sleep and tenderness

ahhh sleep. In bed by 7 last night, awake at my usual 5, but lounged there instead of getting up. It's not just the sleep that eased me a little. It was - oddly or not - sitting there in bed reliving that day. How beautiful the sky was. How much we loved, and needed, that place. I looked at dog-wash island. I saw us there on other trips, soaping boris up, and I saw us there on our last trip, you trying to hold on to the top of a tree, yelling out, letting go. You died just off of dog-wash island, trying to hold on to a tree, yelling out, disappearing. Oh my god.

And in that oh my god  I felt such fierce tenderness and love for myself. How hard this is, how lonely, how scary and how sad. How hard this is. Hard.

And I think this morning how I get to the same place: refusal to do things I do not want to do, unwillingness to suffer through annoying situations, a desire to do whatever brings me any goodness at all and fighting for it if need be ~ I get to the same place I get to when the rage has control of me. I still kick over stupid things, wasteful things, but - in this moment, anyway, I want to kick them over because I love me. Because you died just off of dog-wash island on a beautiful sunny day in July. Because I couldn't stop it, even when I ran into the water and fought those currents myself. Because of all the things I had to do, all the phone calls, all the "arrangements," all of everything.

 It is so much nicer on me to feel tenderness rather than rage. I think this is the goal for me, the direction to lean - not that life can be good, or that life can be anything, but finding ways to access, maybe even eventually sustain, this tenderness. A fierceness for myself that isn't so much the raging Kali stomping out the world.

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