Someone asked me recently what it means to me to be alone. She encouraged me to write it all out, to explore where it comes from, why it is so scary.
What I've come up with is this: being alone means no one wants to be with me. It means I am unworthy of love, not enough or too much. Not enough to satisfy someone or make them feel like I'm worth the effort, or too much for them to handle--too emotional, too intense, etc.--too little or too much. Unworthy.
I know I am a good person. I know it because other people tell me so, but I'm not sure I know it for myself. I think I broadcast my faith in myself so often as a way to hide the fact that I'm not really all that together. I'm sort of a mess, actually. And when you get down to all that's left after your plans have burned away, you discover what you're really made of. For me, the language is pretty much all that's left. I am realizing slowly how broken I am, and that is really okay considering I think all of us are, though some are better at compartmentalizing than others. I don't have that skill. I can't bury my head in the sand and go numb and pretend that everything is okay when it isn't.
Even my performances each day at work--being good in the classroom, being strong for my students--are all underwritten by this weird twitch in my left eye that won't stop and these odd scratches that keep showing up on my face each morning. I think I'm wrecking myself in sleep. Lord knows the dreams I'm having don't help. Dreams of conversations with a man I love who no longer acknowledges that he loves me.
I keep looking at all my past relationships, the other men this most recent one called damn fools for not knowing how to treat me. Now that he's one of them, I'm about as heartsick as you can get. I keep thinking about this one that cheated on me or that one that told everyone I was his roommate, not his girlfriend, or the one who stopped talking to me when the girl he really wanted became available. I used to think it was my bad luck to find all these assholes, but the constant in every situation was me. It's more likely that I was being treated that way because I was broadcasting that I didn't deserve to be treated better, so if I want better, I have to believe I deserve it, and right now...well, I'm trying.
It's funny, being alone is the thing I have feared for so long, but it's also the thing that is giving me back to myself, slowly but surely.
I know I'm supposed to learn from this, to grow, to come out better on the other side, and I want to, I really do, but tonight, I wish this silence wasn't so deafening. I wish there were arms waiting to hold me, ears waiting to hear me, hands waiting to smooth my hair and tell me everything will be alright. I have to do that for myself now, and it's just not the same.
07 September 2011
06 September 2011
Information
"Play with the information you have and decide what it really means."--overheard in a meeting today
The information I have is written on my body, patterns of freckles and a birthmark that only appear when I've had sun. When read by the perfect reader, it shows where I've been and who I am on my way to becoming. My hair, graying at the temples--accelerated these last few months--a white reminder of fears ability to bleach away color, to remove what was once bright and flecked with gold and replace it with absence. The deep blue ring around my irises that corrals the other colors, a circle of green bright as any late summer field at sunset, the burnished gold of wheat, a rich brown like river soaked soil, has gotten darker. Today it is almost black in its attempt to keep the riot in, to stop all the light from seeping out.
The information I have won't do anyone any good just yet. I know what I know and cannot make anyone else know it. We, teachers, work with an unquantifiable entity everyday and are expected to assess it, nurture it, mold it, educate it, and even feel for it, but the variable no one likes to talk about is buy in. If they don't buy in to their own right to knowledge, to their own right to power, to their own right to happiness, no amount of Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, or Hurston is going to make them do it.
The information I have about you clings to the soles of my feet. I plant the truth of you with every step, precisely seeding your stories in aerated ground, each raised instep holding a hundred secrets you're not ready to part with just yet, my five toes kissing the earth with words you love, my heels grinding your hurts and sorrows into a fine white dust that blows up and around me with each new gust of early September wind. When you are ready to hear your own authentic voice again, I will have a grown a garden of you. It will sing your life in whispered rushes, each new note more graceful than the last.
The information I have means I am a lighthouse, burning in the blackness above an endless crash of ocean sorrow. Waves breaking like so many birds, silkily rustling up, flushed from their little sanctuary by a force unseen and unseeable. This water, intent on destruction, will never reach my light so long as the ladder I climb each evening holds. So, I find my footing and rise, ever vigilant, to prove the promise most of you are terrified may come true: that if you want it enough, if you are willing to brave the rocks, at the end of your journey there will always be light.
The information I have is made not of words but of water, of wind, of color, and of skin.
The information I have is written on my body, patterns of freckles and a birthmark that only appear when I've had sun. When read by the perfect reader, it shows where I've been and who I am on my way to becoming. My hair, graying at the temples--accelerated these last few months--a white reminder of fears ability to bleach away color, to remove what was once bright and flecked with gold and replace it with absence. The deep blue ring around my irises that corrals the other colors, a circle of green bright as any late summer field at sunset, the burnished gold of wheat, a rich brown like river soaked soil, has gotten darker. Today it is almost black in its attempt to keep the riot in, to stop all the light from seeping out.
The information I have won't do anyone any good just yet. I know what I know and cannot make anyone else know it. We, teachers, work with an unquantifiable entity everyday and are expected to assess it, nurture it, mold it, educate it, and even feel for it, but the variable no one likes to talk about is buy in. If they don't buy in to their own right to knowledge, to their own right to power, to their own right to happiness, no amount of Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, or Hurston is going to make them do it.
The information I have about you clings to the soles of my feet. I plant the truth of you with every step, precisely seeding your stories in aerated ground, each raised instep holding a hundred secrets you're not ready to part with just yet, my five toes kissing the earth with words you love, my heels grinding your hurts and sorrows into a fine white dust that blows up and around me with each new gust of early September wind. When you are ready to hear your own authentic voice again, I will have a grown a garden of you. It will sing your life in whispered rushes, each new note more graceful than the last.
The information I have means I am a lighthouse, burning in the blackness above an endless crash of ocean sorrow. Waves breaking like so many birds, silkily rustling up, flushed from their little sanctuary by a force unseen and unseeable. This water, intent on destruction, will never reach my light so long as the ladder I climb each evening holds. So, I find my footing and rise, ever vigilant, to prove the promise most of you are terrified may come true: that if you want it enough, if you are willing to brave the rocks, at the end of your journey there will always be light.
The information I have is made not of words but of water, of wind, of color, and of skin.
05 September 2011
Gifts
A man once told me he could walk into any store and come out with twelve things that would be perfect gifts for me. He was right. Every gift, every word he ever sent my way resonated deep in that place that lets you know you've been seen, known for who you truly are.
Sadly, he's not giving me gifts anymore, and while the gifts themselves aren't things I'll miss, I'll miss his impulse to give me things. That burning need in him to show me how he feels, to give me something tangible, something to hold in my hands, to thumb through, to admire on the wall--things that would make me think of him even in his absence. I will miss him showing me how well he knows me, how much he loves me. And I'll miss it most of all because I know he still wants to do those things for me, he still feels that way about me, but he isn't in a place where he feels he can or should.
I do not think we are at the end of our story with one another. I really don't. I've been praying and trying to figure out why this now, why this way, I have been asking God what to do, how to handle this situation, and after every prayer, another sign comes along to suggest that I shouldn't be in too big a hurry to let all of this go. A song will come on the radio, the kind of song you never hear on the radio, and it will be one he and I shared. I read a novel this morning, and in it a young woman gives a young man a gift that I gave him once. These are just two of nearly a dozen little hints that I should let my belief in love guide me through this and stop believing that what is happening now is the end of all that we are to one another.
Would some people find this kind of thinking naive? Certainly. But I don't care. My life is for me to live, and I will not have the way I feel regulated by the way others would react to this situation. I know what I know, and I know how I feel, and at the end of the day, I sleep with and wake to myself, no one else.
So, I'm not ready to let go yet. I'm not ready to say this deep, honest, passionate, easy connection between the two of us is over. I'm not going to pursue it, I'm not going to will it into anything other than what it is right now--which admittedly isn't much--but I do not believe in a world where people who love each other as we do don't end up together. It may not be today, it may not be next year, but I believe in the power of what we have, and I believe that when the time is right, we will have it again. Until then, we live our own lives, and I pray we come back to one another sooner rather than later. But above all, I have discovered that even when things don't go as planned, even when you are hurt and betrayed and feel the world crashing in on you, if there is real love at the center of what is happening, that love is still worth believing in, and learning that I still believe is the greatest gift anyone could give me.
