with the wind.

Thankfully I came packaged with an indomitable spirit and an irrepressible sense of hope my intense losses could really one day be my beginning.  

Like Gibran said so well, "The deeper sorrow carves into our soul the more joy we attain."

And trust me, this is true.

The ends were my beginning, for I found my mentor friends who poured their sweet love into me and I began my surviva-soaring, loving and being loved.  I had at last reached the bright shining distance beyond the darkness.

My end will be a beginning beyond the distance too one day.  A beginning like no other, for this beginning will be when I finally soar to Heaven, for I will at last be free of all the pain and suffering with my life of physical challenges.  And you know what?  I may just be waaay taller than I have ever known, and even able to get on my horses easier.🤣

You see, my dear ones, our lives are many beginnings and endings, with love, sorrow, happiness, and laughter interwoven throughout, like a rich, wonderful tapestry, weaving the threads into something beautiful on top.  But the chaotic sorrows of our many beginnings and ends woven beneath makes all the treasure happen.

So keep your head held high, my dear ones, and hold onto faith, hope, love, and optimism, for you see, there is always, ALWAYS...a bright shining distance to reach beyond the darkness.  And you know what?  It's beautiful.

The stars shine bright because darkness is what makes stars shine bright.

The chaos of the beginnings and ends of our most shattering challenges beneath the tapestry of our lives is what makes living the tapestry of our lives into such beautiful creations above the chaos...in the distance, until at last our tapestry is complete.  And that end is just the beginning.