Am I better yet?

Today is a weird day.

The snow is coming down like Mother Nature is trying to reach her year-end revenue mark and it's keeping me out of the malls and in my apartment. I have been thinking about all the things I should be doing and I am eating a little snack of an apple and some cheese instead. I can't get my mind to focus. I am used to being a whirling dervish of activity and productivity--busy from 6am to 10 pm with work, school, chores, exercise, etc. But now. Now I can't seem to get to the laundry or cleaning the floors. I can't write my Christmas thank yous or read my new book. I can't go get the gym membership I've been meaning to get and I can't contact a man I am supposed to meet for an interview in a week. Nothing is happening. I managed to put together a bookshelf and I managed to spend 30 minutes on the treadmill, but other than that--life is moving backwards through quicksand for me right now.

And this frustrates me. It scratches at my skin. I want to be doing things. I want to be productive.

Instead I am like a child in day seven of chicken pox recovery--I am starting to feel better, but am still contagious, so I am stuck inside the house when the sun is shining and all my friends are playing at the park. I am sick of my books, my movies, my video games. I want desperately to be done with this sickness.

I guess in this way grief is like the chicken pox. I am done with the writhing-in-pain stage, done with the quiet-coma-recovery stage, and I am entering into the too-sick-to-go-out-but-well-enough-to-want-to stage. It's making me want to stomp my feet on the ground, throw a toy across the room, and pick a fight with a sibling.

I probably should let go of the fact that laundry is not getting done and remember that I am being held in by a process. I am not myself just yet. I am still getting over my grief virus. I will be well and I will be healed and the laundry will eventually get done. I just need to be patient with myself and the process and absorb all that is in this moment. If I don't process it now I will always be dealing with it. 

So- I guess I will just keep eating my apple and cheese, play solitaire on my computer, go through old scrapbooks, old journals--the only things I have an attention span for right now.

Hmm... maybe that is God's way of pointing me in the right direction. Away from the Pulitzer prize winning book I have been meaning to read and towards my past, and my processing of it. 

Dear S--

Hey-

So here is the thing. I think you are probably the only one who knows what it is like to be going through this right now, the day after what would have been our 6th anniversary. I don't want to intrude on your life-- I just want some solidarity.

Remember when we got married? Remember the ceremony? Remember looking at me when we made our vows? I know I was crying, just a little, and I remember looking at everyone sitting in the pews. 

So many thoughts flood my mind right now-- I remember your uncle picking me up and twirling me around to the song "I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll". I remember dancing with people in the dollar dance line- and my cousin Dave, the one who died of cancer last year at 39, told me how my cousin Brian, the one in the coast guard, asked him for advice on what to talk to me about. 

I remember people singing. Do you? Remember how we had people sing Christmas carols in order to get us to kiss? Do you remember the toasts? I said thanks. You said nothing and were shy. J told everyone about our nicknames and N- well, he was always perfect and gracious. Your best friend. I understand why.

You are a good guy. 

I could have done much worse.

I am sorry that you struggle with addiction. I am sorry that you suffered from so much pain so early in life. I am sorry your dad was the way he was. I wish he would have come to our wedding. I am sorry you never felt you could be honest with me about your addiction. I like to believe I would have stuck by you if you would have told me the truth.

I miss your family. I miss your mom. I miss your brother. I miss your aunts and uncles. I miss you. I miss you hugging me all the time. I miss you keeping me updated on all the cool things happening in the world.

I miss what I thought we were. What we might have been. 

You really hurt me. I know I have told you this before. It was the lying that killed it--where would we be in fifty years if lies had already sabotaged us at five? It would never have worked, but I would never have changed a thing.

You asked me to marry you six and a half years ago in your apartment. It felt weird to me at the time--forced? I don't know. And all the Catholic counseling we went to you viewed as a chore to mock. Should these have been warnings for me? The issues we dealt with before we married-- family commitments, holidays, sexuality-- all manifested in our marriage, covered, of course, in lies, in omission. 

I could go on and on. I could delve into the abyss of pain I swim in from time to time. 

But that's not the purpose of this letter.

The fact is-- people don't seem to get it. It's only been a year and a half and when I tell some old friends that it's a tough time for me they chuckle. They seem to think I've bounced back. They think I am now so improved I don't remember the darkness of last year.

Other people blame our youth. They say that's what can be expected when two 24 year-olds marry. It's just too young for people to know what they want.

This insults me. I married you thinking we'd be together forever. I don't think age had a thing to do with it. I know I married you with the faith of a girl who had never really had her heart broken before and who had no idea what fate had in store for us. But pushing you away- waiting for four more years- neither of these actions would have served me well. How could I learn to be the person I am meant to be if I didn't pursue my fate as my own heart directed me?

