Love and Pain.

Love and pain are strange but close bedfellows. Today I learned that a friend I adore may be moving away. For a brief moment, as feelings swept over me, I felt an almost-nostalgia for the old me, the pre-program me, the one who was so shut down that she didn't feel much of anything in any situation.

I said as much to my friend, who laughed along with me, and agreed that there were times when a hermit's life seemed preferable to the endless pain we feel when we are loving, loved, and connected.

Small pangs, when the minor happenings of life twist off in a way we hadn't anticipated, or prepared for emotionally, and then the horror show of grief and anguish when we lose those with whom we are bound, in daily life.

Some weeks, some months, some years, seem to consist of one more jolting loss coming fast upon the heels of another, while we stand frozen under the sheer unimaginable weight of it.

I don't know how I'd manage, were it not for my faith.