musings of a melancholic: gallery

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Despite having tried for 6 months to get pregnant (which is shorter than many but longer that I was prepared to hold out my hope for), I found myself pregnant and miserable during the holiday season of 2011.

I wanted the baby, but I never wanted to be pregnant. I didn't know it would feel this way until I saw the pee stick reveal a positive line - well, technically two positive lines. Two = pregnant. One = not.

I knew I was pregnant before science confirmed it. Not surprising, really. Knowing is kind of my thing.

On the morning I found out, Joel and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. He was working at home that day. I had woken up at 5am, took a pregnancy test, saw a quick negative, and went back to my barren bed bleary eyed and pissed. But when I woke up for real at 8:30am, I knew I was pregnant. To help keep me sane, I tore into the bathroom garbage for evidence, and indeed I saw a negative turned positive.

Heart beating fast, I unwrapped my last clean $20 pee stick. This time I read the directions and 3 minutes later, the test confirmed what my body already knew - hell, I hadn't even missed a period yet. I was 3 weeks pregnant, hyper vigilance and all.

Relieved, yes. Excited, no. Happy, kind of. Feeling dread, completely. I walked out to Joel as he sat at our tall kitchen table. I wore a black and white striped shirt and black jeans. My hair was recovering from a bad cut. I was barefoot and cliche.

I bashfully told him that it we had completed our mission. He smiled, but I saw in his smile exactly what I was feeling - WTF have we done?

Flash forward three weeks and you'll see a bitchy and crazy tired Candace attending a holiday party with Joel at the Showbox in Downtown Seattle. It's an 80s themed party (the best) and here I am, unable to make any kind of outfit work (WTF! This never happens to me!) and unable to drink (WTF! How am I supposed to face a room full of strangers?!!) and advised not to dance (WTF! I PERISH).

I did okay for the first two hours. I faked my gin and tonic with lime and seltzer. I tried really hard to smile and converse. But when the DJ began to play the 'Sixteen Candles' soundtrack, I nearly began sobbing - everything inside of me aching to dance.

So I told myself I would dance very lightly. Whatever that means. If you know me or have seen the spectacle that is Candace dancing, you'll know I don't do it...well, lightly. Think Pat Benetar (esp at 3 min 15 seconds in) meets the gal from Flashdance (I wish) channeling every choreographic move from Footloose and aerobics competitions.

So I did it. I tried to hold back, I really did. And I thought I was okay until about 25 minutes in and I felt the familiar wet heat. It was either a lot of dance sweat, per my usual. Or it was blood.

I walked ran to the ladies. Oh god, don't let it be blood. Don't let it be blood. Just as many women have prayed for no blood and for blood for billions of bloody fucking years.

It was blood. I grabbed a bunch of toilet paper to sop it up. It wasn't a ton, but still - it was blood. I left the bathroom, told Joel we needed to leave immediately and politely excused ourselves from the dance floor and friends.

On the car ride home, the cold and dark felt so good. I was so hot. We discussed going to the hospital. We wondered if something was wrong with us because we didn't feel anything. We were both eerily calm, very flat affect. I didn't care. I couldn't care. I didn't even have time to get attached to the little thing inside of me, the dread hadn't passed yet (btw, the dread didn't pass until Bowie was 4 months old, just for the record. And it's started again as we think about her enrolling her in kindergarten next year).

At home, my toilet sits just under a window that somehow always boasts a kick ass view of the moon. On this particular December night, it was crazy clear and big - our moon. Managing blood and the worst fear I've known before or since - the wanting of something that doesn't want to stay - I texted my sister, the only person aside from Joel who knew I was pregnant.

The conversation went something like this:
Me: I was dancing at Joel's holiday party. I tried to dance like a normal person. It didn't work. I am bleeding now.
Her: How much...and other medical questions.
Me: Not too much, but still.
Her: If the baby wants to be, it will be. There's a star man, sister, waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet you but he thinks he'd blow your mind.
Me: Let the children boogie.
Her: Look out the window, you can see his light.
Me: If we can sparkle, he may land tonight.

This wasn't uncommon, we often have nothing but lyrics to say to each other. It's our thing.

That moment, when she said the thing about looking out the window, I looked hard and fast at the moon, directing all my wishes and power so hard at the moon. I wanted the baby. I knew it in that moment. If she made it, I'd name her 'Bowie.' In part for Teresa, in part for the moon path she'd travel, in part for David Bowie for giving us words to make the moment bearable.

She made it.
And damn, that girl boogies.

