goodbye: old love

It's funny, this blog thing. Who do we write it for? It's different than a journal because instead of turning inward, privately, for just ourselves, we open outward, publicly, for a perceived audience, an assumed audience - even if it's never confirmed. Are we writing for ourselves here, or for the other selves we imagine peering into our world? Do we write with the idea of how someone might see us? Does that somehow then make us who we are?

I rushed home from the corner bar just now - literally a block away from my home, but oh rush did I - and I immediately went to the sink and frantically washed dishes and I frantically put on the song that says to me "with every broken heart I become more adventurous" and I scrub away and I hum and then I realize my eyes are filling with tears, and I'm not numb, I am feeling something, I do hurt. So then I came here. Hello computer, hello possible audience, might you want to hear today's goodbye?

Goodbye love. Long-overdue goodbye.

(Disclaimer to the assumed audience of 1+: there might be lots of run-on sentences occurring here. My brain is scrambling to understand itself and I'm trying my hardest to be authentic and real, which sometimes translates to the written version of babble.)

I'm not sure if in my young life I've yet to have good love, love that sustains and nourishes and brings out the part of me that I truly want out, but I have had my run-ins with some types of love. Ranging from the spectrum of really bad and unhealthy to fairly interesting and good at inspiring personal growth.  And recently, I've had a most confused love, a love that tore me in two and that I wasn't brave enough to admit did so.

So, it's held on. For a good year, almost to the date, I've tried to understand my brokenness while simultaneously moving on and forgetting. Those things are hard to do at the same time. I should have just stared my hurt in the eye as long as I needed to and then dealt with the moving on and healing. Ack, live and learn.

Tonight, something brought us together. My own longing for closure? My psychic abilities or sixth sense that something was up? Or my desire to sit together, like we used to do, when it meant nothing, when it was simple?

We sat side-by-side at the bar (because face-to-face was just too much for me) and he told me, after the world's longest pause during which I suddenly knew what was coming next, he told me he and his new love are engaged. (Which I understand seems to imply I am his old love, which is not the case. He is my old love, and I am his....his thing which he has no words for, which he cannot articulate or place in the story of his life.)

The thing that I have been asking myself is: what did I feel in that moment?

I felt something that was enough to shortly afterwards draw tears while washing dishes and listening to cheesy pop music, but that in the moment nailed me to my seat, numbed me to my core. I don't know what I felt because I shut down almost instantly! And that bothers me tremendously.

He rambled on a bit, and in that ramble he brought up "us" (and used the words "us" while also struggling with words a bit, avoiding words like "relationship" and "love" and "intimacy.") And he talked about how this next step with her made him think about a lot of his old relationships, and a lot of the lessons he'd learned. And he tried to talk about our thing, but I was so gone at that point, so shut down. He wanted me to chime in, but I was scared. Scared of opening up that place again and finding that what I thought was dead and done with is actually alive. I was scared of him seeing how much he got to me. How deeply he wounded my most vulnerable core.

And as I sat there longer, I realized that even if the animal is alive in me, it's dead in him. It's so over for one of us, so it has to be so over for both of us. That that is then, and this is now.

Then was laughter and fun and closeness and vulnerability that quickly morphed into ugliness and yelling and distrust and betrayal.

Now is two strangers sitting at a bar, talking around the fact that they inflicted real hurt on each other. Now is one stranger who  still can't "go there" without being deeply inside the hurt, without it feeling present and full-bodied, even if not fully present-tense. Now is the other stranger who can talk about it as a lesson learned, as the past, as over.

Then was learning and hurting and steps forward, steps back, steps forward, steps back, steps back and back and back for what felt like infinity.

Now is two people who can barely look each other in the eyes, and one who is trying so hard to say something he's wanted to say and the other embarrassed by the fact that she's still wishing she had the last word, still wishing she had the perfect thing to say to make him understand, and instead resigns herself to saying nothing - or saying just enough that still amounts to nothing. Now is his release and her sink deeper into the quicksand of her hurt.

