Notes on My Life

  • Protected: Begin with the End in Mind

    This content is password-protected. To view it, please enter the password below.

  • Era’s End

    Here I am, now. Looking backwards, looking forwards, too, I have come to realise that it is now time to make a break from the past and put it firmly, resolutely, behind me. I must pack my bags, carefully. Load up the car and say my goodbyes. It is time to grow, time to leave these childish things behind, so they say. This time the baggage is light, as I have taken the time to be present as I packed, not panicking and throwing everything in at the last minute. No, I have chosen carefully this time and I am only taking with me what I really need, what will serve me in this next chapter of life. My spirit is finally ready to settle into my body, to fully feel the experience of this time on earth.

    I write this today not for you, if you are reading this, but for my self. I am here in conversation with myself, and that is enough for me. I feel cautious, aware that someone else might be reading this, but I must continue to write with honesty. Honestly and casually, flippantly even. The word I am searching for escapes me now, I can feel it running ’round the outside of the door, on the other side of what I can consciously access, still escaping me. It will come. This – this is faith. Knowing that it is there, feeling it, not able to touch it, but knowing it will come, when it is ready and most likely, when I least expect it or need it. That last part – I do believe – is irony. Candidly? Oh it doesn’t matter.

    Years ago, one of my favourite courses in school was the study of creativity. I found it fascinating that something as fleeting, intangible, ambiguous as creativity could actually be looked at through science. I found it reassuring, even. The idea that something left alone – to incubate – could then resolve itself through unconscious work – this is what I am relating to now. Now in this very moment, but also now, as in this time in my life, in my journey, in my consciousness. Now I have faith in this process of incubation, hibernation, in the cycle of dormancy and then living above ground, sprouting, bourgeoning, and finally flowering. To continue this metaphor, I feel like I have completely gone to seed and regrown, about to come out of the earth again and slowly unfurl my self open, naturally, organically, just as you would see in one of those wonderful time lapse sequences of nature’s spring. It is all part of the cycle, the reassuring rhythm of life here on earth.

    Now I feel almost afraid that I won’t be able to say what I came here to say. How silly as there is no one here but me. I am still afraid of failure or of coming up short. I feel the pressure of time passing even as I am learning to let go of this notion. I am here today to say that it is time to move on, to the next chapter, episode, incarnation, actuality of my life. Normally, if reading my life in retrospect, I would move on to the next location, the next city, even the next country. This time is different. This time it’s internal. I see the road ahead of me and I am ready to leave the past behind. Yes, there will be pictures. Yes, there will be souvenirs. But this time, the load is lighter, the packing neater, the goodbye not as sad, nor urgent. My past is happy to see me go on, move forward. They are all there, these ghosts. But instead of pulling on me, crying out to be remembered as I try to tear away from them, this time, they are lined up neatly to say goodbye, to wish me well, as I go off in the world to see what I might make of myself. It is a bittersweet goodbye, but we all know that it is time.

    Now, as I look forward, I am filled with possibility and a quiet, reassuring sense of capability. I have nothing to prove, nothing to lose, everything to do, everything to gain. Although à gagner seems too personal, as though to win at a game. This is not a game, nor a contest. I am simply here to live my life anew. I have been given this time on earth to live, to be truly alive. I have, until now, lived much of my life in the shadows of others, trying to escape, to unload the burdens handed down to me by those who didn’t know how to carry them nor how to set them down. I have always been the strong one, because I had to be. That is all enough now, as now I know that strength is not in carrying but in putting down, letting go, and moving forward with the wisdom gained from what came to pass, what was passed on to me to finally learn when others simply couldn’t.

    So now this is the end of an era. It is time. These things learned can be kept, the wisdom passed on, without the burden of un-felt experiences, un-learned lessons dragged along like the chains of ghosts of Christmas past. These chains have been broken, cast off and remade into crowns, jewels, and signets to be worn with pride, pride of heritage and of battles fought hard and finally won. They are the history of unlearned pains of unattended emotions that are finally put to the fire to be made into ashes and to take a new form, again. Phoenix, rising.

