seeds of hope

Today it was a lovely blustery rainy day. I stayed indoors for most of it. I decided to do a little cleaning and I ended up going through my zine collection to thin it down and sell some of them on ebay. This made me re-read some of them and I got nostalgic. I remember how I was in the days when I was doing a zine and the future seemed a little bit brighter. I had so much to say then. I was excited, motivated and idealistic about everything, music, writing and art... about making the world a better place. Even though now I am much more established, in some ways I had a lot more going for me then.
It's just different.
In some ways I wish I had now what I had then. How boring. I never wanted to be someone who said that. Ugh.
I miss the heck out of my mom.
I miss her all the time. What can I say? It saps me dry and makes me depressed.
I am just so sad. And the tears still come. After I got home from work tonight I looked up at the sky, stunning as it was in this full-moon, with its silver lined clouds, and I cried. Hard. I just stood in the driveway and cried. I want to reach for her. Call her. Hug her, hold her hand. Talk to her. I do talk to her, but she never answers. How can she? She is gone, her soul somewhere else on the next part of her journey, she doesn't exist here anymore, and I have such a hard time wrapping my mind around it. I have such a hard time letting go. Does she know that I miss her? I feel so lonely in this world without her. I could never have prepared for how this feels. Sometimes she visits me in my dreams. I am thankful for that. Upon entering the house I poured a hot bath and a glass of wine and tried to think about relaxing this pain away. I wanted a xanax, or something... but there is no pill for this.

My friends came together and held a benefit show for me (for my mom, in her honor). It was Saturday the 9th, and in case you weren't there, it was a smashing success. I felt warm and loved. I was so grateful my heart was to the bursting point. Truly. We raised a good chunk to donate to Sarah House, and in addition I was able to pay off some things that I needed to as a result. There was art and great live music. And the best part? I made some new friends and got closer to some existing ones. It was good all around. No, it was great.
I've never had anyone throw me a surprise party, but I imagine that that's pretty close to what it would feel like. Grand. Spectacular. Lucky.
So it's over now and life is back to normal. In the quiet times I realize how nothing is the same anymore, nothing is "normal" now, not like it was... but I call it the "new normal".
Now it's late, and I can hear the wind howling outside my window, rattling the panes. I love this house when it rains. I want to have hope that I will feel better and that life will be good again. It hasn't been in so long. I am depressed in the fullest sense of the word. People tell me that I will get better, but it doesn't feel like it right now. I'm still grieving, still in the full throes of it, and that will be its own process with its own time line.
I need a symbol of hope. Something to focus on to guide me.
So I think of this:
A thing I used to see all the time while driving in LA were these little palm trees growing up through the concrete. They seemed to pop up in the oddest places, like in the cracks of the freeway dividers. It seemed impossible that this little imported beauty of a tree could thrive in conditions like these... this smog laden noise polluted concrete covered dirty city. But they do. And how they pop up through the cracks out of nowhere is a wonder to me. I need to be like the palm tree when my landscape seems barren and lost. I just need to persevere. Keep breathing. Know that the sun will come up tomorrow and keep breathing because you never know what the tide will bring in.