Wrack & Ruin: life's hard lessons in forced surrender

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More than once of late I have wondered how it is that I am still here. I am not prone to exaggeration so believe me when I tell you that a series of storms tore through my life and left nothing but wrack and ruin.

I would like to tell you a story of redemption, courage, unbreakable spirit. Alas, that is the stuff of one hour episodes, 8mm reels digested in two hours or less - stories tied in bows that allow us to skip away comforted by the fact that everything happens for a reason and it is all for the best really.

Reality is not literature. I do not know why these things happened and the compression of them in to a neatly tied package that I can point to and say "Ah so THAT is why" removes the reverence that must be held for what has been lost.

What I do know is that I have learned a thing or two. I learned that I had sown my existence on rocks and thorns. I learned that I know nothing about anything with any certainty that stands up under a strong wind, and that hope is a slippery sliver of moon that can be anhilated.

My hope has occassionally been reclaimed in one thought: something has moved through my life with intention, and there is a fifty-fifty possibility that the thing is benevolent. Someone said to me yesterday that sometimes all that is left is to admit defeat.

I have always been a brawler, when life knocks me down I stand back up, fists raised. And so, if I was ever to learn to surrender it had to all be torn down. I have been left with no other option but to bow my head and acknowledge that I am not in control and lack the strength to combat this force.

I sit among the ruins of this life, sifting through the rubble, holding things up to the light, inspecting their value and usefulness, determining whether they can withstand colliding storm fronts. I am seeking new foundations, things that will not bend or break under the most trying of conditions. Most is thrown to the wind, useless. Humility is all that has made the cut.

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Steemit has given me a chance to revisit some of my favourite combinations of words and pictures. This was written as I began to learn to stand again after my sister's sudden death in 2016 and the year of personal turmoil that followed.

The image was taken at sunrise at North Curl Curl in a lesser known spot I had always wanted to visit for it's hopeful message. It is not one of my technically best images but it is one of my favourite shots all the same for what it represents about my life at that time.

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