    All good things must come to an end. If that is true, the same must be for the bad things, too. It would be unfair if not. Why must we continue to suffer? Is it not a choice at some point? Choose life, choose living, choose moving on. There are lessons learned to be carried with you, but the sorrow needn’t be. Why ruin the rest of your life with the pain when you can enrich it with wisdom? Sure, there are times to stop and remember, to revisit the mourning, the loss, if only to take the perspective of the distance between you and that event, that life before. This is why we have holidays of mourning: All Souls Day, Toussaint, Dia de los Muertos., Samhain. We have these days in the autumn when the days are shortening and the earth itself is dying. We feel the sadness of the end of the summer, the harvest, the warmth of the sun and we are pulled by this change to stop and mourn with the season. We can revisit this sadness, it will always be there, waiting for us with the season. Because of this, there is no need to carry it with us. It will always be there, waiting. Set it down.

    Today is the end of this era, for me. I have had the fortune and misfortune to end many eras before this one. This time it is not marked by un grand changement that others can see. It does not involve others, only me. It is mine alone, something that I can treasure, a specialness that I can hold close, value, cherish. It is mine and mine alone. I know I am repeating myself, and it’s fine because this is all for me, not for anyone else. If you are reading this, welcome to my inner world, I hope that you can take a little bit of peace for yourself because this is my next and only goal, peace. This is first and foremost, before any other goal or goals, is to simply have peace in my soul. It is the “how” that remains to be discovered but I assure my self that this will be the focus. I will ask myself what actions will bring me peace and I will choose to take that path, every time. Sober, awake, aware, and willing to keep learning, committed to my self, my peace, and living in that truth. It won’t be easy, but it will be good, because now I not only have the faith that it is possible but the wisdom to know that it is imperative. It is the end of an era that needed to happen from which I have learned so much. Now it is time to move on, suitcase neatly packed, ready to go.

    If you are still here, I want to thank you for coming, for bearing witness to what I’ve both lived through and learned. I hope that you have found some truth in it, some sort of shared experience. I started writing to document my experiences but I kept writing, and kept sharing, in hopes that I might shed light on these dark, inner struggles with grief and loss. I wrote to help myself transform, and maybe to let others know that this is something that is an option. I don’t know what others experience, as these things are not often talked about. I do think that people are going through much more than they let on and that maybe if I talked about it, others might, too, and together we might lighten each others load. So thank you for being here. I will continue to write, but in my mind I have closed this book and will be writing with a new, fresh life in my hands. Thank you, again. Peace be with you.

    , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

  • Things I Haven’t Said, Yet

    I am on day 4 of a hangover. A classic slip-up, a party between friends but mostly new acquaintances, where I was flooded by social anxiety and drank way too much, non-stop even, until 4 am. So I am still hungover, questioning everything, raw, exposed, compromised, and worried for my mental and emotional health. I know I must do things to keep up with my life but the down-pull of depression is hard to escape. Today I am here to dump my thoughts onto the page, to be revisited and addressed later.

    I am terribly fat. So fat that I am afraid to get onto a scale. Fatter than I have ever been before. I must stop myself and deal with it, before it becomes a permanent part of me and my personality. I can barely cross my legs, barely fit any of my clothes. I dread the mirror and am full of denial about this. I want to be thin and strong and sexy and yet I have been doing nothing about it. Instead I lose myself in food, my only pleasure.

    I am very unhappy. The only love in my life I have because of my kids. We love each other very much. My husband and I do not. I don’t even really like him anymore. Yet, I am completely dependent and cannot see myself leaving the marriage, putting my own unhappiness ahead of my that of the kids, of having a family, together, with both parents under the same roof. Would they too be happier apart, knowing that both parents have the chance to be happy, too? Who even knows. He is gone enough with work that who knows if it would even make a difference to have two houses. Are we able to be happy together when we are both home? This remains to be seen. I do know that I have been projecting a lot onto him. So either I am right and there is no chance of sharing the same house with him, all together as a family, or there is a chance, if only I change my own behaviour and expectations. That remains to be seen – perhaps I should make this an experiment of Lent.