04 September 2011
03 September 2011
Whatever Happens, I Love You
No matter how hard it gets, Morrissey always seems to have a song for the occasion.
02 September 2011
Until Now
On the television downstairs, River Phoenix is singing a song that breaks my heart, Until Now. It's from a movie called The Thing Called Love, and if you've never heard it...here it is:
The thing about this movie, about this song, is that I watched it and listened to it over and over when I was in high school, and I always believed this is how I would feel when I finally met that person that changed my life. You know the one that you feel you've known your whole life even though you've just met? The one you can talk to about anything, the ugly, scary, horrible things you never even said out loud to yourself? The one whose voice curls inside you and lights a fire, warm enough to keep you through the coldest nights?
I was right about that song, about the way I would feel when that person arrived in my life, but I was wrong about who we would be to each other. Until now, I believed in forever.
I don't know how I could have been so wrong.
01 September 2011
Perestroika
The cicadas are winding in the trees like baseball cards stuck in bike spokes, or the tired teeth of an old machine grinding tightly against each other without oil, years away from its last lubrication, too dry and too fast. Its hum, coming and going without pattern, chatters away above the air conditioner's sustained breath--this thing never seems to shut off these last few Indian summer days.
It's amazing that I can still be outside, after 8 on a school night, the sky still orange enough from the very recent sunset that typing is possible, that all things are possible...where (as Corso said) if you were a man--possible--as I am a woman--possible--all things could be possible.
But that's not who we are.
We are im-possible. Im-plausible. Im-potent. There is nothing virile or growing about us. We are a cut off stalk, the flower with no bloom, the thing that stretched toward the sky all summer and seemed sure to blossom but then, when the heat rose a little too high, snapped off near the ground and now the carcass dusts and grays the yard, to be mowed over this weekend, chaff beneath the blade, another sacrifice to the greening promise of what could have been.
I read somewhere that every rejection is an opportunity for grace, that we must take the 'no' of a person and turn it into a lesson of the universe, a momentary window into who we can will ourselves to become now that all we thought would be, won't. I want to believe in this, I want to learn from heartbreak, from pain, from the years of trying to control and plan and trust and hope, I want to, but it is so hard.
Tonight, I feel foreign in this first of September sway, the breeze enough to lift strands of hair off my neck that tickle my cheek as they twirl past. I imagine myself a Russian girl, deposited in the middle of Kansas, a landscape nothing like my own, noises in the trees I've never heard before, a heart full of dah in a country of nyet.
In my perestroika voice, I try to explain that the thing about Russians and vodka has nothing to do with being drunk--the r's clipped off against the teeth, my mouth barely opening to release the swampy words--it is not to do with the drinking, the alcohol, the want of escape from the life we know. It is about heat, the blossom that begins to open in the center of the chest as the white fire slides down your throat, the swelling bloom that makes you feel, if only for a small moment, that you are not now, and never will be again, so cold and so alone.
It's amazing that I can still be outside, after 8 on a school night, the sky still orange enough from the very recent sunset that typing is possible, that all things are possible...where (as Corso said) if you were a man--possible--as I am a woman--possible--all things could be possible.
But that's not who we are.
We are im-possible. Im-plausible. Im-potent. There is nothing virile or growing about us. We are a cut off stalk, the flower with no bloom, the thing that stretched toward the sky all summer and seemed sure to blossom but then, when the heat rose a little too high, snapped off near the ground and now the carcass dusts and grays the yard, to be mowed over this weekend, chaff beneath the blade, another sacrifice to the greening promise of what could have been.
I read somewhere that every rejection is an opportunity for grace, that we must take the 'no' of a person and turn it into a lesson of the universe, a momentary window into who we can will ourselves to become now that all we thought would be, won't. I want to believe in this, I want to learn from heartbreak, from pain, from the years of trying to control and plan and trust and hope, I want to, but it is so hard.
Tonight, I feel foreign in this first of September sway, the breeze enough to lift strands of hair off my neck that tickle my cheek as they twirl past. I imagine myself a Russian girl, deposited in the middle of Kansas, a landscape nothing like my own, noises in the trees I've never heard before, a heart full of dah in a country of nyet.
In my perestroika voice, I try to explain that the thing about Russians and vodka has nothing to do with being drunk--the r's clipped off against the teeth, my mouth barely opening to release the swampy words--it is not to do with the drinking, the alcohol, the want of escape from the life we know. It is about heat, the blossom that begins to open in the center of the chest as the white fire slides down your throat, the swelling bloom that makes you feel, if only for a small moment, that you are not now, and never will be again, so cold and so alone.
31 August 2011
Forgiveness
Forgiveness isn't something you have to earn, it's not something you can work for, it's not a commodity to be traded or exchanged. Forgiveness is what we give when we truly love ourselves and one another.
If I truly love you, no matter how much you hurt me, I must forgive your missteps and painful actions, because love isn't limited to the nice things we do for on another, it's not just about the ways we build each other up and cheer each other on. Love, real love, is about radical acceptance. It means saying, "yes, you are flawed, yes, you hurt me, and yes, you should feel remorse, but I accept you for who you are, for what you need, for your weaknesses as much as your strengths, for your shortcomings as much as for your successes, and I forgive you because to hold back forgiveness would mean denying myself the right to love you."
When we love our neighbors as ourselves--and we should all love ourselves enough to forgive our own failings--then we simply have to love those who wrong us. If we cannot extend that pure hand of forgiveness, then the love we believed we felt was never real, it was just an illusion of what we thought love had to be.
Real love sees and accepts everything. Real love forgives. This does not mean you should be a doormat for those who have hurt you, and it doesn't mean accepting violence or neglect. But, when the human beings we love turn out to be simply human, flawed and capable of failure, our own humanity must surface so that we can heal and continue to love because that is, after all, why we are here.
There is nothing more important.
If I truly love you, no matter how much you hurt me, I must forgive your missteps and painful actions, because love isn't limited to the nice things we do for on another, it's not just about the ways we build each other up and cheer each other on. Love, real love, is about radical acceptance. It means saying, "yes, you are flawed, yes, you hurt me, and yes, you should feel remorse, but I accept you for who you are, for what you need, for your weaknesses as much as your strengths, for your shortcomings as much as for your successes, and I forgive you because to hold back forgiveness would mean denying myself the right to love you."
When we love our neighbors as ourselves--and we should all love ourselves enough to forgive our own failings--then we simply have to love those who wrong us. If we cannot extend that pure hand of forgiveness, then the love we believed we felt was never real, it was just an illusion of what we thought love had to be.
Real love sees and accepts everything. Real love forgives. This does not mean you should be a doormat for those who have hurt you, and it doesn't mean accepting violence or neglect. But, when the human beings we love turn out to be simply human, flawed and capable of failure, our own humanity must surface so that we can heal and continue to love because that is, after all, why we are here.
There is nothing more important.
29 August 2011
The Low Anthem
Tonight, a good friend and the love he waited for so long, the love he deserves, the love who has become my friend and is proof that love can and will happen for those open to it, will go to a concert. We will go see The Low Anthem and fill our souls with bright music, beautiful moments, the truth of collective joy.
Jason and I have been to many shows together, but I can't think of a time we've gone with anyone else. I am so happy that Pam is the one who will be with us. Her heart is as pure as they come.
So, this is the song of the day. The red lines kill me, every time.
To Ohio
I left Louisiana on the rail line, oo oo
I left Louisiana on the rail line, oo oo
I was trying to get to Ohio
Trying to get to Ohio
Lost my love before her time, oo oo
Lost my love before her time, oo oo
On the way to Ohio
On the way to Ohio
Now every new love is just a shadow, oo oo
Every new love is just a shadow, oo oo
‘Cause once you’ve known love you don’t know how to find love, oo oo
Yeah once you’ve found love you don’t know how to find new love
All the way to Ohio
All the way to Ohio
Heard her voice come through the pines in Ohio
I heard her voice singing in the pines in Ohio
She sang bless your soul you crossed that line to Ohio
Bless your soul you crossed that line oo oo
All the way to Ohio
All the way to Ohio
28 August 2011
Acceptance
I accept the things I cannot change: other people and the weather.