Again- your actions hurt me so much. My self-esteem, sense of trust, personal values, personal sexuality all changed during our relationship.

But now they have changed again. And everything is clearer than it ever was before we got together.

You married a stunted woman. I married a stunted man. But I truly believe we were both doing the best we could with the tools we had acquired throughout our lives. You meant everything to me for nine years. I have let you go but I can't forget my past. 

Do people make stupid comments to you too? R told me she asked you via facebook what you did to mess it up. I told her our breakup was the worst experience I had been through and probably was for you too. Were your relatives supportive? Do they judge me for leaving you?

I can only guess at the answers.

Good-bye. I don't want to run into you. I don't want to see you again. I just wanted to write to you because, when all is said and done, you are the only one who knows how I was feeling yesterday. And I didn't have to say a word.

God bless. Good luck. We are better for having known each other. My heart was broken and made whole in the course of our togetherness and undoing.

-K

Army of One: A Single Girl Wages War on New Year's Eve

Ok- I told a friend of mine recently that I secretly was hoping that a Christmas miracle would happen on my street and my New Year's Eve dilemma would be solved. I would not be alone on New Year's. 

It hasn't quite worked out.

Here is the thing- there are just too many big days in December. Christmas, anniversary, New Year's Eve... it's ridiculous. And it makes me feel horribly alone. 

Last year I waged an attack on New Year's in a quiet, introspective, rah-rah-women sort of way. I flew to Florida, rented a convertible, made myself lobster and mussels, and sat on the beach writing intentions on shells and casting them out into the waves. It felt wonderful. It felt serene. It felt peaceful. I embraced being alone.

This year, after doing the alone thing for the past 17 months, I am tired of celebrating it. I have tried like hell to get out of town, a town where I am surrounded by my wonderful, but coupled friends, and I have tried to make plans to go to Kenya, Italy, L.A., and even North Carolina--all of my plans have fallen through. It looks like I will be the only single person in Minneapolis on New Year's Eve. Honestly, it kind of sucks. 

Here's the thing. I love being independent. I don't mind being alone. But there are days when it's rough. Today- the anniversary-of course is one. I've cried; I've written in my journal; I've reminisced about the poinsettias, white dress, and chocolate cake. And of course, my ex. BUT I DON'T WANT TO DO THAT FOR NEW YEAR'S! I don't want to be sad. I don't want to reminisce. I don't want anyone's pity. I don't want a pity kiss on the cheek at midnight from a friend and her boyfriend. I don't want to awkwardly kiss the only single guy at a party thrown by my married friends.

I just want to put on my heels and a cute dress and be with someone I am excited to kiss.

Well- I can not control the part about being with someone else, if he's not excited to kiss me, there's just nothing I can do, but-- the soldier in me realizes I still can control what I wear. So this New Year's there will be no quiet reflection, no solo dinner, no prayers and intentions for 2009. No. There will be dancing and patent leather heels and there will be a cute dress. Maybe I will get stuck at a party where I am the only solo person, BUT- I will dress as I like. 

I will take myself out for New Year's Eve. 

I love a party. I love a celebration. I will not say goodbye to 2008 in the same way I welcomed him, quiet and alone. I will greet 2008 at the door with a passionate kiss, knock him to the floor, and step on his back in my shiny patent leather heels. 

Hello, 2009. You don't know what you're in for.

An Ode to Dogs and Nephews

I told a friend of mine recently that my dog and my nephews were going to be the highlight of my holiday. And I was right. They were the highlights, the shining lights, the lights of hope-- they saved Christmas for this despondent soul. 

(Ok, to be fair- my family was great. Sympathetic, even. And I told them I was struggling and they responded with hugs. My youngest brother is in full support of me adopting a schnoodle.)

BUT- the dog and the nephews still ruled. Here is what I observed, learned, appreciated about each of them:

1) M- the baby: Honestly, there is nothing to worry about other than whether we are wet or dry, hungry or full, tired or awake. All of these situations are easily remedied and so there is nothing left to do, if all other functions are taken care of, than smile and drool and giggle and sing. It is preferable to drool directly on someone else as that seems to inspire the most laughs. Also, it is best to have a delicious smelling head. This induces the most holding by others.

2) E- the 4.75 year old: We are smartest when we are young. 

While watching Jen Anniston in Marley and Me process the disappointment of a miscarriage, he told me "I think God just didn't make the baby yet." 

My response: "I think you're right. And God knows what he is doing, huh?" To which he nodded cherubically and solemnly, with the wisdom of a youth with unchallenged faith. 

