Five Minute Friday - Real

 Lisa-Jo over at The Gypsy Mama does a Five Minute Friday post each week on a topic she chooses.  Here are the rules:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. That's pretty much it.

I want to write more and five minutes is quite doable, so here's my first Five Minute Friday

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Topic: Real

There is a lot more pain and sadness in the real world than I wanted to believe before.  Pain that is hard to look in the face.  Pain that is hard to accept.

We dodge around it and avoid it.  We stand at the edges of other people’s pain, somehow fascinated, unable to look away but also unable to help.

And when it strikes our own life we are overwhelmed by it.  The bad, the wrong, the broken things of life that wash over us are strong and often so unexpected they can leave us adrift in a world we don’t recognize.

And that is part of “real.”  A part we don’t want to think about.  But it is real and I think it is the reason that when someone says “real” we think “bad.”  Because it’s only when we are really faced with something terrible that we smash up against reality – something we can’t wish away or redo. 

I never struggle with the reality of happiness.  I say, “I can’t believe how good this is!” as I smile and skip away.  But that’s not really true.  I’m fine with good happening. 

It’s the bad that I can’t believe happened.  The bad part of reality that I want to escape.  The bad part I want to be unreal. 

But it’s a bit unfair for me to label “real” as “bad.”  If I’m telling how I “really” am, that doesn’t just include the fact that I’m up, again, in the middle of the night trying to soothe a pint sized crisis when all I really want to do is sleep.  It also includes the fact that Belle’s hair is soft and long when I lay next to her and her voice is about the sweetest sound in the world as she talks to me. 

Real intertwines the good and the bad.  Somehow I’d like to wrap my brain around the balance that is there. 

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Well, there’s my five minutes and that’s good because this is where the thought gets stuck.  The point where I stop and ask myself, “Self, is that where you were headed at the beginning?" then I roll my eyes at myself and say, "I didn’t think so.” 

And so even though I can still see the thought a little bit farther ahead of me, it soon gets tangled in with all the other half-formed and unthunk thoughts and the feelings and hopes and fears that all wrap themselves together into a tangle. 

But one thing I’ve learned from motherhood is that almost any task can be set down midway through, like a pile of unfolded laundry dumped in the middle of the living room floor which will wait patiently, for days if necessary, for me to come back and continue folding.  So for now, elusive thought about the relationship between real and bad, enjoy your home in the tangles.  I’ll be back to pull you out a little more some other time. 

Probably.