Letting a Little Light into the Dark

I am sorry, again, my gentle readers, for being Absent. It is springtime, and it is May -- historically always a difficult month, for it has always encompassed the end of the school year which is notoriously complex, and it is also the anniversary of the Unmooring -- and I am, unsurprisingly, at a loss. There is a Void, and I don't know what is missing, so I don't know what I need to do to fill it. 

I'll be going to a college reunion soon, and I have mixed feelings about that; for college, though formative and transformative, was also lonely and complex, and I never know quite what emotions I will have about revisiting the place and the time. I am quite fond of my alma mater; but the me that I was then, still struggles with the experience. (A classic case of it's not you, it's me.) 

I used to be a warm, loving, open person. But as time has gone by, all the ways I have been able to express myself have slowly disappeared, as the people have... moved on: my children have grown up and left home; Beloved Husband is often busy with his own personal projects and hobbies; Cherished Friend is at a distance; the members of my family of origin are all a plane ride away; I no longer have any local friends. I don't even have an elderly chihuahua -- just aloof rabbits who eschew even a few pats. Somehow, I have ended up with no one nearby to bestow extra kindness or tenderness, or for whom to do the little things I used to enjoy doing. I feel alone, and in the Dark.

I have a resource that I need to use: I am lucky that my lovely mother-in-law is here, a bright star in a cloudy sky. She is one in a billion, the kind of person I can only hope to be. And I should let go of the sadness I feel at the distance of all my other people, and drive the half-hour cross town to spend more time with her. She has been endlessly kind to me since the day we first met; it's an honor to be in her orbit. She is so filled with light, though, that I am having trouble letting her into the dark place where I have found myself. 

I've built a hardened shell around my heart. One day at a time, one step at a time, perhaps I can soften myself again, if I sit in the light for a little while.