.
A better day. Thank goodness. Ever.so.tired.of.contraction. Just acknowledging the truth of what was "up" helped a lot, as did a low-key day of rest, reading, being out in the woods with the dog. Have been up since 4 today, reading, writing. Good. About to go for a run and then hit the road to parts north, hoping to hold the intention of ~less reactive, more skillful~.
For those acknowledging/enduring/celebrating a holiday today, and for everyone else acknowledging/celebrating/enduring a regular day of life - I wish you some goodness, some peace, and a welling up of love right underneath you, where you are.
.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
a complete sentence
I do not like this season.
Am not, and have never been, a fan of enforced holidays.
Without Matt, there is no buffer, no back-up, no acceptable-to-others reason why I am not attending events that are not fun for me. Excruciating in their not-fun-ness. I remind myself of the last holiday season Before. How awkward and difficult, navigating on my own, with Matt off playing poker, and my step-son with his mom. Just this full-on crucible of strain. I had them to go home to. I had him to talk with about it, all the awkwardness and dissonance. I had my own family who knew me and loved me, who came from the same orienting part of the world, inside and out. I had a crazy-check. I had a self-check.
I notice how angry I am lately. How tired. To go or to not go, either way is stress. And then I think I am a monster. That I am mean and hard and brittle. That I cannot lighten up. That none of this is as bad or difficult as I make it out to be. This is unwinnable. I can't look at myself with love on this one, because to do that is to say No, and No would have to be said so many times. And also, to question, to quote something I don't recall, to question if I'm the a*hole here. Am I jerk? I no longer know. I no longer know what is the effect of actual real dissonance and truth, and what is just me being a crab without grace. I have no external crazy-check from my love, and my own self-crazy check is absolutely unreliable these days.
I read other things on-line about the collective grudge and drudgery of holidays, and I wonder why anyone does it. I wonder if anyone actually loves it. I may or may not be the bad guy here, the monster, the graceless one, if there is a graceless one. There is also the fact that I brace for the baseball bat to the gut - Matt built a lot of their house. His hands, our life, are everywhere. I am routinely doubled over from the blow, the many incessant blows, and then arrive at the table as though everything is fine. I would just like this season to be over, now, thank you. I'm so very tired of assessing my own level of monster-ness just because "No" is not accepted as a complete sentence in these parts. And, I want my family back.
.
Am not, and have never been, a fan of enforced holidays.
Without Matt, there is no buffer, no back-up, no acceptable-to-others reason why I am not attending events that are not fun for me. Excruciating in their not-fun-ness. I remind myself of the last holiday season Before. How awkward and difficult, navigating on my own, with Matt off playing poker, and my step-son with his mom. Just this full-on crucible of strain. I had them to go home to. I had him to talk with about it, all the awkwardness and dissonance. I had my own family who knew me and loved me, who came from the same orienting part of the world, inside and out. I had a crazy-check. I had a self-check.
I notice how angry I am lately. How tired. To go or to not go, either way is stress. And then I think I am a monster. That I am mean and hard and brittle. That I cannot lighten up. That none of this is as bad or difficult as I make it out to be. This is unwinnable. I can't look at myself with love on this one, because to do that is to say No, and No would have to be said so many times. And also, to question, to quote something I don't recall, to question if I'm the a*hole here. Am I jerk? I no longer know. I no longer know what is the effect of actual real dissonance and truth, and what is just me being a crab without grace. I have no external crazy-check from my love, and my own self-crazy check is absolutely unreliable these days.
I read other things on-line about the collective grudge and drudgery of holidays, and I wonder why anyone does it. I wonder if anyone actually loves it. I may or may not be the bad guy here, the monster, the graceless one, if there is a graceless one. There is also the fact that I brace for the baseball bat to the gut - Matt built a lot of their house. His hands, our life, are everywhere. I am routinely doubled over from the blow, the many incessant blows, and then arrive at the table as though everything is fine. I would just like this season to be over, now, thank you. I'm so very tired of assessing my own level of monster-ness just because "No" is not accepted as a complete sentence in these parts. And, I want my family back.
.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
little boy birthdays
You would think I'm nuts.
You know how I am. With cake. With food. With anything.
Even if, for the second year in a row, I am irked that
I get less than a week's notice for such a cake request -
you know I can't not do it. I can't not take the creative challenge.
I almost didn't. Ro is not so little anymore.
Not the little boy
sitting on the steps with you,
while you were on a lunch break.
Not the little boy who was an only child then,
his sister barely formed
inside their mama.
He certainly wasn't this little boy,
the one who has two little ones
he is now big brother to.
The one who still tackles me with such great force as I come up the stairs
The one who has lost the baby-fat cheeks
and retains his great exuberance.
I'm not sure if he remembers you
If he knows why I am still in his life
If he knows why I look at the empty space on the floor
where you and I ate dinner one late work-night
Before they all lived there,
before the couch and the toys
and the empty space filled in
In the end, I had to make this cake -
there are so few times to really play,
to touch that pure fruitcake goofiness,
the intense crazed joy that is a little boy
telling me all about this "new star wars thing."
