"You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles inbetween you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. You are a world. All of those men were worlds in their time with their whiskers on their chins, some of them, their clean shirts, their steel rimmed glasses, their freshly polished shoes..... Each carried his world on his back the way a snail carries his shell..." Frederick Buechner

I'm away in a few hours, before then I have another funeral to go to - a close friends Dad. That makes two in two days...

I know I'm finding it hard - mixed in with all the emotion are the what if's and the how would I cope - how will I cope - the situation turned around in my head, then put one side until I have to deal with it, looked at and discarded until I need to pick it up, knowing one day I will have to. It's the nature of living - and loving...

I'm asking people for support - not like me at all - it's a vulnerable place. I know I am retreating into that snail shell...
It feels like a snails shell - my world...

I woke up on auto pilot - things to be done, needing to rise to the occasion, getting through - the body can function independently of the mind.
I wonder - I think thats how it's going to be - the next few days perhaps...
Can I leave my mind behind how it was yesterday, when it was free and happy, and pick it up on the flight home?
Because if I don't think and don't feel, then maybe I won't feel hurt and then maybe I won't cry... and then maybe I will actually be of some use.

Defences are there for a reason and just as it's good to let them down, and let people into our worlds, there are times when they protect and help...
and yet they come up without our asking.
We are not always in control - perhaps never in control of how we feel.
We learn how to be in control of how we react externally to our feelings - but not how we react internally...

I ask for help and support and yet I know that ultimately I am alone in this - each of us can only ever cope with our feelings alone - yet the knowing that there are others around when our processing is done is perhaps more what I am asking - asking for them not to leave me alone with this - to still be there when I get back. It helps if you know what you're asking for in the first place...but how often do we really know what we're asking for when we ask for it - we just know we need something...

Perhaps thats all the reassurance anyone can ever ask for - noone wants to be left alone with just their world - their snail shell - even when it's tough - it's good to know there are people around

Dance like no-one is watching
Sing like no-one is listening
and
Love like you have never been hurt...

It's a good maxim for living... letting people share the beautiful shiny colours on the inside of our shells - reflected through our eyes, our smiles, our words and our touch - and maybe just our tears.
Showing that perhaps although we may be alone with our worlds, we're not so very different - our eyes, our smiles, our words, and our touch and tears connect us.

Love hurts, it's inevitable, inescapable... but I'm pleased I loved - and love still - guess we carry on loving and hurting and being hurt...
thats how we keep feeling and keep living...