When the dog was put to sleep in the film, E asked me what was happening. "He's getting medicine, because he is so sick, but it's medicine to make him sleep forever." E nodded sagely and continued to dangle from the railing on the steps right next to us. I wiped away tear after tear and pretended I understood as well as he did about the cycle of life.

3) Friday- the yorkie-poo: There is a reason dog and God contain the same letters. It's true and it's ridiculous. I have become a complete sap for my animal. But there are so very few beings in life who support us unconditionally. I have two humans in mind, in my life, and one dog. And the dog can be scolded, reprimanded, and even ignored from time to time and he still trots next to me in strange environments, still wags his tail enthusiastically after a brief separation. He loves me unconditionally and I feel the same. Yes, we disappoint each other at times, me by leaving for a few hours, him by chewing, well- everything, but our anger dissipates rapidly, and we are left snuggling together on the couch.

A dog is a blessing. A nephew is a blessing. A baby is a blessing. I am so blessed to have all in my life; in my Christmas.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

Exactly one week ago my ex and I crossed paths on the sidewalk outside the Italian place I was headed to with a friend. I looked up and froze. He glanced and looked down and cut across the street to our vehicle, now his.

I immediately smacked my friend- "That's him. My ex."

It's only fitting, I suppose, to have had this encounter in the middle of winter, in the middle of darkness, in the middle of coldness, and only a week and a half before our anniversary date, in the middle of December. I felt a chill run through my spine and I realized that I was watching a ghost walk away from me. And not only a ghost, but nine years of memories, of Christmases, of traditions, of fights, of happy moments... and without a word they got in the truck and took off.

I still get shivers thinking about it.

And so it is Christmas night and I am awake and wrestling with the insomnia gremlins again and beating myself up for recent dating mishaps and bemoaning the fact that I should know better than to tangle with thorny creatures and thinking about my past and thinking about the relatives I made and now will never share a holiday with again--and--I am doubting myself. I am doubting my gut. I am believing that others know best about my welfare. I am believing that others will recognize the prince among toads when he arrives on my doorstep but that I will not. I am believing I am not to be trusted. That I make things up. That I believe what is not real. That I seek men to validate my feelings. That I am doomed to perpetually choose the wrong people to form relationships with in life; people who can not and will not love me.

And I am thinking about the ghost sighting again.

Because here is the thing--as I processed my doubts, my anxieties, my insecurities and called my dear friend to discuss the situation, I realized--I know when to leave. I know when I've had enough. I know when to cut the threads on my present and let it drift into the graveyard of my past, where it turns into a figment of what was, takes on white gossamer swaths of ancient history, and becomes a specter whose only power is to drift into my life once in a while. 

I know when a relationship is dead.

I left my ex in clarity. I left with the word "severed" on my tongue. I knew trust no longer could exist in my relationship. 

Do I wish I had never met him? Do I wish I could have replaced pain with the emptiness of missing this experience?

Absolutely not. 

Last October a hairdresser told me that the best thing she ever did was marry her ex-husband and the other best thing she ever did was divorce him. I blew on my dark-purple-nearly-black nails and thought I would never understand what she meant.

Now I do.

I love who I have become, am becoming. I love the fact that I married someone when I was a girl with an open heart full of naive optimism and earnest faith in the pact of marriage. I love that I spent nine years with a man who taught me so many lessons about myself, about life. I love that I waited until I knew it was time to leave, that I gave the relationship every chance that I could. I love that I learned to trust myself. I love that I discovered the multitude of issues I need to address in my life. I love that my new friends can't fathom the 24 year-old who got married. I love that she is just as dear to me, in fact dearer, as she has ever been.

Looking back, someone could have pointed out the patterns for failure that showed up in the early stages of our relationship. I could have been warned to avoid the whole mess.

But I never would have learned by listening. I never would have discovered the new layers of me.

So I will be gentle with myself as I make decisions about the future, about relationships, about men. I will trust my own instincts despite the "shoulds" I hear in my head and on the lips of a few others who want to protect me from future pain. I hope not to chastise myself anymore for not recognizing an unsatisfactory relationship immediately. I hope to feel powerful about my decisions and to have faith in the fact that everything leads me to where I need to go.

 

My ghost of Christmas Past, with its ancient white gossamer material, its goatee and hoop earrings, will never fall out of my life completely. Nor should it. Instead it will remind me of who I am now, who I was then, who I can become, and who is waiting inside. 

I can trust that my gut serves me well. That I am in the process, still, of figuring this all out.

