the new house.

.

I do love words that mean more than one thing. I am in a new house, literally: I finally got to move in. I am starting to unfold, nest, settle in. Picking up the pieces of things that fell away over the last few months. And I am in a new house figuratively, too. My new website is up. Some of my favorite posts from here have been, and will be, reposted on the new site. Traffic will go from here to there, but not from there to here. There are things here that I want to keep mine, to keep ours. This space has been powerful for me, and necessary. I may come back here sometimes. A shift happens. And I feel a little melancholy for it, for the early words, for the kinship and connection I've had here. I made it through because of who I found here. Thank you.

You are all welcome to come over to the new house for its virtual house-warming: www.refugeingrief.com. I would love to have you.

Thank you. I love you.

xo


.

in between

.

Yesterday

at the giant Asian market

I only missed you.

Instead of finding it all so cool
aisle after aisle of fascinating things,
instead of being amused and annoyed
at your narrow culinary skills
or how unmatched our palates are

I only missed you.
I only missed you.

Grief was comfortable
I missed it. I've missed it.
It hurts, and it clouded my joy,
but it brought you here to me
so close



When can I unpack you
what box are you in?
With the knives, with the baking trays
With my running shoes.
Not just the wooden box packed close with special things
You're inside all of it

when I can cook again
even foods you wouldn't eat
when I can cook in my own space again
you will unfold from hiding places
stretch out on the new blue couch

when there is room
you will well up beside me
while this new and different life begins


.

light brigade

.

today is 4 years and 2 months (by day).

By this time tomorrow (insh'allah), I will be loading two big cats into the van, clipping Boris into his palatial middle-seat bed, filling the cooler, leaving behind more of a mess than I'd probably like. Maybe somewhere around Wyoming, I will start to believe this is true: that I'm free.

It still feels overwhelming, and it still is overwhelming. Talking about it only makes me mad - only getting the stuff done will get it done.

There isn't anything to say, and there is everything to say.

But here is this: if you are inclined, please join the light brigade. Any time between now and our projected arrival date (Sunday the 15th at the latest, Friday the 13th earliest) - please light a candle for our safe voyage, our excellent adventures of the good kind, smooth driving, safe roads, calm animals - whatever good wishes you have. If you pray or meditate, please pray and meditate for us. It's a whole big wave of love that carries us across; I am leaning in to that. U.S. east coast friends, release me, send us good winds. U.S. west coast friends, make that big ol' catcher's mitt of receiving - we are coming your way.


.

weepy beast

the way my father misses you
breaks my heart
how he says your name
out loud, to himself, as he is using your tools
as he thinks of how you worked
as he reconstructs things you designed
and I dismantled to move

how he tells me this morning
he can't wait to figure out
how to use your nail-gun

and I know there is so much more he doesn't say

because of how heartbroken he is for me
how protective

and I am a weepy, weepy beast today
having come back from the library
to use their internet
to find my dad gone
and boris under the trees
tail tucked over his nose
perfectly camouflaged

several minutes later, dad comes inside
a little frantic
saying he couldn't find the dog
and had been out searching
for 45 minutes,
and had he been with me all along?


and he isn't mad
just thankful
everyone is alright

I imagine
how panicked he was,
not just for boris,
but for me
for me, and what heartbreak he imagined

and it all comes flooding back
those first few days
of everybody's heartbreak
and my father's for me

it's heavy
and hard to see

we miss you, my love
we miss you.
and my heart is a weepy beast
what with all of this.

.

sunday the 12th

Comes around again, Sunday the 12th. 3 years and 10 months. It's been hitting me hard, but then - there has been so much lately. Of course it is hitting me hard. I left our house. Left it in stages, but still - the last look, the last moments there, were not my own. Sometimes I feel like I amassed an emotional debt I will need to pay later, leaving that way. Well, maybe I already did - leaving the house, swallowing the emotions, not a half hour later, I became car-sick, dizzy, ragingly nauseous. So there we go. The body always knows.

I did have my time there. A few days before, I wandered the rooms and touched walls. Said thank you. Did all the things I always do when I leave a place that has sheltered me. There was also the matter of bucket on bucket of heart rocks to do something with. My mother wants to sell them. Yes, I find this disturbing. Very, very disturbing. Instead, I wandered the yard with handfuls of rocks, casting them and placing them, wondering who would find them, if they would be found.