I accept the only thing I can change is myself.
I accept that sometimes other people--and the weather--will disappoint me in ways I'd never imagined and cause me to reevaluate who I am and everything I had believed.
I accept that forgiveness is necessary to my own well being.
I accept myself as I am and will not settle for anyone who doesn't feel the same about me or about themselves.
I accept that no matter how much I love someone, I cannot make them love themselves.
I accept that my emotions are valid, real, and important.
I accept that for some, the truth is just too ugly or too hard to live.
I accept my role in the positive and negative events of my life.
I accept that fear exists, but I refuse to be ruled by it.
I accept the only thing I can change is myself.
I accept that sometimes other people--and the weather--will disappoint me in ways I'd never imagined and cause me to reevaluate who I am and everything I had believed.
I accept that forgiveness is necessary to my own well being.
I accept myself as I am and will not settle for anyone who doesn't feel the same about me or about themselves.
I accept that no matter how much I love someone, I cannot make them love themselves.
I accept that my emotions are valid, real, and important.
I accept that for some, the truth is just too ugly or too hard to live.
I accept my role in the positive and negative events of my life.
I accept that fear exists, but I refuse to be ruled by it.
27 August 2011
happythankyoumoreplease
Laundry and a lazy Saturday morning have afforded me the time to watch a movie I've been thinking about seeing for awhile: Josh Radnor's "happythankyoumoreplease." Without giving away plot points, I will say that the struggles of the characters were infinitely relatable, particularly Malin Ackerman's alopecia suffering Annie. The dinner scene with her and Tony Hale alone is worth the price of rental.
What struck me most is the concept that, with gratitude, the universe is abundant. If, in every circumstance, we can be happy for whatever lesson is being presented to us, say thank you, and ask for more, please, we reframe the events that happen in our lives and are able to move more gracefully through them. This concept, fundamental and good and easy enough to think about, is horribly difficult to implement, particularly when the universe keeps knocking at your door with more and more bad news.
In the past year, I've gone through a divorce, another powerful and important relationship in my life has ended, and my mom went through her third bout with cancer. Any one of those things would have been enough to send me reeling, but the trifecta has been a stunning lesson in relinquishing control and allowing God and the universe to lead me where I need to go. The end of my marriage was sad on levels I couldn't begin to articulate--how does one talk about the agony of every plan for the rest of your life falling through? In that loss, I had to confront my fears of being alone and that somehow I was the reason for all that had gone wrong between us. I wasn't, of course. Two people are in every relationship and both people are accountable for what works and what doesn't, but in the swirl of the dissolve, I felt responsible for all of it.
The relationship that ended recently is a slowly twisting dull knife in the center of my chest. The man in question is, at heart, good and kind and beautiful, but his own insecurities and fears ate away at him until the man I knew and loved, respected and trusted simply disappeared. I have no idea who he is now, and that is breathtaking.
And finally, my mother's cancer...she is fine, now, in a maintenance program designed to keep another relapse from occurring. What made this round so difficult for me is that it brought up all these unresolved feelings about her second round, ten years ago, when she had a stem cell transplant and I thought she was going to die. I was spent much of that time with her at the hospital in Wichita and overnight in a patient apartment, and while I know I was the best person at the time to do it, it messed me up in ways I never dealt with. Not because my parents did anything wrong, not because there was someone else or some other alternative, but because I imposed strict rules on myself about my right to be sad or scared. I convinced myself I couldn't get upset, that if I broke everyone else would, and that is simply not true. I did that to myself, I placed those heavy perfectionist walls around my heart, and now I am dealing with it for the first time because, as they say, if you don't deal with your shit, your shit deals with you, and boy...is it ever.
My point here is that if I can put the principle of gratitude into practice--happythankyoumoreplease--maybe I can stop trying so hard to figure out where I went wrong (marriage, relationship, etc.) and I can start being thankful for those experiences because they led me to this path, to this moment, to this place where I am now. I don't want to wallow or worry my whole life, I want to be joyful, filled with light and laughter. I want to be graceful even in the middle of searing pain.
So, today, universe, as regards the past year of struggle and heartache and fears, I say: Thank you. More, please.
What struck me most is the concept that, with gratitude, the universe is abundant. If, in every circumstance, we can be happy for whatever lesson is being presented to us, say thank you, and ask for more, please, we reframe the events that happen in our lives and are able to move more gracefully through them. This concept, fundamental and good and easy enough to think about, is horribly difficult to implement, particularly when the universe keeps knocking at your door with more and more bad news.
In the past year, I've gone through a divorce, another powerful and important relationship in my life has ended, and my mom went through her third bout with cancer. Any one of those things would have been enough to send me reeling, but the trifecta has been a stunning lesson in relinquishing control and allowing God and the universe to lead me where I need to go. The end of my marriage was sad on levels I couldn't begin to articulate--how does one talk about the agony of every plan for the rest of your life falling through? In that loss, I had to confront my fears of being alone and that somehow I was the reason for all that had gone wrong between us. I wasn't, of course. Two people are in every relationship and both people are accountable for what works and what doesn't, but in the swirl of the dissolve, I felt responsible for all of it.
The relationship that ended recently is a slowly twisting dull knife in the center of my chest. The man in question is, at heart, good and kind and beautiful, but his own insecurities and fears ate away at him until the man I knew and loved, respected and trusted simply disappeared. I have no idea who he is now, and that is breathtaking.
And finally, my mother's cancer...she is fine, now, in a maintenance program designed to keep another relapse from occurring. What made this round so difficult for me is that it brought up all these unresolved feelings about her second round, ten years ago, when she had a stem cell transplant and I thought she was going to die. I was spent much of that time with her at the hospital in Wichita and overnight in a patient apartment, and while I know I was the best person at the time to do it, it messed me up in ways I never dealt with. Not because my parents did anything wrong, not because there was someone else or some other alternative, but because I imposed strict rules on myself about my right to be sad or scared. I convinced myself I couldn't get upset, that if I broke everyone else would, and that is simply not true. I did that to myself, I placed those heavy perfectionist walls around my heart, and now I am dealing with it for the first time because, as they say, if you don't deal with your shit, your shit deals with you, and boy...is it ever.
My point here is that if I can put the principle of gratitude into practice--happythankyoumoreplease--maybe I can stop trying so hard to figure out where I went wrong (marriage, relationship, etc.) and I can start being thankful for those experiences because they led me to this path, to this moment, to this place where I am now. I don't want to wallow or worry my whole life, I want to be joyful, filled with light and laughter. I want to be graceful even in the middle of searing pain.
So, today, universe, as regards the past year of struggle and heartache and fears, I say: Thank you. More, please.
26 August 2011
The Crucible
Teaching The Crucible today, a play I love, it occurred to me that even though it's likely John never loved Abigail, he must have made her feel that he did. Whether it was their frantic clutches behind the barn, the furtive looks he threw up to her window when he was, as she says, "burning in his loneliness," or perhaps he even spoke words of love to her, he must have done something to make her believe.
I understand that she is unhinged, that her behaviors are inexcusable, that her desire to kill his wife and replace her is certifiable and that her threats to the other girls about bringing "a pointy reckoning that will shudder" them are reprehensible, but here is the piece I never thought about until today. This is a girl who is alone--orphaned--living with an uncle who has no interest in children, who is only concerned about his own daughter because if she is witched it will ruin his reputation. Abigail has seen her parents murdered, feels herself unwanted in her uncle's house, and has no real friends because the girls are all too afraid of her to have any real bond. Add to that the affair she had with John and you've got the perfect storm for some serious mental illness, especially when you consider his total denial of their time together.
He sees her in Act I, flirts with her, allows the distance between them to close, acknowledges he has stood beneath his window in want of her, and then tells her three times to put it out of mind, that they never touched, that the physical relationship--the passion and heat and real feeling--they shared had never occurred. He tells her to forget and erase the most important relationship of her life thus far, the one that opened her eyes and made her see the world for what it really was, the one that taught her who she wanted to be: passionate, engaged, wild, wanted, and--she thought--loved.