Tonight, I've spent the evening listening to David Bowie on spotify, drinking wine, watching videos of his concerts, following links like a crazy person. I've wanted desperately to join with the souls in Bowie's hometown as they sing out live in homage. I wanted to dance all night. I have wept. It has felt so good. That I could feel this way about someone I never met, simply because of his art - his words, and every thing he stood for - that is a kind of god feeling to me, if ever there was one.

David Robert Jones, you hot tramp. I love you soo. I'll try not to blow it.

1947-2016

"I don't know where I am going from here, but I promise it won't be boring."

Look out your window, I can see his light.
crm

Saint Theresa newly adorns my green room. I'm in love with a new muscle T-shirt I found second-hand.

I showed them to her last week when she stopped by in between appointments. She was excited, as always, about these things. She showed me a new essential oil she purchased (called "moon goddess" or something like that. Something I would have scoffed at not long ago. Something I still scoff at, because it's funny). And as she scrambled out the door, endearingly a few minutes late to her next gig, she said, "Because these are the things you need to know."

These things. These everyday things we share and know about each other.

I fingered a tiny silver necklace I was wearing as I watched her leave. This thought, these "things" lingering in the air like the essential oils body spray she showed me. The necklace, one she made me, is the shape of a small pelvis with the sweetest fleck of gold. It sits ever so delicately in the crevasse connecting my collarbones. She made it for me entirety unprovoked and pro-bono.

This necklace is my source of power.
I'll tell you why.

But first you need some backstory. Some vulnerable, embarrassing, she-doesn't-even-know-the-extent-of-it backstory.

She is one of my soul connections. An easy and deeply necessary friendship - for us both. She is an artist, finally making a real living after years of trying. We hit it off one night at a party. I asked her what she does. Her husband, close by her, reminded her that what she does isn't who she is! For some reason, we all three teared up. We've been soul bound ever since - but in the best way possible.

I both love and hate being close to a popular artist. I will tell you why.

In 2007, when we first met, I didn't have to share her very much. She had a small following on her blog and Etsy and would sell things often, but her income from these sales wasn't sustainable. She and her husband worked full-time as apartment managers in their building, and she was painting at her studio in Pioneer Square every chance she got. She was showing at galleries and making textiles. She was teaching me how to paint with watercolors and introduced me to blogging. She was starting to take photos and stomped around Capitol Hill like it was her catwalk. (It was.)

She wanted to grow her online business, but hadn't yet pinpointed exactly how. Her business was in gestation. I knew just about all of her fans, and most of her online friends were connections we shared or had found together.

But a few days after her 30th birthday, she found out she had breast cancer. I was living in LA with my sister for a few months at that time, and by the time I had returned, she had moved back to California. She got better there.

But then she moved back.
And then the cancer returned.

At the same time (and because of her time in California) she was making new Internet connections rapidly, opening care packages with gifts and amazing words from women I never met. She taught herself how to silversmith and was selling goods like hotcakes. She was exploring something she called "journey work" and tarot cards became a part of our ladies' gatherings, much to my confusion.

It became harder to keep track of her new life. I began to feel rejected by it. Her actions never changed toward me, but some small seed of fear inside of me was planted. She'd made thousands of new Facebook friends whom I didn't know, her Etsy sales skyrocketed, and suddenly, she was conjuring forth her dream, and it was beginning to appear. The dream of making a livable wage from selling art.

I secretly housed resentment and panic, scared our time together was coming to an end. Scared I could easily be replaced. Scared that she was finally fed up with my skepticism and found my darkness unhealthy for her - at a time she needed light.

Disgusted with myself, I had thoughts that "a good friend would always, always be supportive." Chiding never actually changes anything, but I sure felt like shit - and that was the goal, most likely. After that second cancer scare, I began to withdraw. It was good timing because I could hide my retreat under the guise of being busy with a baby and going back to work full time.

In short, I sensed I was loosing her and ran away.

This schism filled my journals with angst - entries examining my frustrations, beating us both up, all the while wussing out on actually talking to her. Instead, I did what I counsel people NOT to do. I relied on blind attempts to decipher how she really felt, made assumptions (which were never flattering for either party) and read too much into every little thing she said and did. She doesn't know this, but I even had to unfriend her business Facebook page at the time. Who the eff were all these women appearing on her feed?!

It was like every success and new connection of hers suddenly stabbed me, every new friend an elbow shove to the corner. My irritations came up in therapy all the time. Many months of work revealed something simple. My inner child, the one screaming after my father's car as he left, was begging for a voice. A voice I long denied her. She wanted to know the answer to a most basic human question.

