....hope is in the stars....**

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Beloved LEGS....

....finally....I finished the book about Van Gogh.  While the rumors and his strange behavior have painted a sort of odd picture of him as a man, I found him to be, and his life to be very enthralling.  He was a dichotomous man, on one hand a very hard working, dedicated, to the point of obsessed, meticulous and stubborn, on the other, a complaining manipulator who often played the victim.  Who does that sound like?

....I  both shudder and rejoice to think that him and I are very much cut from the same cloth.  He was incredibly driven....he would stay up late and get up early to pursue his passion, depriving himself of sleep, food, and basic needs.  He once said "I am a fanatic.  I feel a power within me....a fire that I may not quench but must keep ablaze." He spent six months of his life looking for the blackest black.  

I cannot describe this feeling that I have inside myself, and at times it is very hard to hold on to it and cope with it day in and day out.  It is a fire, that consumes me, burns me, and often burns others.  Yet I feel this bizarre need to protect it and to keep it alive.  And sometimes I feel like people want to steal it from me, or feed off of it.  Fire.....is so hard to control.  

In his letters to his brother, he would say things that made me feel as if he was reading a excerpt from my very own brain. 

"I am going in a definite direction, and I want  others to go along with me! Those who are not serious at heart....often have something disagreeable about them.  I am often terribly melancholy, irritable, hungering and thirsting, as it were, for sympathy; when I do not get it, I try to act indifferently, speak sharply and often even pour oil on the fire."

While....I would say that I do not thirst and hunger for sympathy.....I certainly do for empathy, and when I do not receive that compassion and understanding.....I want to completely eliminate people from my life.   He wrote....."I never mingled with humans without feeling less human."  How many times have I written you or said to you how alone I feel in this world!?!

I could not help but think he was not a tortured soul in the way that every one thinks....he was heartbroken much of the time, and like me, seemed to feel that the worlds beauty was at times too much to bare.  "We must live on until our hearts break within us."

He had a fighting spirit.  He said "it is better to provoke a blow, even if it is a hard blow, than to be indebted to the world for sparing you."  To feed off adversity and to know that....I can survive the hardest most difficult things, brings me the grandest satisfaction.  I want what is pure, I want what is real, even if it is pain and suffering. 

But the most brilliant parallel was his infatuation with the stars and the night sky.  

"I often think the night is more alive and richly colored than they day."  

Especially when you are away, I find myself getting up in the night, to view the sky.  I look out the window, or even stand on the front porch admiring the beautiful miraculous nightly vision.  And the stars.....the stars always bring me a noble comfort. 

"The stars were a promise to make light out of darkness and out of problems, good things."

I know that I have purchased and named one star for you, but I think I want to buy you more......  

Perhaps.....that is the source of my comfort.....I know, that if something happens to one of us....we will know where the other is.....and at the end of this life....we shall live eternally on your very own star.  

"To look at the stars always makes me dream, hope is in the stars, but lets not forget that earth is a planet too, and consequently a star. " 

Sun, Moon, Stars by LEGS

....and maybe.....our lives, much like Van Gogh's will be eternal as well.....maybe our love....will leave a permanent impression, a beautiful picture that will live on forever.....**

....Just another day in the life of an unlikely military wife....**