How can time slip by so quickly? It's just full of...stuff. We're in the middle of life, with days and weeks and months full of activities, events, and commitments. We're so busy living it all, that we don't pause and reflect on it or write it down.

In the month of May, Sarah was slowed down by a complex ankle fracture that involved a growth plate. It ended her spring/summer plans for soccer, track and dance. It made her one-legged, hopping in cast and crutches for several weeks. And of course, our exchange student Tina was ending her time in the United States...winding down months of family life and friendships, school activities and cultural experiences. All of these complexities seemed to consume our time, keep us busy. Not much time left over to pause and become introspective.

In all honesty, though? Sometimes it's too hard to stop and think. As long as you're moving and going and keeping busy, the things you don't want to think about or feel might not catch up to you. If you're always busy, then you don't have time to notice what's different or missing. You can almost...almost...forget for a little while.

At least, that's how you operate. You hope it works. You act as if it does. You make plans and goals. You find a purpose. You work. You make dates and appointments, you start projects, you exercise and play, you volunteer and get involved. 

You put away thoughts and feelings that you cannot face, or don't want to deal with. Compartmentalizing...setting feelings and memories aside into mental attics, closed boxes, or untidy bundles. Closing doors, clamping down lids, tying them up tightly. Putting them away for now. 

They're still there. Ready to be examined or opened up and explored some other time, when they cannot be ignored anymore, or they're suddenly important and essential. For now, though, they can be put aside so you can get on with daily life and immediate plans.

Of course, those rooms and bags are still part of you. Those psychological attics and basements, those emotional locked trunks and sealed boxes and knotted bags are all inside you. You carry them around. 

You just don't always open them up and deal with them, but they come along. Wherever you go, they're part of you: cobwebby attics and cluttered closets and stacked-up storage bins and lumpy duffels. They contain part of your history and personal makeup. Their hidden treasures and castoffs are part of what shapes you and motivates you and influences you and hurts you and stops you and inspires you and prods you to keep going.  

Because you carry them around, they get heavy. They sometimes slow you down or bang against your shins and get in the way. 

But they're also available when you need to pop them open, rummage around and find some survival gear that you didn't know you needed, that was stashed away in an unexpected place. 

As for keeping busy...you do. And mostly, it works. If you stop, or catch your breath, or have time to think too deeply or feel too much, it's almost overwhelming. So you don't stop very often. 

You just keep going. 

In May, time ran away with us. Or we ran away, by filling time. This month was busy. And we didn't stop (often) to think about how different it was from past years, when all the members of our family were alive and we were still living in wild pendulum swings of hope and stress. We try not to notice, or admit, or realize who is not tugging at our awareness anymore, except in memory or wishful woolgathering moments of what-if. Instead, we stay immersed in the complexities of 'right-here-and-now.' And if life's not complex enough, we layer it with more projects, commitments and ways of staying busy and involved. 

Because, oh, it hurts.  When we slow down, we can feel what's different and changed and missing. This year aches more, and is more confusing, and difficult, than last year. We're avoiding a lot of feelings and thoughts. Just moving along, staying busy and focused and engaged. And trying not to notice...what it is we'd notice, if we ever slowed down or stopped. 

Gotta go...!