Painting Walls

My studio apartment is a wreck. It looks like all five of my closets have vomited their contents onto the floor of my living "room" (really a space separated from my bed by a few curtains).

I could not be happier.

Right now I am taking a break from painting two walls of my room, a job I planned to work on last year when I moved in. I am listening to Marvin Gaye sing "Let's Get It On" and I just finished eating leftover Chinese food from a paper container. Everything around me is in disarray and it drives me crazy, but I am happy because I know everything will soon be righted and, with a dark blue and a light blue wall, and organized closets, and pictures of birds finally hung on my walls, my life will feel permanent, real, validated. 

For the past year I have delayed spending money on the finishing touches needed to make my apartment really feel like a home. I spend money on happy hours, not house paint; on books, not bath towels; and on shoes, not shelving units. I make excuses as to why I can't afford to buy shelves to organize my junk and I justify other impulse buys by saying life is meant to be fun, to be lived, to be celebrated in the moment.

I think the real reason I have dragged my feet on decorating my space is that I am waiting for a new space to inhabit. I think, and it pains me to say this, that I secretly thought my single status was temporary, ethereal, a blip on the screen. I didn't believe it could stretch on for possibly years and years. 

It's silly. I chide myself for even thinking that this is what was brewing in my subconscious. Why wait for a man to validate my existence? My life? 

My life is now. 

This moment.

This apartment.

My one, precious, wild life is happening right now.

My life deserves to feel real. I need to make it mine. I need to claim my own existence selfishly- make plans for me alone. I need to stop living for what I think might be, should be, will be... and live for what is--

this instant.

Chance Encounters

Chance encounters fill the air right now for me.

For instance, on the second walk in two below-freezing days, I encountered, again, the laugh of a pileated woodpecker and saw his red crest and sharp beak.

I have also, in the span of a week, encountered two former students while out on the town. One, a bartender, served me a shot and a free beer (a completely surreal, and I'm sure inappropriate experience). The other, a server, bought me an appetizer. I had the crab wontons at P.F. Chang.

It's funny how these chance encounters from my past make me reflect on my life. Both students were in the group of students I taught in my first year of teaching--a year of anxiety and uncertainty for me.  Each day made me nervous, but now, looking back, the experience takes on a rosy glow. One student, the bartender, was a student I wrote many detentions for and who I am pretty sure I called home about at least once every few weeks. He could not have been more delighted to see me. He didn't remember I single lesson I taught in my classroom, but he remembered that I cared about what I was doing. I remembered him as a lovable character--he didn't like to necessarily follow rules, but other than that, he was a gem.

Nostalgia makes everything look better.

Another chance encounter left me feeling nostalgic and, unfortunately, full of guilt. While sitting at the patio at P.F. Chang, an indoor patio in a large suburban mall, a friend of my ex-husband's walked by me. 

"Ryan!" I couldn't stop myself.

I gave him a hug. We chatted. I asked about his son. We talked about Christmas. And then, I couldn't help it...

"So I guess you see Shawn a lot, huh?" Of course he did. He was one of Shawn's best friends. It was terrible. I felt immediately apologetic--like I owed Ryan an explanation for why I left, like I needed to justify my decision to him, make up for the fact that I ruined his friend's life. I felt ashamed and guilty. So I said, and I believe I said it with genuine compassion, "I hope he's doing well."

"Yeah." Ryan shrugged and thought about it. "He's doing ok."

I still feel like a bad person. In the process of leaving I struggled so much with the idea that  I was breaking all the rules. That I was not being loyal. That I was a bad person. That I had no right to leave just because things were difficult. I was a bad wife. A bad girl. Unlovable. An embarrassment.

Of course, this is not true. My brain knows it. My brain knows that I did everything that I could and that my husband, an addict, was choosing not to work on his issues. His addiction made him unhealthy and it was starting to pull me down too. My body knew I had to leave. It showed me by giving me stress-related ailments: shingles, migraines, mysterious rashes on my ring finger. To go on would be to forego my life, in a sense. To forego my health, my independence, my dreams.

My body and brain understand the truth, but as usual, my heart isn't quite on board.

My heart still reels at this chance encounter. It still burns from the guilt. No part of me, even my heart, wants back in the relationship, but I still feel the sting of regret, of shame, of sorrow.

What should I do with this chance encounter? How do I process it?

Maybe I do what I did with the pileated woodpecker. Stand for a moment on the sidewalk and watch it with quiet reflection. Absorb the experience fully for all that it is and examine it from ever angle.

And then, after a few moments of observation, simply do the only thing that makes sense. 

Walk on.