I don't think her actions are forgivable, but I do think his denial of their time together is equally cruel and inexcusable. No matter what his reasons were for choosing to reconcile with Elizabeth--and let's face it, it could just be plain old fear at having to start over again under the strict Puritanical laws that would have crippled him emotionally--his denial that he ever shared those moments with Abigail points to a character more flawed than I had ever realized. He uses his denial to absolve himself from any guilt at hurting her, and his lack of remorse is astoundingly selfish. Should he have left his wife and children to be with the seventeen year old girl? Probably not, but to tell her their relationship never occurred is to deny her the right to her story, to her truth, and so, today, I kind of get why she loses it.
No one has the right to take your story from you, and those who try--because they aren't comfortable with who they are in it--aren't comfortable with who they are at all, and who needs them?
I understand that she is unhinged, that her behaviors are inexcusable, that her desire to kill his wife and replace her is certifiable and that her threats to the other girls about bringing "a pointy reckoning that will shudder" them are reprehensible, but here is the piece I never thought about until today. This is a girl who is alone--orphaned--living with an uncle who has no interest in children, who is only concerned about his own daughter because if she is witched it will ruin his reputation. Abigail has seen her parents murdered, feels herself unwanted in her uncle's house, and has no real friends because the girls are all too afraid of her to have any real bond. Add to that the affair she had with John and you've got the perfect storm for some serious mental illness, especially when you consider his total denial of their time together.
He sees her in Act I, flirts with her, allows the distance between them to close, acknowledges he has stood beneath his window in want of her, and then tells her three times to put it out of mind, that they never touched, that the physical relationship--the passion and heat and real feeling--they shared had never occurred. He tells her to forget and erase the most important relationship of her life thus far, the one that opened her eyes and made her see the world for what it really was, the one that taught her who she wanted to be: passionate, engaged, wild, wanted, and--she thought--loved.
I don't think her actions are forgivable, but I do think his denial of their time together is equally cruel and inexcusable. No matter what his reasons were for choosing to reconcile with Elizabeth--and let's face it, it could just be plain old fear at having to start over again under the strict Puritanical laws that would have crippled him emotionally--his denial that he ever shared those moments with Abigail points to a character more flawed than I had ever realized. He uses his denial to absolve himself from any guilt at hurting her, and his lack of remorse is astoundingly selfish. Should he have left his wife and children to be with the seventeen year old girl? Probably not, but to tell her their relationship never occurred is to deny her the right to her story, to her truth, and so, today, I kind of get why she loses it.
No one has the right to take your story from you, and those who try--because they aren't comfortable with who they are in it--aren't comfortable with who they are at all, and who needs them?
Sister (in law)
My sister-in-law of the last ten years and I spent six hours talking tonight. We had dinner and played with her beautiful daughter, we laughed and gave Eva O. a bath, and through it all, we talked. I was as comfortable with her as I have ever been with anyone, and we were both honest and straightforward and held nothing back.
If my brother hadn't married her, I'd be tempted to snatch her up for myself.
Thank God for her in my life, for the strength and focus she possesses, for her utter lack of judgment, and for her complete faith in me and in my best interests. May you all have someone as lovely in your life.
If my brother hadn't married her, I'd be tempted to snatch her up for myself.
Thank God for her in my life, for the strength and focus she possesses, for her utter lack of judgment, and for her complete faith in me and in my best interests. May you all have someone as lovely in your life.
24 August 2011
Therapy
Today I am starting therapy. In about 45 minutes actually. A lot of people hide behind this fact, pretend they aren't doing it, act like they have it all together, downplay their need for attentive and objective care, but I am not one of those people.
I simply cannot handle this section of my life alone.
There are always windows and doors available to us to look out of, to walk through. I believe in answering the knock of my life when it comes calling on me, I believe in saying yes to help when it presents itself, and I believe in turning myself over to those who know better when I have hit the wall of being able to function on my own. And I am there.
I am in no risk of harming myself, I do not have fatalistic thoughts, but I am terribly sad and disappointed and disillusioned and hurt.
I have my faith in God, I have my incredible family and friends, I have my beautiful dog, I have my belief that all will be well, but I also have an overwhelming sadness that nips at my heels with sharp and jagged teeth, tearing flesh and causing me to stumble, bleeding, down the hallway to my room each night.
So...now I have therapy. Pray for me, world. I need all the help I can get.
***
Went. Talked. Cried a little. Feel better. So much better. SO much better than I ever thought I would feel after just telling my story to someone whose job it is to help me. AMAZING.
I simply cannot handle this section of my life alone.
There are always windows and doors available to us to look out of, to walk through. I believe in answering the knock of my life when it comes calling on me, I believe in saying yes to help when it presents itself, and I believe in turning myself over to those who know better when I have hit the wall of being able to function on my own. And I am there.
I am in no risk of harming myself, I do not have fatalistic thoughts, but I am terribly sad and disappointed and disillusioned and hurt.
I have my faith in God, I have my incredible family and friends, I have my beautiful dog, I have my belief that all will be well, but I also have an overwhelming sadness that nips at my heels with sharp and jagged teeth, tearing flesh and causing me to stumble, bleeding, down the hallway to my room each night.
So...now I have therapy. Pray for me, world. I need all the help I can get.
***
Went. Talked. Cried a little. Feel better. So much better. SO much better than I ever thought I would feel after just telling my story to someone whose job it is to help me. AMAZING.
23 August 2011
Un-knowing
I keep replaying that scene in Dirty Dancing in my head, the one where pre-nosejob (and much cuter) Jennifer Grey tells Patrick Swayze she's scared of all kinds of things, but mostly she's afraid of walking out of that room and never feeling ever again in her whole life how she feels when she's with him. I know that feeling. Only in my movie, Johnny doesn't take me in his arms and make love to me. In my movie, he smiles politely, says he's sorry in a way that makes it clear he has no idea the damage he's caused, and slowly pushes me out the door. Into the rain. Into the blackness. Alone.
Enlightenment is a bitch, but no matter how awful I feel--and I do, jittery anxiously angrily near tears violently pissed off heartbrokenly awful--I'd still rather be the person who says at least I was willing to get hurt for the chance at real love. At least I wasn't afraid.
Add to that the reappearance of the man I married. My ex-husband and I have been friends since our divorce because neither one of us could bare to be out of each other's lives. In the last three months, I have seen in him the man I married, the man I missed so much the last two years of our marriage when he was depressed and we weren't communicating. And, seeing him again, has made me miss every minute of our time together that was good. I miss dancing in the car with him and making up lyrics to songs we don't know and watching HGTV and cheering at KU football games and being easy with each other in all ways. I miss him so much, my teeth ache.
I've always argued that blissful ignorance wasn't something I would ever want, but tonight I'll fucking take it.
Enlightenment is a bitch, but no matter how awful I feel--and I do, jittery anxiously angrily near tears violently pissed off heartbrokenly awful--I'd still rather be the person who says at least I was willing to get hurt for the chance at real love. At least I wasn't afraid.
Add to that the reappearance of the man I married. My ex-husband and I have been friends since our divorce because neither one of us could bare to be out of each other's lives. In the last three months, I have seen in him the man I married, the man I missed so much the last two years of our marriage when he was depressed and we weren't communicating. And, seeing him again, has made me miss every minute of our time together that was good. I miss dancing in the car with him and making up lyrics to songs we don't know and watching HGTV and cheering at KU football games and being easy with each other in all ways. I miss him so much, my teeth ache.
I've always argued that blissful ignorance wasn't something I would ever want, but tonight I'll fucking take it.
20 August 2011
Swings
The feeling of swinging, hands on the iron chains, feet pumping beneath the seat, never leaves me. I inherently know that forward motion, that movement back and up, that excitement just before your jump and then the exhilaration of letting go--the closest we'll ever be to knowing what a bird feels as it dips and floats--and then the landing, usually harder than expected but never hard enough to keep us from getting back on.
