New light - Thoughts under the stars

 The clock nears 2 a.m. I cannot see the stars, but I know they are above the clouds, each one singing its song in the symphony of the Universe.

Free image "Milky Way" by Pexels at Pixabay. 

I sit alone at my computer with only the sound of the refrigerator behind me and the peeping frogs of tinnitus pulsating in my right ear to break the silence. 

The dog, confused at my early emergence from my cocoon of blankets, watches me sleepily from the hallway. 

An open cookbook is to my left, a reminder that I will try that recipe for English muffins when I eventually start the day; hopefully I will have slept before that. To my right is a shiny white mug that I use to encourage myself to drink more water. 

I notice these things but I attend to my writing, to calm my racing thoughts. This happens occasionally, these bouts of insomnia that I have learned to accept and do something else until I feel tired enough to go back to bed.

My thoughts turn to the sleeping ones in my house. The cats of course - they sleep over 18 hours a day - and my husband down the hall, oblivious to my insomnia, snoring softly. I hear him whistle occasionally in his sleep, pent-up breath escaping like a distant boiling kettle. I imagine what it must be like to breathe all the time through half-congested nostrils. To have to choose between breathing and eating, for only one can be done at a time; his allergies make him miss so much of what others ... what I ... take for granted. I shudder.

My daughter stops by and checks on me. I explain my insomnia (or what I think caused it this time) and she brings me a heating pad for my aching belly - in this body I pay for every pleasure, it seems, with pain - this time it was a prolonged belly-laugh earlier this evening at some silly thing that happened. She and I understand each other's pains. She's a good person, one I am honoured to call my friend as well as my child. She goes back to her bedroom and wishes me a good night. The heating pad helps. Or was it just her love and care for me? Perhaps both. Definitely the love.

And in this relative silence, I sit and type out my thoughts. Blogging relaxes me; it gives me an outlet and orders my thought process so that it doesn't race along, pinging off the walls of my mind like some freshly-released pinball. Yet the thoughts this time are not regrets or flashbacks - those rip at my soul, but not tonight.

Tonight I am ... grateful, pensive, even (dare I say it?) happy. I am unaccustomed to this new way of being. The change came just this morning when I was watching old reruns of The Big Bang Theory. It was near the end of the series and Leonard, who grew up in a loveless home, realizes his mother is using him again to further her career, as she did when he was a child and all through his growing-up years. 

He becomes very angry ... and she gaslights him, ignores him until (she says) his tantrum is done. At the end, he finally decides to forgive her, and comes to tell her so. She hadn't asked for his forgiveness, and told him that. But he forgave her anyway. And his words (paraphrased below) pierced my soul to the quick. "I forgive you because ... I'm just going to have to accept you the way you are, and realize that you will never change. And maybe someday, you will learn to accept me the way I am."  She sits in silence for several seconds, and says, "That feels good. To be forgiven even though I didn't ask you to do it."  He is silent. And she gets up and for the first time in his life, she hugs him. And he hugs her back. No questions, no conditions, no ground rules, Just one simple act of kindness. 

And yes, I cried.

Free image by
Evgeni Tcherkasski at Pixabay.com

The scene reminded me that there are certain people in my life who need forgiveness and who will never change. And maybe it doesn't matter if they do. They need it anyway. And more than that, I need to give it to them. No questions, no conditions, no ground rules. Just one simple act of kindness, repeated over and over and over again, until the healing is complete.

I said to someone earlier this week that miracles happen every day. And a miracle is no less a miracle if it happens slowly and gradually. Just like my little light here that I shine is no less amazing than that of the stars that seem so dim but are really enormous and magnificent. That there even IS light is amazing. And just because I cannot shine as brightly as the sun (or as brightly as other people whom I admire) doesn't mean that I should stop shining my own light, or that I should even dim it. It could be that somebody, somewhere, might be just as inspired as I am by what little light I can shed.

I think I can go back to bed now.

Whether I sleep ... is immaterial.