Now is seeing the future is never sitting side-by-side at a bar, catching up like old friends do, because now is the real truth that that friendship died the minute one heart broke, and no matter what wounds heal and what apologies are uttered over a 12-year-aged scotch, there is no future for "us." There is only goodbye.

And why write? Why speak in circles about the matters of the heart? Why do this when writing can only uncover a theory and confusion still reigns supreme?

In an attempt to say hello to real love one day. One day. One day...

I'll write until it's real. I'll write until it feels like it could be real.

hello: learning to ride the wave

This week I've been without my trusty map. You know the one: it's been with you forever, you can reference it in your most lost moments, it always seems to be in your back pocket even when you think your back pocket is empty. (Hint: this is a metaphor.)

This week it wasn't there for me. Hard as I looked, I couldn't find it.

I'd been hit by a huge wave, a crushing mass, that came out of nowhere - and inside that wave was all of my self-doubt, the insecurities that haunt me, the anxieties that keep me up at night. Suddenly my internal compass was thrown off, but I couldn't say why. Only the week before I was as sure of myself as ever, and now I found myself at the bottom of all the bits and pieces that add up to who I am. And the bottom of that pile felt messy, suffocating.

When this happens to us, what do we do? We seek, in what feels like the darkest dark, some wisdom on how to find our way again. We seek those things that make our map.

My first map was my freewill astrology horoscope waiting for me in my inbox Tuesday

CAPRICORN: "I couldn't wait for success," said rich and

famous comedian Jonathan Winters, "so I went ahead without it." I love

that approach, and I suggest you try it out. Is there any area of your life

that is held captive by an image of perfection? Consider the possibility

that shiny concepts of victory and progress might be distracting you from

doing the work that will bring you meaning and fulfillment. If you're too

busy dreaming of someday attaining the ideal mate, weight, job, pleasure,

and community, you may miss out on the imperfect but amazing

opportunities that are available right now.

 Ahh yes, read my mind yet again freewill astrology.

This has been part of the roadblock: the dreaded impatience. What is available to me now and does it match what I wish were available to me now? I've been driving myself crazy this week noticing the literal and metaphorical cracks in the walls all around me: literally in the disarray of my house, metaphorically in the disarray of the close relationships in my life.

Freewill tells me to do the work rather than be distracted by the idea of perfection. I was starting to make an attempt when I got distracted by another map...

In a murderous time
   the heart breaks and breaks
      and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go
   through dark and deeper dark
      and not to turn.

-Stanley Kunitz

Initially, I did not think this was was the right map, because I recognized this map and it always shows up when I am already lost, it shows up and tempts me to stay lost. It affirms my heartache. It's a companion to grief.

Yet, it also urges me not to turn away.  Both freewill and Kunitz seemed to want me to turn into the dark in order to find my way out of the dark.

This is the struggle I often face when my map is lost: Do I stay put and hope I will find my way out, or do I explore the lost places in order to find my way more fully, both now and long into the future?

I see the things that are bringing me down, they are typical, they are small and big: the world is messed up, my world is messed up; I love what doesn't love me, I will never find the right love, I am the only one alone; my work is not meaningful, my work shouldn't need to mean everything; my house is not perfect, I don't have the ability to make my house perfect, why do I need my house to be perfect; everyone is moving on but me, why can't I be satisfied with stillness, why can't I be satisfied with how things are...

This week my mind has been haunted by all of this.

And then I found a third map - or it found me? I picked up a book, dusty with neglect, and I turned it to a page and the page said to me:

Learn to ride the waves of energy in  your life. Learn to wait for the right time to take action.  Learn to wait until your senses, your emotions, your body, and the universe give you the signal you need.  Yes, you have a list of things you want to do.  But as soon as you have made that list, visualized what you want, you've already begun a powerful force. You've already begun to engage the universe in helping bring you what you want.  There are moments that are more perfect than others to initiate action, to make that phone call, to finish that task. Untimely action will not get the job done any sooner. It will simply waste your energy and send you back to sea, waiting for the right wave. Focus on your goal, muster all your forces, and head out to sea.  Then wait patiently for the right time, for the right energy, for the right wave.