Lately, I can't jump off the swing of my personal life. I want to find ground, to land and stand and feel steady, thrilled to have flown but even happier to be upright, walking, anticipating the next adventure. I want all of that, but everything I knew of the ground is gone and all I can see below the glide is pile after pile of ashes. Letting go now would mean an endless free fall and I am terrified of that senseless and solitary meander.
I don't want these chains, I don't want to keep resisting the urge to jump, and I don't want to be on this damn thing a year from now, but it is hard to take the leap of faith that leaving this behind would require.
So I stay on the swing. Moving mechanically, slicing air with exhausted legs, hands raggedly gripping the chains, eyes dry and cracking from the bitter wind that slaps my face with every upward tick. I miss the feeling of flight, the weightless moments of infinite possibility, but I am too afraid to face them today.
Lately, I can't jump off the swing of my personal life. I want to find ground, to land and stand and feel steady, thrilled to have flown but even happier to be upright, walking, anticipating the next adventure. I want all of that, but everything I knew of the ground is gone and all I can see below the glide is pile after pile of ashes. Letting go now would mean an endless free fall and I am terrified of that senseless and solitary meander.
I don't want these chains, I don't want to keep resisting the urge to jump, and I don't want to be on this damn thing a year from now, but it is hard to take the leap of faith that leaving this behind would require.
So I stay on the swing. Moving mechanically, slicing air with exhausted legs, hands raggedly gripping the chains, eyes dry and cracking from the bitter wind that slaps my face with every upward tick. I miss the feeling of flight, the weightless moments of infinite possibility, but I am too afraid to face them today.
Maybe tomorrow will be different...but maybe not.
Maybe
No matter what anyone else thinks, there are some things we need to feel like our most authentic selves, to feel strong and happy and known and seen. While there may be other people--or whole factions of other people--who think the things you want and need are ridiculous or unimportant, they don't walk around in your head, they don't live your life, they don't feel what you feel.
Maybe you need to eat McDonalds breakfast every day for a month after a good friend moves away because you used to do that together and you need the ritual to help you stop missing them so much. Maybe you need an hour alone after work to decompress--no tv, no conversation, nothing--just to let go of what happened at your job that day. Maybe you need to stop counting calories and worrying about what you eat because doing so makes you nuts, so instead you just listen to the cues your body sends you, you work out when you want, eat what you want when you want, and embrace who you are regardless of weight or size.
And maybe you need a relationship with someone that no one else understands. Maybe you need to talk to that shrew of a woman you work with whose voice makes you want to eat glass simply because she reminds you to live happy now so that you don't end up just like her. Or maybe you need to be friends with your ex-husband because he is a good man who makes you laugh and helps you through bad nights and loves you still, despite the end of your marriage.
No matter what your 'maybe' is, be brutally honest with yourself. This is your one and only life, and if you are doing something or not doing something because of what other people think you should or shouldn't do, find a quiet place or a good friend and work out what YOU want, what YOU need. In the words of George Eliot, "it's never too late to be what you might have been," and it's never too soon to start living the life you were meant to live.
Maybe you need to eat McDonalds breakfast every day for a month after a good friend moves away because you used to do that together and you need the ritual to help you stop missing them so much. Maybe you need an hour alone after work to decompress--no tv, no conversation, nothing--just to let go of what happened at your job that day. Maybe you need to stop counting calories and worrying about what you eat because doing so makes you nuts, so instead you just listen to the cues your body sends you, you work out when you want, eat what you want when you want, and embrace who you are regardless of weight or size.
And maybe you need a relationship with someone that no one else understands. Maybe you need to talk to that shrew of a woman you work with whose voice makes you want to eat glass simply because she reminds you to live happy now so that you don't end up just like her. Or maybe you need to be friends with your ex-husband because he is a good man who makes you laugh and helps you through bad nights and loves you still, despite the end of your marriage.
No matter what your 'maybe' is, be brutally honest with yourself. This is your one and only life, and if you are doing something or not doing something because of what other people think you should or shouldn't do, find a quiet place or a good friend and work out what YOU want, what YOU need. In the words of George Eliot, "it's never too late to be what you might have been," and it's never too soon to start living the life you were meant to live.
13 August 2011
Excerpt
from Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, Elizabeth Lesser
I am fascinated by what it takes to stay awake in difficult times. I marvel at what we all do in times of transition—how we resist, and how we surrender; how we stay stuck, and how we grow. Since my first major broken-open experience—my divorce—I have been an observer and a confidante of others as they engage with the forces of their own suffering. I have made note of how fiasco and failure visit each one of us, as if they were written into the job description of being human. I have seen people crumble in times of trouble, lose their spirit, and never fully recover. I have seen others protect themselves fiercely from any kind of change, until they are living a half life, safe yet stunted.
I’ve tried both ways: I have gone back to sleep in order to resist the forces of change. And I have stayed awake and been broken open. Both ways are difficult, but one way brings with it the gift of a lifetime. If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us—secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.
For years I have sat in workshop rooms with people who do not want to go back to sleep. They are curious about those breezes at dawn. They hope the wind will fill their sails with courage, and with inner peace and outer purpose. Serious things, and not so serious things, are happening to these people. Some are sick and even dying; others are merely dealing with the terminal condition we call life. Some sense that an inner change is brewing, and they have been afraid to heed the storm clouds gathering in their hearts. Some have recently lost a job, or a loved one, or a fortune. Others are aware that whatever they have at this moment could be lost in the next, and they want to live as if they really know this.
In the spacious and safe atmosphere of a workshop, I have helped people grapple with questions like these: How can I stay awake even when it hurts? What might those secrets at dawn be? Why am I so afraid to slow down and listen? What will it take for my longing for wakefulness to become stronger than my fear of change? ... perhaps the most profound of the tools we have at our disposal is the simple act of telling our stories to other human travelers—in a circle around the fire, at the back fence with a neighbor, or at a kitchen table with family and friends. Since the beginning of history we human beings have gathered together, talking and crying, laughing and praising, trying to make sense of the puzzling nature of our lives. By sharing our most human traits, we begin to feel less odd, less lonely, and less pessimistic. And to our surprise, at the core of each story—each personal myth—we uncover a splendid treasure, a source of unending power and sweetness: the shining soul of each wayfarer.
12 August 2011
Funny
Tom Petty, a sage I don't channel often, once sang, "most things I worry about never happen anyway." I've spent a long time worrying about a slew of things, and recently a couple of them came to fruition in the oddest way.
It's funny, sometimes the things you worry about happen, and they don't kill you, they don't crush you, they hurt and sting and burn, you cry and cry and cry, but then you sleep long enough and find you can breathe again because the anxiety, the what if is gone and now it's just you and your life, two things you've always loved, waiting to see what's next.
It's funny, sometimes the things you worry about happen, and they don't kill you, they don't crush you, they hurt and sting and burn, you cry and cry and cry, but then you sleep long enough and find you can breathe again because the anxiety, the what if is gone and now it's just you and your life, two things you've always loved, waiting to see what's next.
09 August 2011
Essential Facts
I have following sayings taped up around my desk at work:
Be present.
Look up from your life.
What you focus on expands.
Embrace change.
You cannot control what happens, but you can control how you react to what happens.
Over the past two years, I've gotten pretty good at some of these. Change doesn't scare the living hell out of me anymore, I recognize that this moment is the one I need to live in because the past is done and the future is beyond my control, and I know that my life is small in contrast to global ills and pains.
It is my life though, and so it does matter. It matters if I am sad or hurt, if I am in need or lonely. My life, though small, is the only one I have to live and therefore it is up to me to choose what that life looks like.
That's where the other two mantras (for lack of a better word) come in. It is damn hard to remember that focusing on the negative things in life only make them expand because the negative stuff is the most insistent when it shows up in my head. I don't lie in bed at night thinking, "gosh, I was awesome today," or "how great was that sunset!". I lie awake fixating on some dumb thing I said or how someone else's decisions may effect or hurt me. How lame is that? There is no one responsible for my happiness but me, so focusing on the things that make me happy should cause those things to expand, right? I'm going to give that more of a shot.
