My first night alone........................

It's hard to explain in words the feelings, the thoughts that I couldn't seem to turn off. 

I lay in bed so tired, so worn out, feeling so beaten by my newest truth and yet I could only lay there and think, as tears rolled down my face and onto my pillow.

I didn't sob.

I had sobbed earlier.

I had never met this woman, Dottye, my birth mom. It seemed odd to sob over her. I didn't know her.

Yet as I lay in bed that first night, I somehow knew that the pain had only just begun. 

I somehow knew that I would have to continue to be "good" by filtering my feelings.

How do you cry for someone you have never met I wondered.

It occurred to me, I had met her.

She may have been just my dream, just my imagination. Truth is, she was for already so many years my everything. My secret little everything.

Have you ever looked into the eyes of an elephant?

Have you ever been close enough to their eyes that you feel like you can see into their soul?

Any time I have ever had the honor of being close enough to look, I feel like they can look right back into my own soul.

Their eyes are so dark, so glossy. Those eyelashes so long.

And each time I looked into an elephants eyes I felt the sadness.

Was it a sadness of someone they lost?

Being torn away from their child or mother and being made to do things they didn't want to do like perform?

Was it a sadness because they were away from what they had known?

Did it hurt their souls to be an exhibit rather then living in nature, with their own kind?

What would an elephant say if they could talk?

Would they tell us about their pain?

I knew as I lay there that very first night.................................I was alone, my soul was exposed and I needed to figure out a way to survive.