I stopped at the garden fence, between the blackberries and the chicken coop he built, stood there, stooped there, placing heart rocks amidst leaves and roots.

And in a flash, perhaps a slow flash, I remembered I scattered ashes here, that day J. dropped the jar and I found a small pile of what was you on the street beside my parking spot. That day, I scooped up handfuls of body and bone, stuffed them in my pockets. I released them into the air, scattered them in the soil. Let you feed blackberries and echinacea, let you feed multiflora rose and bittersweet and mint.

So there, at the garden fence two days before I left, placing heart rocks, I realize, well - this makes sense. It is a burial ground, in a way. It is sacred space. You are, in part, buried here. We both are, in a sense. We both are.


--------------

Phase one of this move is complete. For a few months, I will be in phase two, the middle place, the neither here nor there. Phase three, the adventure, comes soon after the 4 year mark. For now, I am perched here, in a place you should be if I am, a place I wouldn't be if you were.

---------------

almost

One more night here.
I am so far past fried.
But this phase is nearly done. It's just the last few things, those things that don't fit neatly into boxes. And those boxes that keep getting shuffled around.

I keep checking with myself to see if I am, in fact, feeling emotional or down about this leaving here in any way. I don't seem to be. I am so far gone, left here so long ago, was ready to go even Before. I know it's not endless. It feels endless.

My former employer came to pick up my chest freezer today. One of the very last things to go. I've forgotten the kindness of men, the sweetness of a kind man. Not that there aren't any - just. You know what I mean. I guess, as I type this, I realize it is some poignancy, some melancholy, for those early days After, when I was still too raw for words. When all I could do was milk and muck, when the yellow light after light rain gave me one good moment of peace. My first moment of feeling I could live this. I miss that me. As nice as it is to not be retching on the floor regularly. As nice as it is to feel excited about this move, to feel happy to leave this place. As nice as all that is, I miss the raw newness of this, when you were here. When you were still here so viscerally.

S. hugs me goodbye, and I tear up - at the kindness (that always gets me - Before and since), and at the memory of strong male arms, the solidity of a hug like that. Something I do not think about. Not on purpose; it is just not present here at all, and so has faded from my mind. And then, there it is, and I have to stop, I have to go sit down again and rest. And miss you. And miss you. Like a high tight-rope walker, I never look down, but sometimes the view from here rushes up at me and I realize just how high this is. The reality of this circles back. And I poke, again, at what could be tender places but are not. The tender places are still in me and they are inside these boxes. The ones marked "keep this close," and the one - the other one. But there are no tender places in this house or in this yard, or in this view out these windows, or even in this state.

Today, stopped at a light coming home from one last trip to goodwill, I am behind a truck. Staring at the words, the oil company logo and then realize: oh, that is my story. The name of this particular company is Dead River. I always thought that was a stupid name, indicative of how divorced from environmental reality some people are. But now, now of course, that name is something else. It doesn't sucker punch me. Instead, I blow a deep breath out and say, outloud: man, I cannot wait to be out of this state.

Almost, almost. Almost out of this state.


.

before I forget...

Ah, before I forget. When I leave here (so soon!), I will leave behind some physical memory prompts. Each morning, Boris chooses which direction we walk. When he chooses to walk up the hill past the church, I remember the whale story. And each time we walk by, I think - I should write that whale story here, before we leave, before the landscape doesn't prompt it anymore. And so, before I forget, here it is.

To get the real meaning and sense of this story, you really do need a little background. I tried to make it easier on you, to find a way to put the text right here, but all I could find was this and it won't let me copy and paste. You will need to pop over and read it. Just this brief little story of the whale, from Andrew Harvey's Hidden Journey. Read it, then come on back.

...

So one early morning, maybe last winter I think, Boris and I were out for a walk. I was railing at the universe, annoyed at how not clear things are. That if I were Loved, as is sometimes suggested, then it needs to be more obvious and constant, not this fickle garbage, not this obtuse sideways love.