    Lent is a time for fasting, reflection, imagining, projecting. It is a time for listening to ones self, ones soul, ones spirit. I must be intentional, decide to listen, to focus, and to meditate. Stripping away, finally, the addictions I’ve carried along with me forever. This time also leaving this last one of food behind, too. I think I can but now I know more than ever that one cannot strip everything bad away without replacing it with the good. It’s like jumping without a parachute, left to scream and plummet to the death. No thank you, this is not healing. Now I must learn to replace this self-abuse with care. Maybe that is why it has remained such a difficult task to complete as it required a commitment to self-care. Without this, perhaps it is just another form of self-punishment to not have these vices that I once enjoyed, at least. They were not, are not, good for me, yet I still enjoy them. Aha! This is something to really consider – I’ve punished myself for my punishments! I have taken away the things that I have punished myself with for years – the booze, the cannabis, the cigarettes – not as an act of love but as yet another form of punishment. You cannot have nice things because you cannot handle them!!! Imagine!!! Now, I must embrace an entire paradigm shift to say that actually I cannot have these things because they are not good for me. I give myself good food and take on habits that are good for me, for my body and spirit. I love myself and therefore I take care of myself. How revolutionary!!!

    Today I remembered a story that I have told myself often, over the years. As a young girl, I got in trouble for playing with the kittens in the barn on the farm on which we lived. Today, for the first time, I asked myself why I had remembered this. I think it struck me deeply as I was punished for doing something so pure and natural and joyous, playing with a litter of kittens. No, I do not deserve to be joyous and playful, I am inherently wrong in doing so. Perhaps this is the message that I received and carried with me for so many years. It bubbled up again today. What messages have a sent to my own children without knowing and now, how do I fix the damage??

    Oh my oh my, day 4 of a hangover is a big one. At least I am taking time to examine. I hate drinking and hate being in situations in which I feel like I want to drink, even need to drink to survive them. I can take care of myself. I can prepare for the work I have. I can change. I can, I can.

    Over a year or so ago I remember realising that I wanted to be one of those people that was so far evolved that I never even had the desire to drink or do anything else. I imagined that life being so far in the rear view mirror that it seemed like lifetimes ago. I still today think that is the way for me. It has been confirmed this past weekend. Can these lovely people be my friends without the drink? Perhaps. We will see. It lies with me, having made the decision not to drink. Can I be in friendships in which drinking is a major lubricator? That is the question. But for now, I am happy to have the decision made that this path to sobriety is still for me. Now I want more than ever to be kind and loving to my self, to assure myself that yes it is ok to be joyful and playful, to be me.

    Now, if only I could partition my time in a way that helps me to create this life that I want. Time to exercise, stretch, sit, be, lay, sleep. These seem to be all tied together. Then, time to work, perhaps a little bit more, but in a way that really flows, naturally. Then, finally, or perhaps my priorities need some adjustments, then time to create. To paint, to think, to write, to just be in the flow of creation, to be there in communion with myself and the universe. These points are now out and on paper – to be reviewed and considered. I will ruminate, ponder, accept, integrate and then plan. Oh the planning. I have surrendered to the being and look forward – without anticipation but with knowing that the time will come – to planning. First I must feel that I am no longer chasing my own tail but am walking confidently yet slowly and even quietly in the direction of my dreams, as is said. I wish to be balanced, feeling good inside my skin. Full of knowledge, my power, yet humble and open to the possibilities that will fall on the pathway in front of me.