"Am I necessary?"

Was their room for me in her new life? I knew every relationship has these junctures. Would we find a way to continue walking the same path? Or was this the fork in the road that eventually separates two souls?

Needing people, in any capacity, feels deeply shameful to me. It's part of my life work - to allow places to grow where I rely on people deeply. In over eight years of friendship, I had never once doubted my place in her life. Not.Once. I am so proud of that in myself, too proud.

What was happening now that I was so lost in my feelings of rejection? Feelings I could usually love myself right out of. Was my power diminishing?

While the confusion nearly drowned me, one thing was clear. I needed to confess my feelings of neglect, take a risk and admit,"I need you."

But how? I couldn't just come right out and say it - not with her. That's not what she and I do. We don't really talk about 'us.' With other friendships, maybe. I didn't want either of us to lose face. I wish I could describe how scared I was, how anxiety wound me up at the thought of initiating such a conversation, how deeply I wanted to preserve our sacred space, how fiercely I fought with myself, afraid of relinquishing my power, annoyed that she would later think of me as a desperate, clingy friend.

Maybe you can't relate. Maybe confronting people is easy for you. But maybe you are like me, and you would rather never be in another relationship again than make people feel that their love isn't good enough. That you need more than they are giving.

And truly, I'm unpracticed at this kind of vulnerability. I don't often have to ask this of my friendships because I intuitively know, and I trust that intuition. But also because it's humiliating. Not to mention unattractive, desperate, and off-putting. It just is. It's the dynamic of human attraction. In fact, the sure-fire way to get me running from any relationship is to cage me in a conversation wherein I must assure the other party of my affection. I can't help it. It's the bird medicine inside of me.

Trap me, and I will flee. Free me, and I might stay.

So I didn't want to do that to her. I had lost the deep knowledge of her love, but I knew our friendship was going to perish if I didn't ask her. And that would be on me. Totally on me.

Before long, my courage and need outgrew my fear and after nearly one year of housing this angst, I finally invited her to get a drink.

__________________

Adrienne Rich said of Marie Curie that "her wounds came from the same source as her power." These wounds being, of course, radiation poisoning. Curie was working to cure something that ultimately killed her. Her power, that which she created, gave her these wounds. Yet, she didn't know it; she carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket, not then knowing the negative affects of prolonged exposure.

I study women artists who push deeply into their pain, on purpose. Tap into it, see it as their muse. They find the most grotesque, detestable flashbacks and write them into the present, thereby purging those memories of shame. What remains is only truth and gold.

I tried it once. Several times, actually.
It's the scariest, most nauseating thing I've ever done.

To need her was to lose power.
To need her was to gain power.

Both can be true at once.

She says that all the time.

_______________

Once I finally stopped babbling and back-peddling my way from the outright asking,"Where do I fit into your new life?" she grabbed my hand from across the table. I was painfully embarrassed, avoiding eye-contact. She told me what I wanted to hear, but it still stung that I needed to hear it. I couldn't forgive myself for being human.

As it was. I barely told her a fraction of all I'd felt. But it was enough to let out some pressure.

She teared up, assuring me that I was needed, and better yet, that I was wanted.

Her words both deeply pierced and healed me. But they were the "things" I needed to know. Instead of our normal "things" like every day shopping purchases, the health of a strawberry plant, where you got that tarot deck or what color you painted the kitchen walls, the "things" were assurances of friendship.

Since then, the feelings have assuaged significantly, but will never go away. I've stopped judging myself for needing her. Stopped berating myself for doubting our connection. Stopped being irritated for getting hurt. Stopped trying to squelch the feelings of jealousy when they arise. I let myself feel the feelings because, if nothing else, they indicate how much I desperately need her to stay alive.

The shadow surrounding our connection, where the jealousy hides, is love. Every time I feel it now, I read it like a love letter. I let it soak into my bones like a prayer. Jealousy reminds me that we are connected and that I don't want to loose that connection.

I still don't like sharing her. I don't get a say in how she relates to anyone else, if she is being her "real" self (whatever that means), or how she represents herself online. But it's up to me to love myself enough, not her.

This is the pain and privilege of any relationship.
But especially of being close to a popular artist.

_______________

If wounds hold power, I couldn't see it in myself. For others, yes. For those who had been through real battles.

Locating my wounds, that's never been a struggle. I am a bloodhound, sniffing out pain like it's my only life-force, knowing that wounds can reveal versions of myself I've never met and lead to more self-awareness. But seeing those wounds as a source of strength? I couldn't wrap my mind around it - for me.

