it has been one week since paul left our home. the first few days i ignored it. since then it has set in. heavy. it is a good heavy, though… the kind of drop in your belly you get from a roller coaster or when a plane takes off. i have spent days cleaning and rearranging the home. i have not slept in the bed in weeks. i do not intend to until i get my new sheets that i ordered. they should be here any day. i look forward to the change. i am looking forward to many things right now. it has been so long now since i have felt like myself; felt like doing things for myself… and now i do. and it is truly amazing. i feel like the light inside of me got turned back on again and i walk around with a silly grin on my face each day. i just feel glad at this moment. and i am trying to breathe deeply and remember exactly how every second of this feels. it feels nice. and right now, it is all i could ask for. how interesting to be back in this place after four years together… and here it all is apart. the thing is, i thought i would mind… but i honestly dont. its just… pleasant.
today is the first day of the rest of my life. i am taking a deep breath and looking forward. i am looking forward to all of the new experiences i will have and even looking forward to the parts of my every day that i will have to relearn. i am looking forward to delving back into myself. i cannot wait to become reacquainted…
Filed under: Love, beginnings, fear, friendship, glad, insecurities, thinking, weekends, work
dear universe:
lately i feel you have been collapsing down around me. here i am, all excited and feeling good about some decisions i have been making and then, BOOM!, you hit me hard and knock me down to the ground. i only now am starting to catch my breath. that fall really knocked the air straight out of me. i am wallowing and do not want to be. i want to feel normal. i want to feel solid. you have taken paul, and instead of making him less a part of my life (i thought i had made clear that was what i wanted), you put him right back there in the center… let him lay casually in our bed while i sleep on the couch and force me to watch him waste away in my home. i cant take it. i cannot take it. i know everything will be fine and i just have to be strong and breathe through it, but it is hard right now, and i needed you to know.
in other news, i am so elated that you let the stars align for one of my dearest, oldest friends, and gave to her and her family the blessing they have been awaiting for so long. i am elated for them and for the sheer hopefulness of the entire situation. i am reeling inside with the joy you have given them in the special news, and how happy i am that everything is looking up in that area.
finally, even with the constant curveballs you have been throwing at me, help me stay strong and convicted in the plans i have laid and the goals i have set out to achieve. i need your backing… i need to know that i am doing all the right things, even in light of deterrents, like crying at work the other day over the dumbest thing (how could you let me do that, how could you?). i need to feel like some power out there in the cosmos is keeping me in check. just help me make sure i am aligning all my forces on the right front. keep me steady. because even a light wind right now might push me over… and know just how badly i want to stand.
Filed under: Love, beginnings, desire, fear, insecurities, lessons, poem, thinking
id like to figure it out
with you– (id like
to cease spinning) and
id like you to cushion
my falls.
id like to quit talking
in circles
(enciting equilibrium).
id like to balance it out
with you and
inspire our own
passionate vertigo.
i wrote that poem a little over a year ago. i never imagined that the poem would somehow mean something different to me an entire year later. the sadness has washed over this poem, because i have finally realized that you cannot coerce someone… you cannot create a fiery, beautiful Love story when the Love has simply evaporated… and left behind only after-thoughts and wouldas and shouldas and water marks. i am sure that one day i will dance again and someone will be able to create instability in my earth and when i feel unsteady their Love will catch me without stigma; without jealousy; without ill-will… and then i will write more beautiful poems and the sad ones simply wont seems so sad…
today the rain outside (the cool, misty-type rain) reminds me of winter in oregon. and the clean-ness of the air and the way it smells when i breathe deep makes me think so many things. today my life feels like it is changing. and though i cant be quite sure at this juncture… i feel like its for the best…
this is a strange time of year… here in indiana it is so depressing to me. i have always disliked the winter and the way the beautiful blanket of pure white snow eventually turns slush grey from traffic and sand and general gunk. it is an odd time where the geese start being seen and i remember years ago living in bloomington and thinking about how the slate sky and the slushy old snow and the limestone buildings all seemed to blend into one grey mass of blah and the season that is winter swallowed me alive and would not spit me back out until flurries turned back into warm rain showers and the tulips and poppies started showing their green buds and i could finally breathe deep again because it was spring. winter in the pacific northwest is unexplicably beautiful. i fell so deeply in Love with winter there that i often turn my thoughts back to my favorite season on the west coast… everything in the winter came alive. the pine trees looked a deeper green. the moss that would pop out on roadsides and over logs and branches of deciduous trees was thick and lemon-lime colored. the air was so fresh all the time… the rain made everything shimmer with special light. the morning dew was crystal clear and made my lawn look like a tiny ocean… all the droplets frozen in a moment of time. there was something about winter there. the few occasions it did snow i would walk around my neighborhood and let the flakes fall over me. i felt like a child with the clean white hitting my eyelids, my fingers, my hair. there was never enough snow to get slush grey and there was something about all that cold rain and warming up to the wood stove each night. there was something about the winter there that holds my heart. and i never knew that i would warm up so incredibly to what we know is the cold season.