And finally, the last one, the grandaddy of them all. I cannot control what happens, but I can control how I react to what happens. Goodnight if that's not difficult to remember. But, it occurs to me that if I don't start putting that into practice, I may go stark raving nuts. See, I believe there is a plan for my life, and I believe that plan is divinely ordained, that who I am supposed to be is written in the book already and it is my job to learn enough, be humble enough, and work hard enough to be the best version of that woman as I possibly can be, and fixating on what may or may not happen in the future isn't going to make me any better,it isn't going to teach me anything (except perhaps how to dwell & I could already teach a class on that), and it isn't going to get me any closer to being the best version of myself.
So, today I vow to love myself enough to let go of all pretense about who I would be, what should happen, and when I will figure it all out.
In the words of Henri Frederic Amiel:
“Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring...”
Be present.
Look up from your life.
What you focus on expands.
Embrace change.
You cannot control what happens, but you can control how you react to what happens.
Over the past two years, I've gotten pretty good at some of these. Change doesn't scare the living hell out of me anymore, I recognize that this moment is the one I need to live in because the past is done and the future is beyond my control, and I know that my life is small in contrast to global ills and pains.
It is my life though, and so it does matter. It matters if I am sad or hurt, if I am in need or lonely. My life, though small, is the only one I have to live and therefore it is up to me to choose what that life looks like.
That's where the other two mantras (for lack of a better word) come in. It is damn hard to remember that focusing on the negative things in life only make them expand because the negative stuff is the most insistent when it shows up in my head. I don't lie in bed at night thinking, "gosh, I was awesome today," or "how great was that sunset!". I lie awake fixating on some dumb thing I said or how someone else's decisions may effect or hurt me. How lame is that? There is no one responsible for my happiness but me, so focusing on the things that make me happy should cause those things to expand, right? I'm going to give that more of a shot.
And finally, the last one, the grandaddy of them all. I cannot control what happens, but I can control how I react to what happens. Goodnight if that's not difficult to remember. But, it occurs to me that if I don't start putting that into practice, I may go stark raving nuts. See, I believe there is a plan for my life, and I believe that plan is divinely ordained, that who I am supposed to be is written in the book already and it is my job to learn enough, be humble enough, and work hard enough to be the best version of that woman as I possibly can be, and fixating on what may or may not happen in the future isn't going to make me any better,it isn't going to teach me anything (except perhaps how to dwell & I could already teach a class on that), and it isn't going to get me any closer to being the best version of myself.
So, today I vow to love myself enough to let go of all pretense about who I would be, what should happen, and when I will figure it all out.
In the words of Henri Frederic Amiel:
“Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring...”
03 August 2011
Lesson, Someday, Learned
I've been reading a lot this summer, self-helpy type stuff that in years gone by I would have scoffed at, my nose turned up, literally thinking, "I don't need that hippy dippy, touchy feely garbage. I don't know who's worse, those who write it, or those who read it!"
I can tell you now it was a huge mistake to wait so long to start trying to do what self-help books are made for: helping myself.
When I got divorced last summer, I knew I was making the right decision. It was awful and sad and it broke my heart to hurt someone I love as much as I love my ex-husband (notice I'm saying love, not loved--there is no past tense--I still love him, just not in the way spouses love one another). I realized, long before we split, that we needed and wanted fundamentally different things from a relationship, and that we had a toxic dynamic that was making us both sick. No amount of counseling, arguing, prayer, or sheer stubborn hope was going to fix it. I knew if I wanted us to both be happy, we couldn't manage that together.
Luckily, I hit the divorce jackpot and in the last year my ex and I have developed a friendship that was at the heart of our relationship, and we know we are better off in this configuration of us.
But (you knew a big one was coming, right?) even though I was the one who said we had to end it, even though I have never regretted it, even though I have always known it was the right thing to do, there was a whole lot of self-work that needed to be done in the aftermath, and I just wouldn't do it. I pushed myself at work, I settled in to help my friends and students and family members with their own struggles, somehow believing that if I was strong enough for and helpful enough to them, my own shit would just disappear, cease to exist, my issues would deflate like so many carnival balloons.
Turns out, that's not how it works.
I had to get really quiet this summer, spend a lot of time alone, and yep, read the self-help books I have derided for years to realize that my stuff, my issues, don't make me a bad person, they're just the things I bring to the table like everyone else does. And nothing I have gone through or dealt with is my own, it's the universal experience of human struggle that ties us all together and if we talked more about what we need, what we know, and what we fear, we may actually all start to stumble out of the darkness.
A friend asked me recently how I manage to shut off my head. I am inwardly critical in a way that rivals Mommy Dearest, calling myself names and breaking myself down in ways that would make me slap someone who spoke that way to a friend. I would never allow such negativity, and yet I push it on myself again and again. But the trick I've learned, as I told my friend, is that I've taken to asking if any of the things I think--in the middle of my dark little tea-time of the soul moments--are true. Would anyone who knows me and loves me think I am bad, dumb, stupid, moronic, childish, unworthy, beyond repair? Would anyone who knows me and loves me allow anyone else to say those things about me? And the answer, overwhelmingly, is no. None of those things is true, and no one who loves and knows me would suggest that they are. Even if I did something they didn't agree with or understand, they would never say those things about me because they would never pass judgment on me. That's what loving someone means: to be free of judgment, to be supportive and even critical, but never to call names or deliberately hurt.
So, I have to learn to love myself that way. It may be the hardest lesson I'll ever learn, but I'm worth it.
I can tell you now it was a huge mistake to wait so long to start trying to do what self-help books are made for: helping myself.
When I got divorced last summer, I knew I was making the right decision. It was awful and sad and it broke my heart to hurt someone I love as much as I love my ex-husband (notice I'm saying love, not loved--there is no past tense--I still love him, just not in the way spouses love one another). I realized, long before we split, that we needed and wanted fundamentally different things from a relationship, and that we had a toxic dynamic that was making us both sick. No amount of counseling, arguing, prayer, or sheer stubborn hope was going to fix it. I knew if I wanted us to both be happy, we couldn't manage that together.
Luckily, I hit the divorce jackpot and in the last year my ex and I have developed a friendship that was at the heart of our relationship, and we know we are better off in this configuration of us.
But (you knew a big one was coming, right?) even though I was the one who said we had to end it, even though I have never regretted it, even though I have always known it was the right thing to do, there was a whole lot of self-work that needed to be done in the aftermath, and I just wouldn't do it. I pushed myself at work, I settled in to help my friends and students and family members with their own struggles, somehow believing that if I was strong enough for and helpful enough to them, my own shit would just disappear, cease to exist, my issues would deflate like so many carnival balloons.
Turns out, that's not how it works.
I had to get really quiet this summer, spend a lot of time alone, and yep, read the self-help books I have derided for years to realize that my stuff, my issues, don't make me a bad person, they're just the things I bring to the table like everyone else does. And nothing I have gone through or dealt with is my own, it's the universal experience of human struggle that ties us all together and if we talked more about what we need, what we know, and what we fear, we may actually all start to stumble out of the darkness.
A friend asked me recently how I manage to shut off my head. I am inwardly critical in a way that rivals Mommy Dearest, calling myself names and breaking myself down in ways that would make me slap someone who spoke that way to a friend. I would never allow such negativity, and yet I push it on myself again and again. But the trick I've learned, as I told my friend, is that I've taken to asking if any of the things I think--in the middle of my dark little tea-time of the soul moments--are true. Would anyone who knows me and loves me think I am bad, dumb, stupid, moronic, childish, unworthy, beyond repair? Would anyone who knows me and loves me allow anyone else to say those things about me? And the answer, overwhelmingly, is no. None of those things is true, and no one who loves and knows me would suggest that they are. Even if I did something they didn't agree with or understand, they would never say those things about me because they would never pass judgment on me. That's what loving someone means: to be free of judgment, to be supportive and even critical, but never to call names or deliberately hurt.
So, I have to learn to love myself that way. It may be the hardest lesson I'll ever learn, but I'm worth it.