Three maps, are they right? Are they leading me when I need to go?

A breakdown:

Forego perfection for the imperfect but amazing life in front of me.

Venture further inside the heartache (by first admitting I still have some) in order to ever get through the heartache.

Trust that the right wave will come to me when I am ready for it and it is ready for me.

A further breakdown:

Acceptance. Honesty. Hard work. Patience. 

you can't go home again

Apologies for the long hiatus. I have been attending to a certain special nephew:

He's precious, truly the sweetest little man I know, and I feel lucky to have had the chance to disconnect from my regular life for five days and just focus on his new life. To say that being around a baby fills you with a sense of wonder at the world doesn't even start to explain it. You really get to see things through their eyes, and because most every experience is a new one for them, you get to remember what that feels like. Suffice it to say that every cliche thing I could say right now is begging to be said, but I'll spare you.

Now I'm back in my small, blue house feeling many conflicting emotions about "being back." Going home gets increasingly more strange the older I get. Talk about seeing things with "new eyes"! I am not sure I've ever fully acknowledged how charming my hometown it is. Almost all the homes are beautiful brick structures.  Sturdy, classic architecture fills the town. Driving through town is almost serene, definitely relaxed and easy.  I could never see myself living there as an adult, but I am now struck by what a charmed childhood I led. Biking around the neighborhood with my little gang of other children; playing kick-the-can and hide-n-go-seek; catching fireflies in the summer with my bff down the block. I may have grown up in a suburb, but when I think back on my childhood I realize how much I was a "free-range kid." I had the freedom to explore and dream and flourish.

I think I really realized this even more when talking with Colten's mom (my future sister-in-law) about places they could raise Colten. My brother and Nicole don't want to stay in Arizona or have him go through school there, but they are having a difficult time deciding what place would have the community they desire. The community they desire, I realize, is a lot of what I experienced growing up.They want to be friends with their neighbors (like we did), and feel safe letting Colten take off on his bicycle down the block (like I did). They want good schools that they can walk to (yup, I did that too) and activities that are family-centered (I just think on all the days I spent at the park or the pool or the rink or the...) They want so many things that make the place you live your home and not just some place on a map that you belong to. I hope they can find a community and town like the one I grew up in. I hope it still exists.

So now I return to the home I've created, which is quite a different thing than the home you are born into. And, I admit, whenever I return I can't help but question if I've chosen well. I returned feeling a little lonely, aware my community has changed a lot in the last few years and that I was longing for something I wasn't finding on my return, but that wasn't so easy to put into simple terms.

It's something to think about. It's something perhaps to inspire a few goodbyes, a few hellos. In my way of speaking: there are more robes yet to be unearthed and, perhaps, replaced.

ode to the writer

The last time I visited my childhood home I discovered that again, in my absence, my parents had taken it upon themselves to "organize" the spaces I used to occupy. What this translated to for me is that I had another line of boxes to go through to sort into one of the following categories: goodwill, trash, save.

In this assortment of trash and treasures, I discovered something truly horrifying: a folder of writing from my 10th-grade Creative Writing class. I'm conflicted here because I don't know if I should go back and put "creative" in quotes or "writing." Let's just say what I found in that folder made me blush.

I was very fond of my Creative Writing teacher, Mr. Ryan, and I shuddered to think of him alone in his office struggling to get through my poem about whales which was trying to not obviously be about a love interest but was pretty obviously about a love interest. And that was one of my better, more articulate pieces.

The folder was horrifying enough that I was compelled to write Mr. Ryan an apologetic email. We got a good laugh over the angst of high school "creative" "writing" and I thanked him for his positive feedback on some truly cringe-inducing stories. I was waiting for him to say he'd seen worse, but he just lol'd it off. Ouch.