it is such a beautiful day outside and i wanted to share with everyone a picture i Love with two of the most beautiful faces in the world. it was taken months ago, but i think it is amazing and it gives me so much happiness…
jackson and maka, i Love you so…
i guess it has been much longer since i have written than it feels like… i never intend to go so much time without having written something, anything… but each time i sit down to write here, i want to write something significant or mesmerizing… and quite honestly, that does not happen that often. my life, when i think back to being in my late teens and early twenties, was so full of passion and new feeling and all these things… and now, i feel so set in my day to day… like nothing is new or beautiful or whatever. maybe im jaded. i want to feel so passionately. mostly, i look around and wonder how people Love the things they Love and why people get excited about something that seems ridiculous to me. dont get me wrong, i Love hearing about my friends successes and joys and adorations… i live for that… but i feel i am just living vicariously through them. i want so badly to know joy like they do about those things. i dont feel depressed. i simply feel like i am in the wrong place in the world and i feel helpless in trying to resolve it. i look back on my time in oregon and realize that i had it great and almost perfect for a while and that now i am in a city i never ever wanted to return to. and while getting out of this place is on the horizon, i feel it will never be soon enough. i dislike that i am writing so negatively, because there is lots of joy in my day to day… paul has been kind and warm and cuddly when i need it in the cool autumn night, and the dogs have never been more attentive or Loving or downright fun. but, i cant imagine that i really want to sit and write about my dogs. or paul. or even myself. i think so often that is why i put off calling friends when i lived in oregon. i always wanted to have a story… something grand to tell them when i phoned, like, “this amazing thing happened today,” but it seemed like it never came. and now looking back, i think to myself, hey, man, there were so many amazing days… and now i fear i am falling back into being somewhere and forgetting to see all the good even though there is some bad… i should probably call a friend today and say, “hey, the leaves are yellow, and the sky is blue, and the air smells fresh. and that is all i have, but i needed to share it. i needed to tell someone that this moment was amazing to me. even if it was trite to you.” i think i need to start appreciating even the most mundane. i should stop shrugging my shoulders and form actual concrete opinions and lose friends and make friends and laugh and cry. i should stop being so passive, which is what i think i was trying to be for so long… i think i got passive and easy-going jumbled up… and easy-going is nice, but i feel like i went from easy-going into passive and somehow slid right into complacent. and that is the last thing i want. cause i really do have fire in my belly.
and so, it is just after 10 am where i am supposed to be. i am supposed to be packing my things up into my backpack and preparing, like my other lady friends, to spend a few days on the oregon coast. reconnecting with one another, and the land, and the sea, and everything in-between. but i am at work, and i am writing this. and mostly all i can think about is how much fun i hope they all have. and how i hope they catch a million crabs. and how i hope they drink too much and laugh too loud and find themselves thinking of me on that dock… wishing i was there. and knowing that i wish i were there too. out on the pacific coast… thinking it is cold and wet and smelly and i have had too much to drink and i am laughing too loud and that there is just no other place i would want to be in the whole world at that moment. and it is true, there is no other place i want to be right now. i Love all you ladies with my entire soul. and oregon, how i miss you… oh, how you light fires in my belly. have wonderful times together… and be sure when you return back to the interior over that mighty coast range and back east along that wilson river, you let me know of your travels… let me know every detail of the salt on your lips and the wind in your hair. let me know how the sunset evenings tasted and how the morning fog condensed on your faces. how i wish i were there, oh, how i wish i were there…
i remember years and years ago when i couldnt wait to grow up. i couldnt wait until i could drive and stay out later and eat whatever i wanted and just plain do whatever i want. well, turns out my parents were right (all of our parents were right, damn it) and when you grow up you dont really get to do whatever you want. i have been having great internal struggle recently regarding how i should find balance between what i want and what i have to do. and then, how much of “have to do” is just me feeling guilty about not doing it and then the other person just not liking me? in general i think that my fear of being disliked gets me into far too many situations i dont want to be in to begin with. i also think i give up a lot for my partner and there are days i wonder what exactly i am getting back. i am sure at this moment i am just bitter and much later when i am out of the warm embrace of irritation (how nice to see you again) i will be able to spout off the things that my partner does give to me. just for example, i do know he is grateful to me for lots of things and he tells me this all the time… but (i know, but but but, i shouldnt say “but”) i feel like i lose myself sometimes in becoming the “us.” maybe i am not cut out for a relationship, much like i do not believe i am cut out for adulthood, or friendships, or motherhood, or well… anything that normal people are supposed to participate in because… i dont know, i guess because there are people who have told me im not that good at functioning and that is a whole different story. i just wonder if i am supposed to be with this person that i believe in and admire and respect and all those good things when there are days i feel like we are on two seperate islands and there havent been bridges for years and years. i know there is always the good and the bad and i know there is always hardship and then periods of solace. but how much slack should i give and still know that the rope is taut enough to keep me from smashing into the ground when i do release? i like to always think that my problem with paul is money. mostly that there is never enough of it. but i know from reading… well, anything… from cosmo to carl jung that we, as human beings, place blame on something vague when really there is something much more precise underneath. i guess i spend a lot of days trying to figure out what that tiny thing is that bothers me. if it is that tiny or if the tiny-ness of it is only metaphorical. i cant answer that because i dont yet know. i search for those answers and i dont know if that is supposed to be part of a relationship. before i met paul, i hadnt been in a relationship for almost four years… and now that my relationship with him is nearing that four year mark (well, it has been three and a half, but four years is coming)… i am just making sure i am in the place i want to be. how much of my relationship should be who i am and who he is and who we are and compromising and all of those things? is there a scale or a balance or a handbook or an instructional video? why do things that when they are going so right seem so easy and when you begin to question the ebb and flow of the every day, suddenly it is so hard? the specifics of my situation are not important… i am just a lady trying to figure out what is next and asking the few readers i have for suggestions… what are some ways you have had to deal with internal struggles? where do you leave off or stand up in your relationships? when do you find you should compromise and when do you find you should walk away? how do you remain yourself and also accept someone else as your partner? how do you not give in? how do you not feel like you have failed? how do you make it through the day some days? any advice is welcome… via comments, my email, or by phone… let me know what you guys are out there thinking. im asking for advice here, and i need some of your nuggets of wisdom… what is it that works for you?
