I am sitting in the dark with candles all around me, my margarita, and La Vien Rose playing on my laptop. It is moments like these that make my crazy hectic days at work, in a job I don't like, worth it. To come home to this every night, and all of you, gives me peace and I am my "la donna sola" self once again. Sometimes I catch myself aching to be in a relationship again, and then I think about the dozens of friends I have who are married or dating who are completely and totally unhappy. Friends who tell me almost daily they wish they could take it all back. I comfort myself with this thought. I don't stay up late worrying about where my boyfriend or husband is...the only one I have to keep tabs on is me. I don't get angry with anyone because they forgot to pick up something at the store or annoyed because their ex-girlfriend is friending them on Facebook or keeping me up late talking in their sleep. This chaos that is "having someone," something that is supposed to make us feel better on Valentines Day or at the very least, make us look like less of a loser by not being alone is driving us all crazy and depriving us of our own inner peace. I read something somewhere once that said that said that maybe the reason we want to be with someone so badly is to have a witness to our lives. There will always be people out there who think they know you or who haven't seen the good things that you do--only the bad things. Sometimes all we want is a witness to say, "Your life meant something." What if we don't have someone? What if the only witness we have are the few people in our lives who truly get us? Is it the same?
On a rare occasion of soul-baring between my son's father and I this week, I shared with him about this patient of ours who had come in with liver failure who was the color of a green bean. At first, I was annoyed, because her entourage included 10 of her family members who I was supposed to squash into a room that was meant for three at the most. Until they started talking about her being their "chief in command" and the one who "holds everything together," so they were going to be there for her just because she wanted them at her appointment. Her brothers..her sisters..her children...they were all there. I wondered out loud if my brothers and sisters would fly from around the country just to be there for one doctor's appointment.
Then I stopped and there was silence for a few moments before I heard a quiet, "I would be there."
Since I was not fishing for this reply as I would have normally had it been my current significant other, this caught me a little by surprise. It may not always come from the people we expect, but there is someone out there for all of us. Someone who is watching and that may take you for granted sometimes...but we have witnesses all around us. I know that there are people in my life that I would move into the hospital for if they were in that much pain and misery. I am surrounded by death and sickness every day and I see the people that are truly there for their families and those that leave to go to the parking lot while their 80 year old grandmother is too weak to even wheel herself into her own waiting room. My heart both overflows and is broken on a regular basis these days. I was desperately hoping for an escape from my roller coaster ride of a personal life. To hide my head in a hole at work, but lately I find myself racing for the safety of home thanking god that my life is not so complicated as all that. It is midnight and I have to be up in 5.5 hours, so I'll leave you with this thought. Who are the witnesses in your life? Is it enough to know that they are the ones who will be saying someday that your life meant something? Will they say anything at all?