22 July 2011
Patience
I have a good friend who, in times of crisis, swears by opening the nearest volume of poems and finding some form of answer or reprieve in whatever work you land on. Happenstance and fate joining hands, a union of need and serendipity.
Today two of my dearest friends began journeys, one spiritual and one physical. In my struggle to know how to give them assistance, I tried out the aforementioned technique. The book, New and Selected Poems Volume 2 of Mary Oliver. The poem: Patience. Imagine my utter shock to have wandered into those pages and come out not with a poem that is right for my friends, but one that is so utterly perfect for me.
I struggle, often, with patience, with the letting go and letting God/the universe/the angels of our better nature. I feel a deep joy when I wallow in some semblance of control, but of late I have noticed that is all it is--my control is nothing more than a charade, a glittery blue pool on the horizon of 110 degree day that, once approached, proves to be only sand. So, today's poem is fitting in that I must try to stop controlling my own life, stop thinking there is a perfect word or thought or deed to accompany the events in my life and instead to breathe, to wait, to trust that what should be will be, whether I will it or not.
Patience, Mary Oliver
What is the good life now? Why,
look here, consider
the moon's white crescent
rounding, slowly, over
the half month to still another
perfect circle-
the shining eye
that lightens the hills,
that lays down the shadows
of the branches of the trees,
that summons the flowers
to open their sleepy faces and look up
into the heavens.
I used to hurry everywhere,
and leaped over the running creeks.
There wasn't
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do
in a single day. Patience
comes to the bones
before it take root in the heart
as another good idea.
I say this
as I stand in the woods
and study the patterns
of the moon shadows,
or stroll down into the waters
that now, late summer, have also
caught the fever, and hardly move
from one eternity to another.
17 July 2011
35
This is the poem I want to live by from now on.
When Death Comes, Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
11 July 2011
Checking the Next Box
This coming Sunday, the 17th, I will turn 35. This means on every survey, magazine quiz, legal document, and medical form for the next nine years, I have to check the 35-44 box.
19-25? Fine. No qualms about that. 26-34 was cool, too. I didn't mind being anywhere in that sucker, but this new one...well...it's a lot to take in, that nine year span. It's going to include 40, and I have to tell you that 40 sounds like an unreal number, something that doesn't make any sense, isn't possible.
Inside, in my little pink heart I feel about 17. I still laugh at all the things that made me laugh then (Weird Science, Growing Pains, my parents), I still love a lot of the same music (The Smiths, James Taylor, Ani DiFranco), I still read and am blown away by the same books (Skinny Legs & All, Catcher in the Rye, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg), and I am still stunned to silence by the same miracles of nature (sunrise, late blooming flowers, starry night skies).
It is absolutely shocking to think that soon, I'm going to boxed in by a whole other set of expectations, ones that traditionally mean I should be more grown up, less engaged, more settled, less full of wonder. I am the oldest I have ever been--obviously--but each day I feel more alive, more engaged, more sure of who I am and what I want from the world.
So, here's to checking the next box, to embracing the next phase of life, to believing that getting older means getting better.
19-25? Fine. No qualms about that. 26-34 was cool, too. I didn't mind being anywhere in that sucker, but this new one...well...it's a lot to take in, that nine year span. It's going to include 40, and I have to tell you that 40 sounds like an unreal number, something that doesn't make any sense, isn't possible.
Inside, in my little pink heart I feel about 17. I still laugh at all the things that made me laugh then (Weird Science, Growing Pains, my parents), I still love a lot of the same music (The Smiths, James Taylor, Ani DiFranco), I still read and am blown away by the same books (Skinny Legs & All, Catcher in the Rye, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg), and I am still stunned to silence by the same miracles of nature (sunrise, late blooming flowers, starry night skies).
It is absolutely shocking to think that soon, I'm going to boxed in by a whole other set of expectations, ones that traditionally mean I should be more grown up, less engaged, more settled, less full of wonder. I am the oldest I have ever been--obviously--but each day I feel more alive, more engaged, more sure of who I am and what I want from the world.
So, here's to checking the next box, to embracing the next phase of life, to believing that getting older means getting better.
06 July 2011
Revelation
I figured out today that at the heart of every single thing I am anxious about, afraid of, nauseated and confused by, lies a deep, rich, three-pack a day fear of being alone.
That fear moved in a long time ago, dragging its dirty boots across my carpet, leaving thick stains that no steam or solvent can remove. It took over rooms in my heart, throwing dark curtains up, burning its foul herbs in little ashcans, smoking out the sweetness that used to live here, buying up prime real estate from the hope and joy that lived side by side for years.
I am trying, desperately, to evict that fear. I know, with no intended arrogance, that I am smart, funny, kind, and beautiful. I believe these things to be true and so they are. After all, all we have in this world are the things we believe in, so I guess I'd better stop believing in the ludicrous notion that I will be alone, right?
But where are the examples of strong, single women throughout history? I mean, where are the ladies who--without any romantic relationship to speak of--found true happiness? And, frankly, even if you find me those examples, I'm not going to be placated because I believe in the power of sharing my life with someone, I want that desperately, but I have NO control over whether or not it happens. None. And that, too, scares the living bejeezus out of me.
Okay, enough of this. It is late, and fear is trying to call up all his friends--speculation, worry, and doubt--so I'm going to turn off all the lights and shut their party down. Here's to trying, each and every day, to be a little less afraid.
That fear moved in a long time ago, dragging its dirty boots across my carpet, leaving thick stains that no steam or solvent can remove. It took over rooms in my heart, throwing dark curtains up, burning its foul herbs in little ashcans, smoking out the sweetness that used to live here, buying up prime real estate from the hope and joy that lived side by side for years.
I am trying, desperately, to evict that fear. I know, with no intended arrogance, that I am smart, funny, kind, and beautiful. I believe these things to be true and so they are. After all, all we have in this world are the things we believe in, so I guess I'd better stop believing in the ludicrous notion that I will be alone, right?
But where are the examples of strong, single women throughout history? I mean, where are the ladies who--without any romantic relationship to speak of--found true happiness? And, frankly, even if you find me those examples, I'm not going to be placated because I believe in the power of sharing my life with someone, I want that desperately, but I have NO control over whether or not it happens. None. And that, too, scares the living bejeezus out of me.
Okay, enough of this. It is late, and fear is trying to call up all his friends--speculation, worry, and doubt--so I'm going to turn off all the lights and shut their party down. Here's to trying, each and every day, to be a little less afraid.
30 June 2011
Daze
There were many things I expected to be doing this summer, particularly writing, but it turns out that hasn't been happening so much. In fact, the majority of my time has been spent reading, watching movies, and lounging by the local public pool. I have worked in my classroom some, I'm house sitting for some friends, I've had some really wonderful dinners and lunches with colleagues and former students, but I haven't been terribly productive in the sense that I have produced anything.
And you know what? I could care less.
Sometimes, it turns out, even the most well intentioned people with the loftiest of goals--well, okay, maybe not the loftiest--turn out to need to just stop. To breathe. To reconnect with what it is in them that makes them fundamentally who they are, and it turns out, for me, it's water, words, and movies. They're a pretty great foray into my little mess. There are other things that make up the sum total of who I am, namely the fact that I am a fiercely loyal friend and daughter and sister and aunt, a teacher who loves her job, and a woman who dreams of one day sharing her life with a good man, but all of that stuff has been on the back burner this summer. Not because it isn't important, but because--when I pulled my head up from the daze that is every day life during the academic year--I realized that I am important, my mental health, my sense of self, my, well, me-ness matters, and so I'm getting back in touch with that.
Does that mean I'm lazy? Unproductive? Wasting a lot of time doing a lot of nothing? Some may think so, but for me, this is the best summer I've had in years because there is no point, there is no pressure, there's just me and the sun and the words and the images I love, and we're all--it turns out, much to my total shock--doing just fine.
And you know what? I could care less.