You want to show me you love me? Give me a whale, then. Allegedly, you have done these kinds of things before. You have the universe do crazy things, beautiful waves of love via whale. So where's MY whale? You Love me? Then where's my whale? Where is my whale?

And you know what? It needs to be a CLEAR whale. Not some vague, yeah, I guess that maybe sort of is a vaguely whale shaped rock or cloud formation. You're out there? You love me? Fine. You show me my whale. A bumper-sticker shaped like a whale that says something like "Megan's whale" or "the whale of mmd" would be awesome. Clear and direct.

So I am wandering down the street like this, demanding my whale. You know where this is going, right?

...

Boris and I are passing the Polish Catholic church. Next to the church is a small garden where a statue of the BVM stands, her arms outstretched. ("BVM" - that's blessed virgin mary). I often nod at her as I walk by. From the opposite side of the street, I nod at the mama, direct a "you show me my whale" thought at her, and turn back to the sidewalk ahead. My eye catches something just beyond us, scooting around the corner.

It's a bird. A quite larger than song-bird bird. Boris and I approach the intersection here, just past the church and the garden, and I stand for a moment watching the bird scratch at a bare spot of grass. It's not a bird you'd see in downtown portland. Not a bird you'd see here at all, especially not in late winter, roaming around the sidewalk just after dawn. Upland ground birds just don't live around here.

I keep walking. Two steps, maybe three. And then I stand there, mouth open, eyes wide.

It's a quail. You gave me a quail. A q-whale.

...

I asked. No, I demanded. And three steps later, there is a quail. Love, plus comedic timing, plus a little play on words.

...

I saw that bird only one more time, though I have looked for it since. It was perched high in the eaves of the rectory, within the gates of the church and garden, tucked in and puffed up against the cold. Each time Boris directs our walk this way, I look up at the eaves, and I snort a little laugh at the BVM. Good morning mama. Thanks for the qwhale. Before I forget, thank you for the qwhale.


...

clean slate

You'd think I'd know my own process by now. I do, I mean, I am just surprised that it applied to this moving thing. Here is how I work: first, something is presented. I am adamant that I will not ever do this thing. Hours, days, weeks later, I think, well, okay, maybe it's possible. Not likely, but possible. This stage is followed by the I must do this thing right now.

And that is where I am. The scales have tipped. Realizing that it will cost nearly four thousand dollars to send my furniture, books, and belongings cross-country made it really impractical to hold on to things. That, and some powerful, emotional discussions with my widowed people, and a few unintentionally well-placed words from my neighborhood butcher tipped the balance even more. As hard as it was to think of letting go of things his hands have made, I suddenly realized that what Matt would want for me is beauty. He would want beauty in my life. There is only one thing he made for me that he would acknowledge is beautiful, and it will fit in my car. The other things are rough and functional. The furniture we own together, the family things from both of our respective lines - they are beautiful, yes. But I did not choose them. With the money I am not spending on ridiculous shipping fees, I can hunt for new things. I can choose them. I can see what this new life requests, and what it calls for, on its own.

So - in my flip-flop, adamant both ways nature, I have been on a sell-off, give-away rampage. Not much is left. The family pieces will be stored in my folks' barn. My car is small enough that there is a clear breaking point: bringing anything more than what fits means at least a few grand in costs. Maybe at some point in the future (oh widowness, you have me add "if there is a future"), maybe at some point in the future, I will have a pod of things - books and art, mostly, the bed platform we built together - shipped off to me. But for now, it has come down to what will fit in and on my car, and a few boxes of things light enough to send by post.

It is fear of losing more, losing evidence of us, that holds me back, that has held me back. I don't want to live that way, choosing out of fear. I want to choose from beauty, if I can. Show up beautifully as Cassie wrote on WV yesterday, which helped immensely too. So there is that. Clean slate.

.

travel light

Even as a person with comparatively not much stuff, I have a lot of stuff. Books, mostly. Kitchen things. But now that 3/4 of it is in boxes, I can't even think of what is in there. I have visions, beginning yesterday, of just lifting off with next to nothing. What would fit in my small car: matt's ashes. His hat, his journal, a few of his shirts, small evidences. Photographs of us. My violin - though I never play it, he played it Then, and I like to have it around. If I could replace everything, I would take just two pairs of shoes, a backpack of clothes, the tea press, and the kettle. I would take my journals of this After, and a few pieces of art. And then, I would leave. Lift off.