Turns out, I didn't have to.
She did for me. She found a source of power and bottled it up into a necklace for me.

When the second cancer came back. It broke her bones. Lots of bones.The symbolism of bones and skeletal structure, the idea of what lies beneath, examining what holds us up that we can't see, has always permeated her art. Even more so now.

How can we survive walking on broken bones? How can plenty come from scarcity? Power from wounds?

I never put myself in the same category as she was in. The brave born from the broken. Maybe emotionally, even psychologically - sure. Never physically.

Until one day, she showed up with the tiniest necklace adorning her long neck. A necklace she made for herself, a necklace of bones and blood and truth and gold.

(photo used by permission from umberdove.com )

Then she told me that she was making me one.

"Me?! But I've never broken any bones!"
She looked at me sideways. "Um, your tailbone?"
"Oh right. I forgot about that."

Images of my birthing experience flooded my mind. I had pushed for over five hours, rocking back and forth on my tailbone every 1 minute or so. I couldn't sit on it for weeks, but figured it was all part of the netherly healing happening slowly. But when I was still in immense pain eight months later, it dawned on me that I had probably fractured my coccyx.

My bones, as she pointed out, had sustained a birthing wound.

I immediately felt ashamed that I hadn't seen it. That I had so undervalued my body. This vessel who carried life, who bore down with strength and brought forth a baby star.

She crafted my broken bones into a talisman of power. This necklace reminds me daily of my physical capability, but also unlocks the shame that I couldn't at first see how my broken tailbone made me a force to be reckoned with. Me, a seer! I couldn't see how my wound was a deep wellspring of power, a bow in my quiver for battles I would come to face.

I was blinded.
But she saw it.

She saw power in me that I never recognized.
And THIS, this is why we need people.

What if all our self-care, awareness, anagnorisis
Doesn't have to rely 100% on our own self-care, awareness, and anagnorisis?

What if the very space where my resilience and imagination fails,
Is where people come in to fill in the gaps for me?

What if needing her has made me more powerful?

What if my power isn't my power alone but the collective power of those surrounding me in love? What if I can use her skeletal structure to reach out and look farther.

What if, like she always does, I can go forth and trust my motherfucking bones.

These are the things I need to know.

~crm

Please, help us fight the 3rd round of cancer. Donate here: http://www.gofundme.com/morekellyclark

I hadn't realized the full magnitude of the last 5 years until I read a succinct summary in a recent letter from a friend. She would know, we've been friends for 15 years. I suppose I sensed a shift as I read new articles, learned new ideas, walked through my day to day, but looking back - she is right. I've changed. I would say that I hardly recognize myself, but that would be untrue. I know exactly how I got here.

But she doesn't, not fully. Not enough to feel like she went through it with me.

Enter another challenge. I am a proud introvert. I love my own company and default to preferring predictably quiet days with Joel and Bowie. Connecting with people is absolutely not a struggle for me, nor is it without its life-altering rewards, but socializing goes down easiest when planned and when I've had enough time to reflect on my own beforehand. Couple this with depression and top it off with an extremely fatiguing pregnancy and you have a recipe for hermitude - an isolation so severe that it pushes far outside of the scope of introversion.

Perhaps a downside for others (and one I've always wished didn't hurt people) is that I work best hashing through hard times alone. Even Joel often knows only a piece of of my internal mash-up. I may reach out to the deep, real friendships I enjoy, but even these gifted and intuitive women know a fraction of my internal pain until I choose to reveal it. That reveal usually occurs post-tribulation, presented as a tidy story with beginning, middle, and end.

I'm not hiding, and I'm not lying. But I am not easy to know. I guess.

But maybe that's bullocks. Maybe me hearing internal accusations that I am hard to love because I am hard to know is a tired, toxic, ancient story. Maybe it's not even mine - maybe I inherited it. Who knows.

Because the truth is no one can know 100% of the data any other human brain contains. Some humans are more expressive than others, but more words do not translate to deeper intimacy. The words must be careful and self-aware for them to carry the potential of true connection. So maybe I am absolutely, profoundly easy to love. Who knows.

Out of the religious closet:

The change I speak of is that in the last five years, I somehow made the incongruous leap from Christian academic to atheist* feminist.

*How I cringe to write that word. How it makes my heart skip a beat. I've never written it before, not as a confession anyway. I don't cringe because it's untrue, I simply dislike the limitation of the word. It is not precise enough. It's too brazen, too ignorant, to full of hubris to claim that there is absolutely no deity. I hope my perspective is more humble than such stubborn, limiting proclamations.

