The wonderful folks at NaBloPoMo give prompts for Monday through Friday of each week. I have a backlog of posts that I've never uploaded and pictures that need to be shared each weekend.
Anyway, I am a latecomer to the whole Vampire Diaries thing. My bff China convinced me to watch it and I'm hooked. It's like cotton candy for the brain. You know it's artificial and terrible for your brain, but you can't stop.
I'm in the middle of Season Three. For the uninitiated, here's the short story: The arrival of vampires in town disrupts the lives of a core group of people. Many people die and the female protagonist feels like she doesn't know how to incorporate who she is now with the younger, innocent self of the time before the vampires. Her good friend (I'm so Team Matt right now) tells her that she can't live her life trying to be everything to everyone. That person doesn't exist anymore. They decide to hold a "funeral" for her old self - just a few words and a couple of dandelions tossed into a river.
The point is that so often in life we mourn for the past to such an extent that it eclipses our present and future. It's hard. There are some events or experiences that are so profound that they change you forever. For better or for worse, the person you are now is the person you are now. In all of your greatness and flaws, this is who you are.
One of the difficulties of living with a chronic illness is this concept of mourning. So many of us hold on to the idea of the "old" us as our real identity, and this person is just a temporary situation. I frequently mourn the fact that I'm not the kayak-loving, sunbathing, park-cleaning ball of energy that I used to be. I've held that as the standard by which I measure myself for so long that anything else seems like a failure. When I let go of my automatic prejudice against the present me, when I let go of the idealized previous me, I kind of like the person I am today. I'm smart, funny, witty, and adorable like a weeble is adorable. I am fairly accomplished and respected in certain fields. And I write seriously funny political/debate rants on twitter.
I'm sure some will say it's morbid, but the more I think about it, I think there should be some journey passage ritual for something like this. A full-out funeral with people wouldn't work for me, or even a small gathering of best friends (Think The Fault in the Stars). For me, this grief and mourning is something deep and personal. I imagine that I'll go out to one of my local parks with a creek - my favorite kind of park. There will be some meditation involved and maybe something corny like the flowers in the creek. Something to say goodbye to my old life so I can fully and appreciatively live in the present.
Do you have any ideas that might work for a ritual like this?
Have you gone through something similar where you had to say goodbye to a huge portion of your life or your personality?
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