But what about but what about -

So I revise. What if I lift off with my small car and these things here above, plus a moving van. Not a truck, just a regular sized van. Take one or two pieces of small furniture that would be expensive - literally, emotionally - to replace. Leave the rest. Leave the rest. The books we've read and want to read. Most of the kitchen, with plates and bowls and cups. Leave the recliner I remember searching for, how psyched you were to find it. The bookshelves you built, even. The evidence of life we lived, I lived. Leave the kitchen table and the chairs, things I brought into our life together, things with their own history for me. Leave even things I like, because there is a freedom in it.

It wouldn't be as bad as it sounds. It could be like training wheels - I can store all that furniture at my folks'. No big deal. I will be a country away from it, but able to go back and truck it over if it feels connected to me. Anti-climactic in a way, then. Okay. So, writing it out, this seems like the logical idea. Pare down. Travel light. See how it goes.

So bizarre, all this. To be considering my new life, what comes, what goes, what waits. Weighing things out, over and over - what is the cost of this versus this, my heart and my wallet and my mind. What holds me back and what is freeing me. Tumultuous times with eyes on the prize. Weird. Weird life.

.

water

Cheryl Strayed wrote a review of the book "Wave" by Sonali Deraniyagala. The power of Cheryl Strayed to influence decision making... after quite literally years now of avoiding all sorts of water imagery, it's pretty strange that I found myself wanting to read this book. Not only is she (Sonali, not Cheryl) a water widow, but her children and her parents were also killed. Yes. I am maybe crazy, and I probably won't actually read it. But I read the review, sat here perched on the couch crying, and also kind of laughing in that maniacal way, thinking - I can never escape water. That I did, then, that day, that I got out, is immaterial. Somehow, today, it seems - not exactly a blessing, but a relief that water will always be with me, grief, Matt, that day, the days Before, the days since.

It's a measure of growth maybe, or maybe just a simple measure of change. But what's also weird or interesting to me, and the reason I won't likely read the actual book, is that I could deal with her images of her family dying. (that's probably b.s., but this was my thought train...) But I do not want to read about her experience in that water. I do not want to see me. I do not want to see myself, to be brought back to myself in the water. Even now, I want to run away from that. I forget, sometimes, if that is odd, that I was in there too - like the lens is never, ever turned on me, not in that same way. There are things I cannot withstand yet, and might not ever. So while in a theoretical moment, I felt drawn to read the story of her entire family drowning, and what the world has been since then, there is no way I can withstand her words like mine, to hear myself back there again. It's not fear. I was not ever afraid, not like that. It is love for me. It is sheer love for me, that I do not want to turn and see the full force of my own pain, not that day, not there in that place. The places I can go do not include a view of myself there.

This is the second time within a few days that I have had a sudden view swing into place, seeing myself as someone who loves me might see. I am so accustomed to my normal grief, it's like there is a haze of normalcy around it. This view is different, more raw; new and intense: to feel the weight of what is broken, to feel so much pain, love, compassion, grief for who I see, even though who I see is me.  Schizophrenic love perhaps, to be both the one in pain and the one outside of it, looking in.

.

paper trails

I'm not sure if I should be concerned. About myself. I am taking a break right now, having just cleaned out the big closet (the only closet, really) in this house - the one full of books and photographs, documents I haven't looked at in years, boxes that made the last move with me and probably the one before, without my opening them. It's not those I care about. I mean, I opened. I sorted. I discarded a whole lot. That's nice.

It's the paper trail, and my non-reaction. My sort-of reaction. My ~ acknowledge and keep going ~ reaction. To the paper trails. I didn't even know I still had the entire folder of receipts from our trip cross-country years ago. Each receipt initialed MD or MP, depending on who paid. I nod in acknowledgment, curt in my response. I keep them, but do not look through.