The Pileated Woodpecker

Today the yorkie poo and I were taking a walk around and between two lakes, under a bridge, and near some naked trees. I was lost in a reverie of my own thoughts; the yorkie poo was lost in a bliss of unusual smells and piles of snow. Both of us were enjoying the sunshine and I was trying to pretend that the temperature was higher than 15 degrees. 

The noise of twittering birds often fills the air while we go for a walk--the cardinal's cheep, the chickadee's chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee, the whistle of a robin. All of these sounds have become background noise. They barely register. But today I heard a laugh--that registered. I looked up and there, in a crook of branches high in the air, sat a pileated woodpecker.

"Look! Friday! A pileated woodpecker!" 

I frequently talk to my dog while on walks and so he did what he usually does in these moments, he ignored me completely. I stood transfixed; he stuck his nose in a snowbank. He failed to grasp the importance of the situation, but for me it rarer and more exciting than seeing a shooting star, or Rudolph's nose on Christmas Eve.

The pileated woodpecker is an enormous bird--at least in terms of woodpeckers. It looks like a small bird that has been magnified to the size of a crow, raven or barn owl. I haven't seen them often, and I come from a family of bird watchers. In fact, I've only seen one one other time; it was pointed  out to me by my mom, the queen of all bird watchers.

"Kids! Look! A pileated woodpecker!" 

She had us running through the house and in the yard, my brothers and I were still pajama clad and barefoot. This was an exciting day. A moment to be treasured. In this moment I think all of us kids realized there was something special about this bird, and about a mother who cared so much about this bird.

I called my mom today to tell her about my sighting. "I saw something really rare."

"A shooting star?"

"No, rarer. Something that would make you run through the house in your pajamas."

"A pileated woodpecker! Oh, how exciting!" 

And we talked about the bird for a while. It was a conversation lacking tension and complex rules. It was a purely delightful memory.

My mom and I rarely connect on such a harmonious level and not that we fight anymore, like we did in the high school years, but we just aren't often on the same vibration. There are old pains we both carry around that make it tough to connect open heartedly. I feel sensitive to criticism, reluctant to share my feelings, and irritated by suggestions and directions. I don't know what she thinks. I wish we could always talk birds to each other.

In the last year I have spent a lot of time in therapy processing my divorce. I have learned words like "codependency" and "addiction" and "toxic shame" and "family-of-origin." I have even started to examine how my interactions with my family have shaped who I am today. It is not always pleasant. It is often scary. It is discovering what is behind the screen, shredding the material of illusion, and coming face to face with the truth of my past. I am reluctant to look at the truth most days. I think I love the illusion too much.

But here is what is not an illusion:

Pileated woodpeckers. 

Bird feeders. 

Cross country skiing through snowy woods.

Feeling a hush created by a snow-insulated world.

Smelling the fresh air of the pine trees. 

Noticing foot prints of animals. 

Holding bird seed out to chickadees so tame they land on your mitten, 

(or the hat of a five year-old brother). 

Whatever dark secrets reside in my past, whatever sad truths I encounter, this is also my truth. This is not an illusion. My family, my mom, taught me to love the world. To love the world in small ways. In feathers and laughter. In quiet hushed tones and the offerings of mittens.

A List of Loves

In the blog entry I wrote yesterday I used the word hate eleven times.

This is fine. It was simply where I was at. Sitting inside a migraine headache thinking about the sorrow I have felt, and especially the pain of last December, when I was in the process of losing my husband to a divorce, my friends to a disagreement, and a family member to a disease. Last year grief assaulted me daily like waves crashing against a person holding onto a slippery wall trying not to get pulled out into the sea. I suppose it is only natural to experience a relapse in the grieving process.

But the word hate struck me. It made me think of the Japanese writer Sei Shonagon, who wrote basically as a courtesan while living in the palace of an Empress around one thousand years ago. I learned about her in a writing class when I read an essay of hers from The Pillow Book. 

I didn't get it at the time. 

She wrote lengthy lists on silly subjects: hateful things, things that are elegant, how to write letters correctly, etc. etc. It didn't make sense to me. This wasn't rocket science, it wasn't anything revealing or inspiring, it wasn't a confession to a horrible ordeal, a memoir of the major events in her life. It wasn't anything but a close look at the daily occurrences and encounters in her life. It certainly wasn't the key to understanding life's mystery.

Now, of course, I realize it was.

How wonderfully present this woman had to be in order to be completely absorbed in the daily details! How free she must have been while writing this from ruminating and dwelling in the past, from fearing and worrying about the future. Isn't that the real secret to appreciating life? To be able to drink in what is immediately present and to find beauty in simple pleasures?

