Black Friday Survivor

Saturday, November 29, 2014

I can now check off yet another item from my Unexpected Experiences bucket list.  I have now had the experience of working for Macys on Black Friday.  For those of you who might be reading this outside of the United States and who are unfamiliar with American culture, Black Friday is the name given to the Friday after Thanksgiving.  It is used within the retail community to describe what is often one of the most demanding and yet also rewarding days of the calendar year.

I did more than survive yesterday.  I did fairly well actually.  Considering Black Friday also marked my first day working for Macys on the actual sales floor I feel quite pleased with my performance actually.  Not everyone would willingly make Black Friday their first day of work for Macys.  I worked again today.  Before starting my shift I ‘baptized’ my Macys card by buying a new pair of shoes.  Investing in myself and my wardrobe feels good!

The darkest days of the year are upon us now.  I feel fairly good actually.  I still feel skeptical that my hard work and dedication to healing is ultimately going to eventually lead me to achieve my biggest dreams I hold for my life.  I want to believe diligence and dedication will ultimately help me to create a rewarding life for myself.  But having faith in such an outcome can be difficult given what I have experienced in my life.  And hearing other individuals recount their own experiences of injustice and disappointment can make having faith in my own brighter future even more difficult.  The world can be such an unjust place.  Sadness, loss and difficulty is a universal human experience.

And yet there is beauty even in the darkest of days.  I still frequently catch myself marveling at the beauty of the world.  Though the dormancy of the winter season is now firmly in place here in Minnesota there is a certain harsh beauty that can be found in these short days.  The cold simplifies life.  Those aspects of life we might take for granted in summer take on a deeper primacy in winter.  Remaining warm becomes a primary task of daily living.  Remaining healthy and of good spirit in the encompassing darkness of winter also becomes essential.  Nothing can be taken for granted in the darkest and coldest time of the year.

I find the grief I feel regarding the termination of any active relationship with members of my paternal family of origin still remains.  But it is changing.  My grief is withering as even grief must ultimately do when you pay it some attention.  Eventually my own life must go on and I must find a way to transcend the immense losses, disappointment and sadness I have experienced in the last eighteen months.  Loss may mark our lives but life itself will go on in some form.

I am about to embark on my first December without a clinical case of PTSD.  This is my first winter season in which I am living with what could be called a ‘bright mind’.  As I attend to my grief and venture into the darkest days of the year with a quality of health I have never really truly known throughout much of my life I feel grateful to have reached this place in my journey.  This place on my path to healing offers a strange mixture of darkness and light, sadness and joy.