houston, we have a problem.

My thoughts are scattered tonight but they have been simmering inside my core all day.  All week even.  Until today I felt too broken to open the lid.  I realize that perhaps I let my thoughts simmer too long as I open the lid and these words are boiling out of me without structure and concentration, making a mess all over this screen.  The heat was turned to high as I was reminded tonight of a favorite verse from a song I have always loved.  This lyric/quote was my senior quote in high school and has followed me since I first heard the song.  "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."  I had a chapter of my life closed for me today.  A friendship sealed.  I would walk away without a tear if I knew I had done everything I could to save it.  But I'm not sure I did.  I have to be so strong all the time it seems as so many people look to me to lift them up.  Family, friends, and the like all look to me to be some pillar of strength, unmoved by life's constant turbulence.  My melt-downs are kept few and quiet.  I only expose my pain to you, my reader, and a select few individuals who could be counted on one hand.  Tonight I am censored from someone's life charged with the crime of not lifting them up when they were sad, saving them when their bedrock was eroding, and not being more sensitive to their health scares.  I have been kicked but never this hard.  Of all of the sins I am guilty of, being an absent friend is the last one I expected to be judged on.  While I can't deny guilt completely I also know I must pick myself up off the ground and move on with my life in a positive direction.  I want to be happy.  I insist on it.  I was even taking a quiet drive this evening with soft rock music humming in the background as I made peace with my life and it's fragility.  I imagined my light being snuffed out without a moment's notice and wondered if I had done all I could to leave the world a brighter one.  I hoped I would die happy.  Life isn't fair and often people pass out of this world in an unhappy state of mind.  My soul aches to think of those wretched ones.  So these were my thoughts before I received a hand-written letter on my doorstep tonight.  Five pages later and I am left stunned and unable to visualize how I can move on as a friend to anyone.  I have spent the week wondering who was going to save me, meanwhile, people I love will cry themselves to sleep tonight because they thought I could have done more for them.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.