In honor of Sei Shonagon and in order to counteract the hate filling up yesterday's blog, I now write a list of eleven things I love:

1. I love my sound machine--the noise of artificial rain filling my apartment. It is almost as good but not quite nearly as the sound of real rain falling on the window, the quiet coolness of everything in the world being cleansed from above one drop at a time.

2. I love answering the trivia question correctly at Caribou coffee in the mornings. When I answer correctly that Maine is indeed the only state that touches only one other in the U.S. I feel inexplicably satisfied. Ha! Take that big corporation- that will be ten cents off my latte.

3. I love the daily ritual of reading my horoscope--preferably from a real newspaper so I can feel the griminess of newsprint over the prediction of my day.

4. I love opening my mailbox--the anticipation of what will be inside, of how many pieces of mail I get, of whether or not I will have a bill to pay, or whether or not there's junk mail. A good day means no bills, no one to answer to--but a really good day means a letter or better yet, a Christmas photo card, from a friend.

5. I love posting Christmas photo cards on my fridge. I love picking the spot, I love tearing off a little piece of masking tape, I love seeing the new picture every day. I often let the cards stay up until February. One time it was April.

6. I love reading trashy magazines while I run on the elliptical machine. The more gossip about celebrities the better. I never buy People or Cosmo on my own, but I do so love to read it at the gym.

7. I love child's pose best in yoga. My arms stretching out ahead of me, muscles extending along my back, my forehead resting on the floor or the mat, the utter surrender I feel in my shoulders.

8. I love lighting candles and watching them through the evening--the soft scent, soft wax, soft light. Everything feels cozier by candlelight.

9. I love applying eye make-up. I love the careful work of outlining the eye, the decision of color and shading strategy based on time of day and planned activity, the transformation that occurs each day.

10. I love writing with a juicy pen--especially one with a nice gel grip. I love watching my own handwriting appear in loops and messy swirls all over the page. I love the ease of the pen gliding over the paper.

11. I love unexpected friendly encounters with strangers-- the genuine discussion about dogs occurring on the sidewalk near a lake, the sincere conversation about a cashier's two-year-old daughter currently obsessed with Tinker Bell, the shared dismay over sub-zero weather. The simple smiles that brighten up the day.

Turns out there is a lot of love in my life after all. 

The Ugly Blog

I am writing this blog from inside a pain coma. I am doing this because I am starting to learn that I write myself out of the pain.

Right now my head feels like there are at least three arrows sticking all the way through it--one through my head just above the eyes, one going through my head ear to ear at the base of my skull, and one drilling its way straight down through the top. My eyes and lips and nose are all swollen and my eyeballs feel the weight of someone jabbing them into my brain. I have a migraine and I have been ugly crying.

This migraine came on quickly- I was watching the movie About a Boy and suddenly there was a slight ache, then it grew, and then, during a fifteen minute phone call with my dear friend, it blossomed into a full blown ordeal. It started to hurt so bad I actually started to cry.

I think I gave myself this migraine; I think I did it just so I could cry.

My day had been going well- I had successfully avoided thinking about my troubles and my feelings and I stayed busy with errands and exercise, cooking and cleaning. But the movie- Hugh Grant (sadly)- opened the way for the ugly tears...

In the movie he plays an emotionally unavailable man. During the course of the movie I ruminated on all of the emotionally unavailable men I have become attached to and rejected by throughout the years. From big cataclysmic breakups to silly dating dismissals--I seem unable to do anything other than slam my fingers repeatedly in the drawer of unavailable men. Be it baggage or addiction, I seem to find the ones that can not see their way into opening their hearts to intimacy; into opening their hearts to me.

Here is where the ugly tears come in.

I hate this about myself. I hate that I want to be in a relationship. I hate that I want to be loved. I hate that I can't accept myself as I am, that I never feel good enough to be lovable, that I determine my own worth by the reaction of others. I hate all of this. 

I hate it so much I give myself a migraine and start crying. 

Crying for me is the most exhausting ordeal. I rarely do it. When I do, it is in muffled sobs--alone, I don't want my neighbors to hear, I don't want my friends to know--hell, I don't even want my dog to know. It is a bathroom-floor-clutching type of pain during which I often mentally picture Japanese warriors committing sebuku, and I feel a strange compulsion to slice myself open, vomit my guts out, and turn my skin inside out. This is how much I hate feeling sad. I loathe loneliness. 

And I hate that I feel so worthless. I hate that I hate feeling sad-- mentally, I know that I am not unlovable. I know that I am compassionate, intelligent, sensitive, creative, vivacious, intuitive, and brave. I know that I am not doomed to forever fall into romantic entrapments with men who can't love me. I know that if I am rejected it is about the person rejecting me, not my own self worth. But I can not get rid of those feelings. I can not get my heart on board with my brain. I wish I could give myself a lobotomy and eliminate whatever neural pathways lead to my own self-loathing.