I also cringe because I can feel it breaking my parent's hearts. I cringe because it hurts, confuses, and isolates friends who ascribe to that belief system.

So in what or whom do I believe? I believe in questions - big, vast, painful questions. I believe my soul will die if it stops asking who, what, when, where, and why. I'm no longer able to be satisfied with answers that others fed me, answers that always felt incomplete somehow. Answers containing gaping holes in logic, evidence, and human consideration. So I chose to question it. My pastors told me God encouraged doubt. I believed them. Plus, I didn't chose to be a skeptic. I have always, always been this way.

I believe in being brave, in speaking with near-shocking vulnerability and honesty. As a conflict-avoidant, but still outspoken Christian, this was easy for me. I believed what everyone around me believed. But now, being honest with others about my worldview is wrought with shame and hidden in shadow. I feel like I am standing naked, coaxing to be knifed by any passerby.

Please know that I do not equate changing belief systems to accepting and 'confessing' one's sexual orientation. Inviting anyone to the complex table of your personal sexuality is vulnerable enough when you don't have to fight societal norms. I never had to tell anyone that I was heterosexual, never had to confess how attracted I was to boys, never had to admit to anyone my bedroom secrets. I consider coming out of the heterosexual closet an act of ultimate human courage.

Confessing that I was no longer a Christian was nothing near as painful nor did I suffer the loss of relationships. My parents still love and talk to me. My friends still want to be friends. Further more, they all still want to listen to what I have to say.

Reversed rejection:

But there is something this recent correspondence hit me with. Over the years, I was so internally focused on my own evolution that I didn't consider how it would be perceived as a direct affront to relationships I have with Christians.

I never considered my change as a full and complete rejection of my past. I never slammed a door everything I was. I didn't renounce Christianity because I was angry or because the church irreparably wounded me. Over 5 years (and for the rest of my life), my rich religious past will deeply inform who I become.

I now see see how renouncing Christianity could be perceived as renouncing Christians. In my mind, I took a step away from a religious culture, not a step away from relationships. I never imagined that choosing into a new belief system would also send Christians the message that I though they were stuck, stupid, unenlightened, and small-minded.

I sprinted so fast away from Christianity, all the while assuming all my relationships were keeping pace there - or at least cheering on the sidelines. When I finally stopped, hands on knees, bent over trying to catch my breath, I realized they weren't there. When did they drop off? Where did I loose them? I don't know. I don't even know if I could trace my steps back...the route got crazy twisted.

My rejection of their worldview in turn made them feel rejected by me.

But how could I fight these assumptions or extend myself to help them understand when I was simultaneously buried under the weight of a sad hermitude?

The compassionate middle ground where Lake Union and Lake Washington connect

The realization of hurting her and others cut me deeply. I have a new seed of compassion for parents of homosexuals who didn't see it coming, who felt/feel rejected themselves because their child rejects heterosexuality. I have a renewed respect for those parents who grabbed their lesbian daughter's hand and refused to be left behind...even if it meant they fought all along the way.

I am deeply satisfied to internalize the realization her correspondence gave me: the reverse rejection paradox. It forces me look hard to find new bridges...new ways to know and be known, to understand and be understood. And mostly, to be patient and compassionate in conflict.

Perhaps human reciprocity is my real gospel.

crm

I think we give ourselves a bad rap sometimes, we melancholy, analytical, introverted, grumbley-type folk. We don't understand why everyone else is so happy and colorful all the time, and assume we have an inability be happy or colorful at all.

But I see in color, I do. I prefer not to wear it as my identity, but it doesn't mean there isn't room for me to claim a part of it. There is room, so much room, on this strange and vibrant planet. As I walked up my drive tonight after an evening facial (my annual b-day treat to myself), I saw it more than usual. I grabbed my camera and let myself be one of those colorful people.

Conversely, I hope that those colorful folk find ways to realize they too are melancholic, like to wear black, and allow negative feelings to just be instead of chasing them away with self-help or external distractions.

Why in goddess's good name do we box ourselves in so rigidly?
I know why.
It was a rhetorical question.

The composition of one self is as vast as the composition of one solar system. We contain multitudes, we see moments of our greatness flicker (two points for guessing the two literary references here). It's like a mother with ten children - each of them must be a certain kind of person so as to easily know them (Jane is the athlete, David is the beauty queen, etc). It's a sad practice, but it makes sense. So let's not judge ourselves too severely for it.

