A really really dark Florida winter

Began the season with the loss of a dear friend. (adding to a year of grieving for another good man already in progress…) Can it be that the garden is a reflection of the horrors going on inside me? No. I don't think I'm that powerful. I know I'm not powerful. If thinking the good thought was enough, we'd all be in Paradise right now. But frosts happened, more than one. Even more than two. And they're still coming this day of the supposed "last frost date" in the Land of the Flowers. I've stopped being able to look out my window, usually a rescue tactic from inner turmoil. It's been so cold I haven't been able to put in much swing time. Chance and I do squeeze in some moments, each of us in our quilted, padded coats. (Okay, so his is PINK! He can handle it. HE knows he's a boy…) (Mine is blue, now that I mention it, and my name IS Andy. And I had no hair for the first 3 or 4 years of my life… but I'm not confused, at least not in THAT way.)


But the frosts came. And the air is just cold. And it's totally gloomy. I think the inner gloom gets reflected in that I just don't have the patience or the interest to be out there. Even if it was sunny. Nothing is growing anyway - but the weeds coming up through the mulch.

The poinsettias brought home from the grief house are waiting to be planted, still alive, on the front deck. The garden looks more dead than alive to me. I guess most of it will come back in the spring. Or some of it. I have trouble caring, really. My closest confidants have descended into the world of pain. I share their grief as much as I can, but it is theirs and too exquisite to touch. My suffering is huge to me, but it pales in comparison to what they are going through. I can't add to their grief, anxiety, just pain in general. Where is my flood of negativity supposed to go? Writing is good. Good thing nobody is reading this. (If you are reading this, then, thanks - and stay nonjudgmental, will you?) Anyway, I hope the gloom will ease some with the coming of Spring.

I do have flashes of just being here, just now, in this moment. And, if I can just use my eyes and ears, and not my heart or memory, I can see (and hear) that Life is going on in it's own beautiful perfect way. But while Life itself is perfect and knowing, I am not, not in my superficial, ignorant self, and I AM suffering and my friends don't need my stuff added to theirs. So, again, I write.