And mostly what I hate is this--typing away, going into the pain, exploring the feelings of self-hatred that linger in my core like a tumor in remission while I convince the world and myself that all is well. I would so much rather put on a performance.

But I'm starting to learn the only way out of pain is through it. Best to keep typing away, I guess.

Gremlins and the Baby Jesus

Gremlins have invaded my body. 

Little green and brown demons are scurrying throughout my limbs, causing me to feel itchy, twitchy, irritable and ugly. Ugly like feeling jealous over a friend's success in being published, ugly like feeling rejected in the dating world, and ugly like feeling too big for my favorite pair of jeans. 

I hate these gremlins.

Of course, they delight in my hatred. It makes them giggle in a high-pitched tone and move even faster through my body. They grow as I loathe. This makes me loathe them all the more and they multiply even faster. 

I hate myself for falling prey to these parasites.

As I explained the gremlin phenomenon to my dear friend, she said everything I felt was human. She'd feel that way too. I felt consoled but I told her the worst of it is that I can't appreciate the season; I feel nothing for Christmas this year. "I don't even care about the baby Jesus," I told her.

"It's ok," she said. "The baby Jesus understands." 

Christmas and I have an interesting relationship. I loved no holiday better in my youth. I felt transported by the magic of candles and carols, by the twinkling lights and the twinkling eyes. Santa once walked down my grandma's street when I was three. He saw me in the window, came to the door, and gave me a wooden car. As an adult, this joy for Christmas continued. I got married in December at an old train depot; there were cedar beams, white poinsettias, a chocolate cake--everything about this season felt like hope and magic to me.

Last year, during the separation and divorce, I survived Christmas through a deliberate plan. This year I have been trying to leave the country and avoid the whole deal altogether. 

God and NWA had other plans, though, and I have had to resign myself to staying put and dealing with the bittersweet memories of my Christmas pasts. Here, I think is where the gremlins come in. And possibly the baby Jesus. 

I am not a particularly religious person. The last time I went to church was in September for my nephew's baptism. But I don't want to be plagued by gremlins for the next three weeks. The comment I made to my friend about the baby Jesus surprised me, but it's not wholly unhelpful. Praying is too hard right now. God is too hard. But a baby? I am a sucker for babies.

Yesterday I walked down the hall of my apartment building and heard the raspy cough of a baby with a cold. I felt a pang of desire to hold that baby. My nephew is four months old, all smiles and drool. Carrying him around my parents' house is the most beautiful part of the holidays. It's that innocence--the ability to spark joy simply by lifting him up in the air and saying "Sooo big." 

Maybe this is why Jesus had to start out as a baby. Gremlins don't respond well to grown men or spiritual entities, but a baby? Well, who doesn't love a baby? Even the gremlins are forced to give up there tormenting, come to a stillness, and say, "Ohhh. How cute."

Shadowlands

Yesterday afternoon I did one of my favorite things--I pulled on a sweater dress, cute tights, and a pair of boots and joined two friends at the theater to watch a play. The theater feels like magic to me--dressing up, being transformed, the smell of the stage, the treats during intermission--all of it takes me out of my own existence and puts me in the one intended by the playwright and director. Yesterday was no different--I felt myself transported into Shadowlands, the play based on the life of C.S. Lewis and his wife Joy Davidson.

Lewis said of life that this world was merely the shadowlands of something more, something greater. He had the artist's vision of Narnia and a faith that made him believe in heaven and an afterlife. More than that, he learned through his love for his wife, a woman dying of cancer whom he married in the hospital, that suffering and happiness, and more importantly, suffering and growth are inextricably linked. The pain he felt during his wife's illness enhanced the joy he felt during her remission. The pain he felt when she died eventually pushed him to grow in his faith and understanding of the world. The shadows make us recognize the light.

As I consider this, instantly I see a path winding through the woods. Light blues are covered by dark blues and then blacks and then the whiteness of light bursts through. Leaves sway and the shadows move. Clouds pass and the shadows darken. Trees stand shoulder to shoulder and darkness covers the path altogether.

Life is a shadowland. Sometimes the shadows are darker than others. Sometimes we lose our way on the path and forget to even look for light.

Recently I completed a semester long class on the writings and life of Virginia Woolf. As I talked to a friend about the course he said, "Wasn't she the one who jumped in a river with rocks in her pocket?" Yes, she was. Why would she do it? What makes anyone do it? She didn't want to be a burden to her husband, didn't want to impede his work, the Nazis were coming, she was struggling with depression... "So killing herself would make it easier for her husband to work?"