In some part of myself I have always fancied myself a writer-and I'd like to think (or hope) my writing voice has improved since 10th-grade. However, it would be more honest to say that I have always wanted to fancy myself a writer. I have wanted to claim the title for myself and say to people, "I am a writer." But I found myself abandoning the practice again and again, and so I thought I therefore didn't have the right to call myself one.

I thought of my friends who were self-described painters, artists, runners, teachers and so on. What they all seemed to share in common, and had that I lacked, was an ability to claim their title with no hesitation. "I am an artist," one would say, showing me her newest creation. "I am a runner," another would proudly proclaim, recounting his 15-mile trek through the city.

I, on the other hand, would always insert a disclaimer. "I am...I mean, occasionally, I do write. But not like every day or anything." [really awkward laugh causing both parties discomfort]

As I toasted the new year nearly a month ago, I got to overthinking about a lot of things, including my resistance to name certain parts of myself that are actually really important parts of my identity. Parts of myself that are scarier to talk about because they make me feel more vulnerable to an audience of possible critics. I thought about the inherent insecurity in not just declaring who I am and who I want to be. I think I've been letting the fear of failure or judgment (possibly my own most of all) keep me from exploring the parts of myself that could be very nourishing, life-giving even. I felt this deserved a little attention.

Which brings me back to this goodbye ugly robe project.

A quick tangent: perhaps I am a little too fond of exploring the roots/routes of things, but admittedly I am interested in context. I find that when I start a project it's very important to define things a bit. What got me here? What are my intentions? Though the road in front of me might be a mystery, what are my hopes for it? I do like to get to the heart of the matter before focusing on the surface of things. So bear with me.

I think a big part of 1) making writing more of a practice in my life via this blog and 2) specifically documenting the figurative moments of replacing ugly robes with beautiful robes is about not not doing things out of fear or (ugh) laziness.

I was afraid of not being good enough to call myself a "writer." So I stopped writing as much. And then nearly altogether. So my refusal to claim this part of myself became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ick. Goodbye to that behavior! Or, to be crass: F all that!! (F You Ugly Robe didn't have quite the poetic ring to it, and was a little too angry for my liking...)

So this is me lifting myself out of - I'll admit it - what was starting to feel like a lot of really depressing self-fulfilling prophecies. I imagine the specific adventures I undertake and document in this space will start to reveal what some of those hang-ups were.

For some reason this is the year I decided to get serious with myself, strangely enough, to rediscover both the serious and less serious parts of myself. Which is me saying: this is also about having FUN.

Because I'd never felt like an expert at, frankly, anything, I'd stopped myself from trying many new things. But this year I reminded myself that one way to get closer to yourself is by more honestly seeing the world and the resources around you. I know a lot of talented people. I know a lot of experts. I'm ready to see what they are willing to teach. And what I'm willing to ask to learn. Plus what I'm willing to try all by myself, even if it means making a path where there is none. Because (cheese alert) I'm also waking up to the world of resources we have within ourselves. Denying these types of adventures and just dwelling in the world of same ol' is actually quite exhausting.

I woke up on January 1st with an overwhelming feeling that I had a lot of unanswered questions and near-expired promises to myself.  What else was on the brink of extinction because I had denied it's importance for so long? I felt with certainly there were many adventures and interests brewing inside of me that were begging to be explored.  From things as mundane as: I should know how to jump my car, I should paint my bedroom and rearrange my art; to things that impact my daily life like: I want to cook more thoughtfully for myself, I want to be more active to have the option of doing races in the summer, I want to rely less on my car and more on my feet; to long-ignored goals such as: I should reteach myself Spanish, I should ask more questions about my family history, I should read more poetry and take more pictures of my world; to much more secret desires and dreams such as....

....well, there's no hurry to put all my cards on the table right away. There's plenty of time to dig into those spaces and explore what's after that dot dot dot. In other words: there are plenty more ugly robes to destroy to see what comes out of the ashes.