One

Awakenings are inevitable if we live long enough.

Sleeping Beauty and Rip Van Winkle awaken to worlds far removed from their comfort zones and yet each must go on - reawakened, reborn, into the reality of the now.

Youth or age, it can happen to anyone.

High expectations, inexperience, believing that life can be skimmed off the top, or that it is simply following the rules because that is fair, eventually collides with the wall of reality. Then, curse, or wicked gnomes, depression, or wicked people, whatever the catalyst is, throws us into a darkness full of numbness and nightmares.

The past puts us in a position never sought after, never wanted, and perhaps undeserved, until one day awakening to the frightening truth that life is still going on, we realize we are totally unprepared for it.

The young expect Prince Charming to come in and carry them away on a dashing stallion.  The old try to walk in their old footsteps, hoping to recapture the past just as it was.

The lucky realize this is a second chance, a rebirth, a time to build new ways in new places;  that it's literally time to get down off that high horse and stop staring down into the rut of those faint old footsteps, that all birthing has labor pains and all building starts one brick at a time.

Awakenings are slow and one is the magic number.  One thing at a time.  Just one, because each one is difficult enough all on its own.There is no efficiency expert here.  No grabbing the bull by the horns and leaping over this mess into happiness. It is one foot in front of the other until one day you realize the gait is almost normal.

And then it starts getting easier.