Distance can be defined in many ways. I am geographically distant from the place that I was in a few years ago. I have physically transformed my health and life distancing myself from the person who practiced so much destructive behavior. And I have distanced myself emotionally from a life that seems only a foggy memory (possibly foggy due to mind altering practice).

Today I stood on the outside looking in. I waited on a couple that could have been he and I. They were sharing a joke that no one else knew as they giggled inappropriately with a look of distance from the world around them. There in public they were not a part of what was going on around them. I felt odd seeing them and myself and my past in them. Every now and then I think about him. I wonder how bad it might have gotten, how bad I might have gotten, if the light had stayed off. While I still feel disconnected in many ways I don�t feel like I�m in a little bubble. The edges are no longer soft and the hard cold light, while less than flattering, is easier to forecast.

I am far away from all that was; no chance of my past slamming into my present and I have lost touch with so many of the folks I met along the way. They were my friends (they were our friends) and they stayed after the fall but now they drift away one by one. Have I let them go, have they left or is this just the normal distance that time and geography creates.

Their lives and mine no longer resemble each other. I am not the person they once knew and I suppose they may not care for me anymore. I used to be fun, the life of the party, but now there is no party. There is the day to day and I do the things I used to like to do before, before I stopped doing everything in favor of distancing myself from my unhappy life. I have returned to the life and activities I had before. Every day I get closer to the life I left behind in favor of fun and games (which wasn�t really all that much fun and a lot more game than I bargained for). Someday I will have a home again, the good that I came here to find will materialize and I will live the rest of my life knowing that I am here, completely, separate but not distant. I am present in my life, for whatever is left of it and come what may.

It was strange to see my past but it brought my present into focus and that was something I needed in this tenuous time as I wait for news (no news is good news?). Whatever happens I am going forward at least and every step puts those days further and further behind me.

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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