Later, going through evidence of my younger self, a much earlier life - well before Us. I see the photographs of then. I remember, but feel nothing - it's all so far away, a different life, a different time. I remember these times of my life, but feel nothing for the people involved. Our lives have gone different ways; it is all eons ago. That's a pretty normal response for me; it is the way I am. I leave things when they're done.

And what - bothers - me is this: that our life becomes that. A different life, a different time. People in a photograph. That our life is in a box (even as literally, your ashes are in a box, on another shelf, for another day). That our life, the evidence of our life, comes with a film over it. A curt nod, a small breath, I move on. Sort, discard, collect.

I don't seem to feel much these days. I feel disconnected. A weird, unexpected break in my writing work also keeps me from being in this. Maybe it's a gift, a weird gift. To plow through with no feeling, a dark blank place, like a scar, disconnected and distant. Holding my breath perhaps. No idea. On one hand, it feels good to just plow through, no sentiment for older things. I'm pretty good at that. Maybe it's just determined focus. Meh. Who knows. There is sh*t to be done and there is nothing to do but do it. My sharp edge bothers me, but it is also cutting through. So there is that.

.

box mania.

Box mania!

I started packing yesterday. It's funny - I do all this, do everything really, with an eyebrow raised at the sky, wary and untrusting. I believe nothing until it actually, tangibly happens. The most solid and seemingly blessed of events, choirs of angels singing and signs aligning - they mean nothing. The Universe does as she chooses, and gives no reliable hints as to what Her aim might be. I take action, hoping Her will works well for me. This time. That I do actually get to go where I'm heading, that things unfold as I hope. As I need. But I trust nothing.

It's not negative - I'm not pouting. I'm not refusing to act. I just raise an eyebrow. At the sky. And keep on packing.

But first, I began to unpack. There are boxes of things from the other house, boxes from our life. Boxes of dishes and silverware, little elements. Things that a friend boxed up for me in the weeks After. In fact, I can tell the exact dates: dishes wrapped in newspapers marked August 1, 2009. Scenes of life, from then. I am curiously un-emotional. Focused. Detached, maybe. Keeping these things will not keep him close. If I didn't know this stuff was in there, I wouldn't know it was gone. For the most part.

Wheels are turning. Clocks are ticking. Long-distance tentacles reaching out. The bottom seems to have fallen out of a sure-thing project - more frequent skeptical and questioning glances in the general direction of the Universe. Things are in motion. More will be revealed. Eyes on the prize, as they say. The packing continues.

.

stunners.

Um.

I just gave notice to my landlords. After 8 years of living here, I will be packing up and clearing out. 8 weeks from now, this place will be empty and cleaned, and I will close the door on the place we lived. Your ashes are scattered in the garden. The chicken coop you built has been empty now for a couple of years. Things are changing. Things have been changing.

I have lived in this house longer than I have lived anywhere this whole life. Crazy. I left this house on a bright sunny day in July of 2009 and came home several hours later as a completely different person, with a completely different life. This house held our life, and it held that new life too. The walls and the floors have absorbed screaming and crying and vomiting. I have dragged myself across these floors, hauled myself up, leaned on the counters. I have stood in the shower, sobbing, remembering you there. I have laid in this living room, retching and convulsing. I have screamed where no one could hear me. We lived here. And it is time to go.

As great as it is - no. As hard as this is, as insane and stunning and painful - as hard as it is, the new life is calling. It won't let me do it gradually now. Heck, I've had a LOT of "gradual." Just that now, it's real. Now, packing begins. Not just for hoping I'll get out of here sometime soon, but because it is now.

Deeeeeeeeep breath.


.

8

.

happy anniversary
my love
the number of infinity on edge.
No poem today.
No crossword puzzle secret messages.
I won't even mark it with anything
just because that wasn't really our way.
I love you.
That is all.

.

detach

weird little things
going away
today, I cancelled the p.o. box I have had for ten years
the one that still gets mail for you
sometimes.
They won't be forwarded
the catalogs and advertisements
mailed to you
I realize
as I hesitate to click -
I won't see your name
inside a pile of mail again


outside the post office
was where I first recognized you
in an unfamiliar place
all those years ago
when we first met
knowing it was you
from the back
from your shape,
from how you walked and held yourself.


