how to save a life

between the lines of fear and blame

you begin to wonder why you came.

where did i go wrong? i lost a friend. 

somewhere along in the bitterness. 

i would have stayed up with you all night

had i known how to save a life.

my own personal medical knowledge comes from grey's anatomy and discussions round the dinner table with a nurse {mom} and doctor {brother}-- more second-hand than hands-on training.
and yet while i don't {really} know how to perform a hemispherectomy beyond my own snooping in research, i am excellent at performing the postmortem.


no expert at analyzing brain tissue, i am a professional of retrospectively abstracting my life-- inspecting the culprit of my many inadequacies and the neuroanatomy of reasons culminating in where i am. right this very instant.  


time and time again i come back to: "where did i go wrong?"
because i blame myself.  it's always me that is not enough of whatever it is the situation calls for. 

if i were more ________ then ________.

if i weren't _______ then ________. 

.

the postmortem can be vicious, to say the least.


my wonderful friend sent me a link to this, as i was hosting my own pity-party:

you mustn’t perform an endless postmortem on the relationship.

by continually asking yourself what you did wrong or what would have happened if you’d done things differently, you keep your wounded feelings alive.

i don’t believe the Lord intends you to be hurt again and again for the sake of “learning experiences.” i believe that He wants you to know the joy that comes from understanding, trusting, and loving someone in an honest, giving relationship. 

you may find that the best preparation you can make for marriage is to learn to love God and to love yourself. when you have a secure, spiritual knowledge of yourself as a child of God, you will find a sense of personal confidence and identity that makes a good relationship possible.

how to save a life? 

it's tricky. 

it's more than surgery and vitamins and 8 cups of water a day. 

i'm figuring out, little by little, how exactly to save my own existence of happiness. 

i never signed the dnr forms, so i am using extraordinary measures in loving myself. i deserve that.

enough to let go of every past boy, and to thank them for what they have taught me, even if it wasn't meant to be for the eternities. 

{huntman is still pending. i'm not letting go until he tells me to}.