The questions led me down a path thinking about suicide and depression. Having experienced two episodes of depression, one not medicated, one medicated, I would be lying to say I didn't understand the urge, didn't understand the total severity of self-loathing, didn't understand the desire to drop off the plane of existence and escape. But I share my friend's reaction to her suicide. When I read Woolf's biography I felt unaccountably, almost irrationally, angry with her, with the futility of her act--perhaps because of the anger I feel towards myself about my depression, perhaps because of the grief overwhelming that consumes when you know someone who has committed suicide. Depression is a greedy disease. It takes away its victim's perspective. It stems from deep forgotten pain and chemical imbalances. 

I think the reason it angers me so much is because there is no way to control depression. Like addiction, you have to surrender to it before you can be released. Or if not to the disease, then to God. Otherwise you are simply trying to harness a stream. A former student of mine committed suicide. His father walked into the house to hear the gun go off. The grief of that loss still lives in my knuckles. The senselessness of pain shook me for days. 

But pain wakes us up. Pain pushes us forward, whether we believe we are ready to move ahead or not. Lewis explained God allows us to suffer because, simply put, that's what it takes.

I feel blessed to have walked through shadows; blessed because it makes me recognize light. I know there will be dark times again, but I know how to recognize when the path becomes too dark; I am blessed enough to have beacons available to me--friends, doctors, medicine, support groups. 

Perhaps I haven't reached the darkest part of my path, but I hope, that like Lewis, I have learned something from suffering. Were it not for that unhappiness, I couldn't feel alive today as I do. I couldn't recognize the light around me, the miracle of being with friends, of being inspired by powerful words, of going to the theater and losing myself in another world, a world not on this plane of shadowlands.

For my best friend who requested a blog entry... and so I write for you despite my own misgivings

I am sitting in my bathroom on the floor on top of the red shag rug with my back against the bathtub. The fan is humming above me. My journal sits next to me--full of three pages of garbage from this morning's initial ramblings. This has been my routine for the last couple of weeks--I wake up, grab journal and laptop, and creep into the bathroom so as not to disturb the yorkie-poo sleeping in my studio apartment. I perch on the ledge of the tub to scribble in my journal for 20 minutes, then I shift to the floor, sit cross-legged, and work on my real writing. 

For the past two weeks I have had specific projects to work on-projects due for my graduate classes. I have felt comfortable in at least knowing what I had to work on even if the business of writing it filled me with the usual anxiety and self-doubt that accompanies so many writers. Now I am projectless and I find I have nothing to say.

Absolutely nada. I have no idea what to write in this blog.

I usually write blog entries with a sense of direction--after walking the yorkie poo, working out, and showering an idea will have worked itself out. I will have a plan. A direction. A question to ponder in my work and an image to jump start the essay. Now I got zilch. No image. No question--I am working on this on the fly. 

I suppose I could write about any one of the topics I wandered over in my mind--the anxiety of feeling lonely as I did last night after my last class of the semester, the tension I felt with a friend over opposite political views, the undergrads I read about online who discovered a planet and who looked like fifth graders at a history day project, or the incredible occurrence of a former classmate requesting me as a friend on facebook, a woman who I have not seen or heard of in 12 years, who was definitely part of the cool crowd, and who rumor said worked as a stripper during our senior year. Any of these topics might make for a good blog--

instead I'd like to talk about flying without a net.

Plans make me feel good. Direction comforts me. Without either one, anxiety creeps into the periphery.

As a teacher I crave an organized lesson plan. I still quake when life throws a wrench in the works and the computers in the lab all go offline, or the movie I had planned to show is missing from its spot in the English office. This sort of occurrence unhinges me, despite the fact that I have been in the classroom for seven years, despite the fact that unplanned lesson plans are often the best, despite the fact that I am not such a bad teacher and always manage to pull it off. 

It still rattles me to be without plan.

Why is this? Why can't I trust myself? The process? Realize that life takes care of itself really with very little push-pull on my part. 

Hmm... even as I write this I see the work I have been doing for the past year, I see the serenity prayer, I see the effort it takes for me to be present in the present, not dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, I see the very concept I have been trying to learn--that we are all on a journey and that we are all exactly where we need to be at this moment. I want to be able to have faith in myself. I want to be able to worry less. To forgive myself flaws. To unclench the core muscles in my stomach that hold me together throughout the day. 

i want to feel safe flying with or without a net.

I guess I am still trying to learn how to relax my heart and trust God.