This morning, I continued to clean out
dumping old spices you'd kept
dumping old packages of things
we wouldn't eat even if you were here to make them.


One more clean out of the closet
I discard and take back the dress I wore
to your funeral
(a word, three and a half years out, I still cannot bring myself to say out loud)
the dress my mother chose.
I won't ever wear it again, but I am not ready to let it go.


In one bottom dresser drawer
I find your old wool pants
willing myself to put them in the pile
of things that need to go.
I don't associate them with you anyway.

I check the pockets just in case.
Just in case.
Inside, one poop bag, stuffed in your pocket
for a winter snowy dog walk.
And I stand there,
crumpled pants in my hands
trying not to cry
sifting through my mind to find an image of you
of us
late at night
your brown scarf looped stylishly around your neck
your hands stuffed in the pockets of these green pants
as you walk backwards, skipping



.

without holding

Going through some old files, looking for something. What I find is this  - some passages I had written the night of your memorial, and the day after it. I'd forgotten now, who was there, what was said, who I was. I'm afraid of the things I have forgotten, the things that would be so useful and important now. I feel like I'm at a crossroads, though a long and slow one: there are important and powerful, real and true things back there in all those words, all those things that happened and were felt. I live without them now. Until they come back, circling back sometimes. What did I write for me, and is it important to go back and look? Or am I supposed to walk on from it, to hear what gets written now.

This poem here below, I had forgotten. Joan read it at your memorial; I read this in my notes. This is where I am these days, this is where I live - the knife sharp and dull, and a long clenched fist unfurling.

To Have Without Holding
Marge Piercy

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can't do it, you say it's killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

.

weddings

My it has been a long day.

I revealed my marital status to a new friend. It had become so awkward, all those silences, the gaps from my side of the conversation. The last couple of times we've talked, it's sounded like I'm divorced, so that was weird. Not saying something was awkward. Saying something also felt awkward - not exactly a small-talk comment to just drop in casually. Revealing something like this can go so badly, can divert even the most normal of conversations into strained territory. But today, the awkward scale tipped, and I went with the awkwardness of saying "my husband died" rather than just feel like an idiot. If a relationship is going to continue, I can't keep evading such a large part of who I am. At some point, things get stuck and can go no further without feeling false. So there was that.

I told my new friend about my marital status because we were discussing my upcoming delivery of wedding cupcakes to city hall this evening, in honor of the equal marriage legislation that went into effect at 12:01 on the 29th. City Hall was open for marriage licenses and weddings. Some friends of mine were giving out free boutonnieres. I, of course, made cupcakes.

Not just any cupcakes. I baked for a few days, and C. and I spent the afternoon frosting. 10 dozen pretty wedding cupcakes, infused with the blessings of widows. It's late and I'm tired, but I really like the blessing of widows, and I got to silently give it a bunch of times tonight. I got to say it out  loud once when asked why I was there. The blessing of widows is a little like the 13th guest in a fairy tale, the guest who wants to give an uncomfortable beauty:

 

Tonight, we're bringing wedding cupcakes to honor your wedding.

We hope you have a very long life together.

And when one of you does die, we are so glad

that you will be legally honored as widowed.

Because to be widowed is hard enough.

To be widowed and given no legal or social

 acknowledgment is unconscionable.

 

Congratulations. Sorry it took so long.

We wish you long life and good deaths,

with the ones you love beside you.

 

 

 

 

Not wanting to be a downer on other peoples' wedding day, I didn't wander around repeating the whole blessing out loud. The closest I came (except for the time I was asked) was when I offered cupcakes to a couple who asked what they could give me in return:

                          You can have a long, happy life together. A very long life.

 

 

 

 

.

 

And on that note, I need to get to sleep. It is way, way past my bedtime.

 

.

 







semantics

.

I don't suppose we can have a moratorium on the
words "drown" and "drowning" can we?
Seems a large percentage of posts and things I have read in the last month
have used those words to describe - well, you know - the things
"drowning" is so found of describing. Just - I am ever so tired of
seeing the words again and again, and saying outloud again and again -
stop it. Stop it. Stop it. You have NO IDEA what those words mean.

That is all. Word tired.



.

ahhhh

.

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.

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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.


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