BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH ...

I am a Literature buff from a ways back. I’ve always loved the written word, and have since developed quite the love for the spoken word as well. Words are soothing to me…

One of the books that I studied at examination level in ‘High School’ was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and one of the lines that has been stuck in my head since then is “Beware the Ides of March!”

I remember having been particularly offended the first time I heard that line because of my understandable affinity for the month of March. It is after all the month of my birth … and while my birthday is nowhere near the 15th, I happen to be offended by any reference to ill-will that may occur in the beautiful month of March.

Ah, the innocence of youth. How I long for the days when bad news, disappointment and – well – disgust came as such a shock to your system that it could actually shut you down. Now the jadedness of perceived ‘seniority’ may make you ill at such occurrences but they generally roll off of one’s back like so much water.

I must confess that my own encounter with the Ides of March could not have been prepared for … but then again it could have been. I suppose that I am just overly sensitive right now … who knows. Prepared or not, it’s always a devastation when the people that one has held closest to one’s chest turns out to be the ones that literally stab us in the back.

There aren’t many people that have had the privilege to be let into my inner sanctum, but it looks like I’m going to have to pull a couple ‘membership cards’ from some of the people in there. What good is it when one attempts to build up resources and those same resources have no problem spitting you out on Idus Martiae (Latin, Ides of March). Others have said to me that I need to ‘let it go’, that that is the way that they would handle it. I do so solemnly wish that I could just dust off and press on. It is a little difficult when the individual involved has cut so close to the bone. My mother has this saying that she uses from time to time that says that it is always worse when you’re bitten by your own flea. Well that is precisely the way that I feel right now. Oh I know that I have to put on my big girl panties and deal with it, and believe me I will. Right now on the other hand, I need to take this time to reconstruct my ‘fortress’, as there seems to be some bricks that may need to be chipped away.

And like Caesar, I was warned … I had my own seer, but like Caesar, I ignored the warning. Now, again like Caesar, I am forced to turn and look at that brick and ask “Et tu Brute?!”

I find it all so unfortunate, ironic and just garden-variety wretched that in this world, it could be so hard to find like minded spirits to share ones inner self with …

What happened to honor … what happened to actual friendship, and support? Is it that most people have now come to the point of being friends through convenience, and as soon as they have achieved their own Zen and Xanadu, they then disavow the others who have to this point been there for them? Should that be the case then yet again I am forced to hold tight to what little faith I have left in our Humanity.

The good news is that I am approaching the end of my own tunnel, but theirs is still waiting in the wings … and in true Pisces form I will probably be there yelling that they beware there own Ides of March.

That’s the way that I’m made up … it is a part of me that I love – my ability to love others no matter what … and it is another object lesson to me along the way, and I have learnt from it to I am thankful, and I will be more thankful as soon as I reach around and pull the dagger out that had been so firmly SLAMMED into my spine!!!

“Joy Cometh in the Morning”, and I will be the better for it.