I began to straighten the kitchen from the hasty family dinner of pizza and salad and thought about what makes us who we are.

What if we have less control than we think over:
who we are
what we think
how we feel

Science seems to be backing me up here*. We inherit the temperament and personality traits we come to love or despise in ourselves. Some are born grumpy and it's nearly statistically impossible that they change into a happy-go-lucky person. We can change habits, relationships, and outlooks, but we simply cannot change the building blocks of self.

Similar to the subjection and consumption of women, somewhere in the course of human history, society decided that humans prefer upbeat, energetic, free-spirited people. Conversely, we were taught to distrust quiet, introspective, inhibited-types and soul-crinkles.

I'm one of those people, and I distrust myself all the time. Society could just have easily come to value solitude and sadness. It's hard to be me, but it's hard to be you too - I am guessing.

And yet we I spend so much time trying to reconcile myself to the world around me, terrified not only of being misunderstood by others, but fucking petrified that I will never, ever make sense to myself.

So I plan to embark on another mental retraining. To accept all and everything I am - understood or not. And not just resign to its presence, but accept it like I fully accept my daughter into my love. To divert the steady flow of compassion I have for everyone else and let myself tip-toe in it. To refuse to feel shame because I feel less free-spirited than others, because I like to calculate risks before I take them, because I need to know what to expect before I can proceed without anxiety, because I dislike small talk with strangers, and that despite everything - I will always be a highly-irritable curmudgeon, snapping at you for leaving empty ice trays out on the counter. I will always live in an abundance compassion, insight, and thoughtfulness for others while simultaneously dreaming about the next moment alone.

Since I cannot change my DNA, I shall determine to change how I see it.

crm

*See "Brain Rules for Baby" by John Medina.

You learn the lessons of one season. Hell, you damn near master them.
The seasons change.
You forget not the lessons necessarily, but the urgency of them.
So you pick up something you've not wanted nor needed for the latest era,
and reacquaint yourself with
yourself.

All
lonely
gritty-haired
magic hour
versions of yourself.

Maybe not the now you needing it at all,
but for nostalgia sake.
For acceptance of a written, closed novel.

Who and what you used to love and want to see
changing all the times around the clock.

in everything,
a turn.

{crm}

Tuesday of last week

Tuesday of this week

I have to say that sometimes the contradictions of life are so jarring. One week, I am sitting poolside with beautiful waiters bringing me drinks and forgetting that I was ever frustrated by motherhood or scared of death. The next, I am sitting in the gray light, sipping coffee from a Mexican cup with a beautiful baby bringing me puzzle pieces, forgetting that I was on vacation only a few days ago.

Sidenote:

Have you ever tried to read while in the company of a toddler? At this stage, it's an exercise in getting her used to Momma having her contemplative minutes in the morning...that she is to entertain herself. I need to her to understand that not every single moment of my awakeness is dedicated solely to her needs and entertainment. This being said, almost every morning I end up laughing (or crying) because it's hilariously comic to try and read or write while she stands next to me, scratching the pages, throwing books or toys into my lap, or furiously signing "help!" to climb up to the couch.

Life with a toddler

life at all, for that matter

seems to me

to be all about

allowances

I allow her to see me making allowances for myself, despite her needs.

I allow myself to make allowances for her, despite my convictions.

I suppose I mean to say this morning,

in the gray light,

sipping coffee from my Mexican cup,

that sometimes life is confusing because we make it confusing.

We rigidly decide how it will look

forming contracts with divinities

to guarantee pleasure

and avoid pain.

When the realities of life set in

sometimes the grief's source

is our very noncompliance,

our stubbornness to accept a fate we never agreed to.

This morning, I read this as Bowie tugged at me:

"...perhaps nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. Maybe the only enemy is that we don't like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we find is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. If we run a hundred miles in an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, and manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves."

Pema Chodron

When Things Fall Apart

There was a heaviness I was able to momentarily shake in Mexico. Upon returning to Washington, I returned to the burden of bearing up under life, with all its fight and confusion. I'm engaged in a continued exhaling prayer for Kelly's healing. I'm perpetually breathing in the sacrifices and bravery required to maintain a monogamous commitment with my dearest soul, Joel. I'm repeatedly reminding Bowie and I that our lives are a fight for gracious balance, kind acceptance, and simple clarity.

And I'm sipping a margarita by the pool.

And I'm sipping coffee in the gray.

And making allowances.

This is my life.

I love it.