January 3rd, 2011 | Comments Off on one word

capturing a new year

I’ve noticed some of my blogging friends have chosen a theme word to help focus the year.  Simplify.  Breathe.  Listen. Words like that.  What word would best encapsulate my aspirations for 2011?  I can think of many words that describe how I feel at this moment.

Drained.  Deflated.  Depleted.

Relieved.  Relieved to have my boys home, asleep in their beds, and to have a little alone time to regroup, try to figure out where I am, how I am, and let tears stream down my face as I try to sort these things out.

I’ve had a week off from work, but it doesn’t seem as though I’ve had a vacation, even though I did get two full nights of sleep in during that week, and even though I had two fine grown-up days that bathed the senses with visual, aural, and gastronomic goodness.

Maybe this is the year to focus on loving myself the way I want to be loved, or treating myself the way I want to be treated.  Or to put the golden rule into action and love others the way I want to be loved and treat others the way I want to be treated.  In general, I think I do these things (for others).  For me,  I can give myself time.  I can carve out more time with which to do things that edify me.  That I can do.  But what of intimacy?  Why is it that I have such a deep and persistent ache for physical touch, for embracing, for intimacy?  I don’t know how to assuage this ache alone, and I can’t make it an expectation for another.  So I’m stuck, like a spoiled and whining child who wants something she can’t have.  The difference being that that which I want to receive is also that which I want to give.  That said, I like to think that I don’t come across as spoiled and whiny.  I hope that I come across as loving, giving, and nurturing.

Stuck.  Stuck is not the word that I want to use to define my year.

Maybe I will find a way to overcome the ache, and just live, just be.

Be.  That can be my word.

Be.