You would think I'm nuts.
.
You know how I am. With cake. With food. With anything.
Even if, for the second year in a row, I am irked that
I get less than a week's notice for such a cake request -
you know I can't not do it. I can't not take the creative challenge.
I almost didn't. Ro is not so little anymore.
Not the little boy
sitting on the steps with you,
while you were on a lunch break.
Not the little boy who was an only child then,
his sister barely formed
inside their mama.
He certainly wasn't this little boy,
the one who has two little ones
he is now big brother to.
The one who still tackles me with such great force as I come up the stairs
The one who has lost the baby-fat cheeks
and retains his great exuberance.
I'm not sure if he remembers you
If he knows why I am still in his life
If he knows why I look at the empty space on the floor
where you and I ate dinner one late work-night
Before they all lived there,
before the couch and the toys
and the empty space filled in
In the end, I had to make this cake -
there are so few times to really play,
to touch that pure fruitcake goofiness,
the intense crazed joy that is a little boy
telling me all about this "new star wars thing."
You would think I'm nuts.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
times and changes
.
Haven't written here for a bit. That's not true. I have written here, I just haven't posted anything.
.
I feel a million miles away, and I do not like where I am. Like our life never happened, I repeat it as though it's a fiction. I read things I wrote in those first months and feel nothing, until I do. And then it is a freight train. This happened to me.
.
I close up the garden I started that year Before. I touch soil I turned when he was here, when life was what it Was. I don't want this garden anymore - like so many things, it has stopped being fun. It has stopped being good. And to leave it feels strange, letting go of one other home, one other place in my life that was life. To let go of what was ordinary and normal, knowing it no longer fits.
.
Watching election season via facebook has shown me a lot of things that no longer fit. That I no longer want to find a place to fit. Tangential friendships ended, not simply because their political views are vastly different than mine, but because I see how their political views are used as a weapon of hate. Ending friendships even when our political views are the same, because I see the same seething hatred underneath their emphatic shouting about love. I don't want these lies in my life. The vast gulf between what you actually live and what you shout about. Ugliness is ugliness, no matter what ideals you're voting for.
.
Four years ago, this whole life was different. The poll lines were a party. Matt brought me a thermos of tea, and we all hung out in the parking lot, waiting our turn to go vote. There was hope and fun and silliness. We were one big neighborhood. At home, we stayed up late to watch the election results. We watched and listened and heard. It was good.
This year, I talk out loud to you, inside the polling booth. And then I remember that other people can hear me, standing just behind the canvas flaps. I stand there muttering and weeping that you should be here with me. Goofing around as we did the last time we voted - just a week or two Before. We voted for a friend of yours, running in a local election for who-knows-what. After we voted, we walked through the park, naming all the trees we could name. All of this I brought with me into that little canvas booth, filling in ovals, talking out loud, wishing you were there. There was no party in the parking lot. There was no sense of one big happy neighborhood. There was only me, in the car, parked and texting about the difference between four years ago and now.
.
Haven't written here for a bit. That's not true. I have written here, I just haven't posted anything.
.
I feel a million miles away, and I do not like where I am. Like our life never happened, I repeat it as though it's a fiction. I read things I wrote in those first months and feel nothing, until I do. And then it is a freight train. This happened to me.
.
I close up the garden I started that year Before. I touch soil I turned when he was here, when life was what it Was. I don't want this garden anymore - like so many things, it has stopped being fun. It has stopped being good. And to leave it feels strange, letting go of one other home, one other place in my life that was life. To let go of what was ordinary and normal, knowing it no longer fits.
.
Watching election season via facebook has shown me a lot of things that no longer fit. That I no longer want to find a place to fit. Tangential friendships ended, not simply because their political views are vastly different than mine, but because I see how their political views are used as a weapon of hate. Ending friendships even when our political views are the same, because I see the same seething hatred underneath their emphatic shouting about love. I don't want these lies in my life. The vast gulf between what you actually live and what you shout about. Ugliness is ugliness, no matter what ideals you're voting for.
.
Four years ago, this whole life was different. The poll lines were a party. Matt brought me a thermos of tea, and we all hung out in the parking lot, waiting our turn to go vote. There was hope and fun and silliness. We were one big neighborhood. At home, we stayed up late to watch the election results. We watched and listened and heard. It was good.
This year, I talk out loud to you, inside the polling booth. And then I remember that other people can hear me, standing just behind the canvas flaps. I stand there muttering and weeping that you should be here with me. Goofing around as we did the last time we voted - just a week or two Before. We voted for a friend of yours, running in a local election for who-knows-what. After we voted, we walked through the park, naming all the trees we could name. All of this I brought with me into that little canvas booth, filling in ovals, talking out loud, wishing you were there. There was no party in the parking lot. There was no sense of one big happy neighborhood. There was only me, in the car, parked and texting about the difference between four years ago and now.
.
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