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"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

(Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut)

I don't know why, but this quote is really resonating with my soul right now.

I think it's because I wish this were how I felt... but sadly I do not.  There are areas of my life that are beautiful, blessings for which I am eternally grateful.  But there are also areas that are not so beautiful.  Areas that definitely need more attention and dedication than I am currently able to give.

And hurt is a funny thing.  That first night after Z passed away, I remember sobbing for hours, finally falling asleep only after I had put some of my thoughts and feelings down in words.  I woke up two hours later and continued my sobbing, unable to fully comprehend what had happened, frightened by the pain of loss.  At the time, I made the foolish assumption that the hurt I was feeling then was the worst it was going to get.  If I had known that night that I had not even begun to feel even a fraction of the hurt that was to come, I probably would have raised the white flag then and there.  I had no point of reference, no precedent for how to deal with what I was feeling.  It's been fourteen weeks (that's another funny thing, the way you measure time - days, weeks, months - after a devastating loss... but that's a topic for another post), and I think the worst of the hurt really has passed, but the hurt itself is a constant in my life.  Some days it's a sharp, heavy hurt; other days it's a dull, gentle hurt.  Either way, it's always there.

I wish everything were beautiful in my life right now.  I wish nothing hurt.  But I suppose that is the great challenge of life: to create beauty, to be more than your hurt.  To build a beautiful life out of the ruins that hurt leaves behind.

Because in the end, overcoming the hurt is what makes everything beautiful.