Sometimes, it turns out, even the most well intentioned people with the loftiest of goals--well, okay, maybe not the loftiest--turn out to need to just stop. To breathe. To reconnect with what it is in them that makes them fundamentally who they are, and it turns out, for me, it's water, words, and movies. They're a pretty great foray into my little mess. There are other things that make up the sum total of who I am, namely the fact that I am a fiercely loyal friend and daughter and sister and aunt, a teacher who loves her job, and a woman who dreams of one day sharing her life with a good man, but all of that stuff has been on the back burner this summer. Not because it isn't important, but because--when I pulled my head up from the daze that is every day life during the academic year--I realized that I am important, my mental health, my sense of self, my, well, me-ness matters, and so I'm getting back in touch with that.
Does that mean I'm lazy? Unproductive? Wasting a lot of time doing a lot of nothing? Some may think so, but for me, this is the best summer I've had in years because there is no point, there is no pressure, there's just me and the sun and the words and the images I love, and we're all--it turns out, much to my total shock--doing just fine.
24 June 2011
Quotations
I've been reading a lot this summer, and I'm sure there will be a post on that at some point, but for now, these are a few of the tidbits I'm chewing on.
"One man all by himself is nothing. Two people who belong together make a world." — Hans Margolius
"One man all by himself is nothing. Two people who belong together make a world." — Hans Margolius
“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”--Rumi
“Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.”--Marianne Williamson
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.--From "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.--From "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver
"Change happens when you understand what you want to change so deeply that there is no reason to do anything but act in your own best interest."--Geneen Roth
"What is to give light must endure burning."--Viktor Frankel
'It is time the stone made an effort to flower
time unrest had a beating heart,
it is time it were time.
It is time."--from "Corona" by Paul Celan
"Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation. Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina's delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat -- was, literally, talked into life."--Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
"The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own."--Calum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
"Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?"--Kathryn Stockett, The Help
21 June 2011
Summer Cold
I can't exactly name the ailment that has befallen me, but for the sake of argument we'll call it a summer cold. I have been super sick the last few days and am hating it. I'm chugging water like it's been deemed illegal, I'm running through pectin cough drops like their candy, and at this point I should own stock in Kleenex.
I'm on a Z-Pack, Sudafed, a brochial inhaler, Tessalon Pearls for my cough, Tylenol for pain, and I'm fairly addicted to bad movies by now. As we speak, I'm watching Drive Angry, a particularly bloody Nicholas Cage film with pretty rotten dialogue, but at least Amber Heard is hot.
So, here's how I'm trying to get over the illness: reading, bad movies, and thinking about how much fun I have every time I see this sweet little girl.
I'm on a Z-Pack, Sudafed, a brochial inhaler, Tessalon Pearls for my cough, Tylenol for pain, and I'm fairly addicted to bad movies by now. As we speak, I'm watching Drive Angry, a particularly bloody Nicholas Cage film with pretty rotten dialogue, but at least Amber Heard is hot.
So, here's how I'm trying to get over the illness: reading, bad movies, and thinking about how much fun I have every time I see this sweet little girl.
17 June 2011
Faith
Trying to let go of the need to control the universe is exhausting. I spend half my day, it seems, trying to conform the world to my vision of how it should be rather than conforming myself to the reality of the world and that, according to GB Shaw, is a surefire sign that I am an irrational human being. Pretty sure he's right.
Lately I've been asked to blindly trust that certain things are going to go well: finances, personal life, the health of loved ones. As a woman of faith, I know there is a greater plan that has already decided these things, but as a woman of letters, I also wholeheartedly believe in the power of free will and so I am torn, most days, by the desire to trust and the fundamentally ingrained tendency to doubt and speculate.
I do not need proof of God to believe in Him, I feel His presence in my life and that is enough. I see His acts and love in action in the world, and that is enough. These things are, I suppose, my proof. Where others see senseless acts of random kindness, I see God. Where you might see a scientifically explainable situation, I say the science behind the situation is proof of something miraculous.
Albert Einstein said there were two ways of looking at the world: as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is. I am trying desperately to follow the latter. But, as is the case of all fallible humans on this little blue planet, I trip up. I get caught in the trap of wanting what I want right now, wanting my vision of the world to come true immediately, wanting the world, as aforementioned, to conform to me, even when I know such wants are ridiculous.
Troy Girsgonelle believes that being in love is chemical while loving someone is active, and not always pleasant. That to truly love someone we must be willing to sacrifice our wants for the sake of what it is they need in the moment. While it is easy for me to follow this logic in terms of those I love--I will always and without hesitation sacrifice for them, it is the right way and only way for me to behave (no judgment if you disagree, it's not for everyone--but I've been thinking a lot about how this applies to loving ourselves. If I have a vision for what should be, what I actually believe will come to be, then maybe--just maybe--I ought to be willing to sacrifice my want of the culmination occurring now in exchange for loving myself enough to wait for things to happen as they must.
[Cryptic enough for you? There are just certain aspects of my life I'm just not comfortable writing about on the interwebs. However, I am grappling with these concepts, so they feel like good blog fodder.]
I guess my point here is that I'm wondering how to do it, to just believe that things will all work out for the best, to have faith not only that the universe will provide & that God has a plan, but that those provisions and plans mirror what it is I want. Of course, I know that's not how it works. The act of faith means not expecting what happens to follow your preconceived notions, but instead trusting, blindly.
So here's to trying not to see in the dark any more. To breathing deep. To saying yes. To faith.
Lately I've been asked to blindly trust that certain things are going to go well: finances, personal life, the health of loved ones. As a woman of faith, I know there is a greater plan that has already decided these things, but as a woman of letters, I also wholeheartedly believe in the power of free will and so I am torn, most days, by the desire to trust and the fundamentally ingrained tendency to doubt and speculate.
I do not need proof of God to believe in Him, I feel His presence in my life and that is enough. I see His acts and love in action in the world, and that is enough. These things are, I suppose, my proof. Where others see senseless acts of random kindness, I see God. Where you might see a scientifically explainable situation, I say the science behind the situation is proof of something miraculous.
Albert Einstein said there were two ways of looking at the world: as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is. I am trying desperately to follow the latter. But, as is the case of all fallible humans on this little blue planet, I trip up. I get caught in the trap of wanting what I want right now, wanting my vision of the world to come true immediately, wanting the world, as aforementioned, to conform to me, even when I know such wants are ridiculous.
Troy Girsgonelle believes that being in love is chemical while loving someone is active, and not always pleasant. That to truly love someone we must be willing to sacrifice our wants for the sake of what it is they need in the moment. While it is easy for me to follow this logic in terms of those I love--I will always and without hesitation sacrifice for them, it is the right way and only way for me to behave (no judgment if you disagree, it's not for everyone--but I've been thinking a lot about how this applies to loving ourselves. If I have a vision for what should be, what I actually believe will come to be, then maybe--just maybe--I ought to be willing to sacrifice my want of the culmination occurring now in exchange for loving myself enough to wait for things to happen as they must.
[Cryptic enough for you? There are just certain aspects of my life I'm just not comfortable writing about on the interwebs. However, I am grappling with these concepts, so they feel like good blog fodder.]
I guess my point here is that I'm wondering how to do it, to just believe that things will all work out for the best, to have faith not only that the universe will provide & that God has a plan, but that those provisions and plans mirror what it is I want. Of course, I know that's not how it works. The act of faith means not expecting what happens to follow your preconceived notions, but instead trusting, blindly.
So here's to trying not to see in the dark any more. To breathing deep. To saying yes. To faith.
13 June 2011
Neruda
Sonnet XVII, Pablo NerudaI don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.I love you without knowing how, or when, or where from,
I love you simply, without complexities or pride;
I love you in this way, not knowing any other way of loving
but this, in which neither I nor you exist
so close that your hand on my breast is mine,
so close that your eyes close when I sleep.
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you simply, without complexities or pride;
I love you in this way, not knowing any other way of loving
but this, in which neither I nor you exist
so close that your hand on my breast is mine,
so close that your eyes close when I sleep.
01 June 2011
Joplin Benefit
I've spent the last week planning this benefit; if you can make it, I'd love to see you. Excellent music for a truly worthy cause.
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