Don't forget what you love

On Monday, I returned from a trip to Boston. I've been wanting to go to Boston for a very long time. First there is all of the Revolutionary War history that happened there. Then, when I was pursuing my Masters in History, I wrote my thesis on a slave poet named Phillis Wheatley, who lived (and died in poverty) in Boston.

I've been on a real high since I got back.

You see, in Boston, I remembered everything about my greatest love - History. It might seem strange that a person could forget something as basic as "I really love this." However, when you are on a really bumpy roller coaster, which is perhaps the best description I have for infertility, sometimes your focus becomes narrow.

For the last ten years, there have been a lot of periods of time where my brain was consumed with trying to make sense of this strange diagnosis I live with. Why can other people so easily have children, to the point where they have children "accidentally," and I, who always imagined myself as a mother, can never even hope to have children who are really mine? What is that all about? How can I make it through another day with this great weight on my heart? How can I express joy for other people who seem to just be living out all of my dreams?

I haven't spent a lot of time in the last ten years thinking about things that I really really liked. I made up all sorts of reasons for this. I was soooo selfless. I was sooo busy. Whatever the reasons were, ultimately the fact was that I had become separated from myself. Depression and various hardships had split me from who I truly was, and I was lost.

Unlike in the soap operas, I was not able to take a random trip for 3 months to go looking for answers. That's the problem with real life. It keeps going, and you have to keep doing little things like getting up, going to work, and doing laundry. Finding your bliss gets put even further back on the back burner.

I remember, now, though, that History has always been my greatest love for as long as I can remember. I remember reading a book when I was first learning to read. It was called Wagon Wheels, and it was the story of a Black family who traveled to Nicodemus, Kansas. I had read it tons of times when one day I noticed the afterword. It was a true story!

I remember finding out that I was part Cherokee.

I remember going to Washington, D.C. for the first time, going to Mount Vernon, and somehow sensing that I was in a place of great importance.

My love of History is like being a fangirl or a fanboy for a celebrity. To walk in places where people I read about walked, to touch things that people I admire touched. These are things that fill me with incomprehensible joy. And it's something that likely will seem very strange to a lot of people. But that's okay. This is my bliss. We've been separated for quite some time, and it's so nice to have my arms around it again.

Do you remember what your bliss is? Do you know what it is without thinking? Is there something you can see or hear that makes you weep for joy right away, before you can even analyze what is going on?

Don't lose track of that. Don't try to fill that space with something else that makes sense to other people. Find your bliss and let it be your compass. Don't let it get lost like I did with mine. It is a long and winding unbroken path to get back to the paved road of right direction. Stay on, ever forward, and take it for all that it's worth.