  • Anniversary

    My mother died a year ago today, on the 29th of January, which is also my sister’s birthday. However this came to be, I cannot imagine why it did, but it is so. Seeing as it is not my birthday, I can easily say what a special day it is to share, of one soul leaving as did the other come in. Alas, it is not my birthday, so I can only imagine the complicated feelings that would come with such an occurrance. What a terrible thing to share. It’s absolute shit, let’s be honest, made even worse by the fact that my mother was, in fact, a narcissist to her core. She was a covert narcissist, as I’ve learned her type is called. She was never overtly controlling, overtly self-centered, overtly manipulative. No she was a strange sort of opposite character. She was always late – unable to understand how this might be hurtful to the child waiting for her. She was unable to connect to us as her self wasn’t shown value or connection growing up. She simply didn’t know what to do. She only understood her sadness, ignoring that of others, that which she often caused. She didn’t mean it, if you will, but she hurt us nonetheless. So, for her to die on my sister’s birthday could be read as her final narcissistic act, making the day about her, overshadowing my sister’s happy day. Now, I know she did not mean it. Wherever she is now, I know she is apologizing whole-heatedly, finally understanding, though perhaps too late. We just have to know, she didn’t mean it.

    This is not what I came here for today, to tell this agonising detail but it is hard not to talk about it. I feel for my sister but I will never understand her experience of what this day means, to her. Even if Mom had died on any other day, I don’t think that two people experience the same grief, just as it is impossible for anyone to have the same relationship with two different people. When I think about the journey of the relationship I had with my mom, well, there is just so much to think about. It was a long journey, with twists and turns, stops and restarts. It was complicated, to say the least. I am so grateful that we got to spend good times together towards the end of her life. I am even grateful for knowing that she would die and being able to prepare for it. There is so much that we missed out on, though. There are so many conversations that I would liked to have had with her. We just didn’t have the time.

    Lately I have thought about missing her and wanting to see her. She would often be alive in my dreams, but not present, not actually in them. I would just be in the world knowing that she was alive and close by. I’d be in San Francisco, Oakland, or Berkley, mixing up landscapes that I’ve stored in my memories. All these images about being home or feeling at home, so many different places, times, and images all mixed up. I find myself confused in these dreams, when something will tip me off that maybe I am dreaming, some sign or signal, or some strange perspective. Often times I am racing to get somewhere, late for something., unable to get where I need to be. I might be in London, St. Louis, or LA, New York. These places are always a melange of parts that I’ve stored in my head, little vignettes that I’ve stored, enchanted by their urban beauty.

    I often dream of the house I grew up in. Lately it seems I dream of it almost every night. I am very comforted by these dreams. Sometimes my parents are alive in these dreams, sometimes they have passed, but always, when I go home, I can feel them there, regardless. So when I wake, it is always painful to realise that I cannot go back there, I am here, in France, and that home is no longer ours. It may not even exist. It may have been destroyed to build a bigger, better house in its place. So when I awake, I have to grieve that feeling each time, that feeling of comfort, of continuity, of home. These dreams feel so real that when I wake up I have this transition time when I come into reality where I feel that all is lost. I have no home – the old home is gone and I am completely alone. I have to fight my way back to a conscious reality, one where I do have a home, a family, a place where I belong. It is not an enjoyable process but one that I know I must go through. I also know that it is not yet over, I have not yet finished this work. On the contrary, I seem to just now be entering a new era of this dream work.

    I just realised, very recently, that my mother is not usually present in these dreams and that my father never is. I think this stirred something in me, in the spirits, as in just the last week or so they have both appeared. A few days ago, I openly wept in my dream, begging the death of my mother to not be true, she can’t go, no, no, no… I cried, and wept lying on the ground, curled up into myself. When I woke up I realised that I mourned for here there in a way I haven’t been able to in the waking world, in a way that felt almost to vulnerable to bear. She was in another dream, too, present and happy. I am not sure what she said or did but I felt her love. I was happy that I was able to see her there. Just today I dreamt that my father was beginning a full-scale construction project on our home property and I was trying to talk him out of it, or at least slow things down to make sure he’d thought it through. Another night I dreamt that the shed, the building just across the drive from the house, had been finished into a lovely workshop that we shared. Another night, I dreamt of a built-in bench along the wall by the wood-burning stove in our home, which we’d worked on together in the dream. It was a lovely addition to the room, with cushions made to fit. In all, it made the room even more cosy and homey. To wake from these dreams – of contentment, of living parents, of home – and to have to come to terms, again and again, that actually they are not living and there is no more home – is this grief? Is this grieving? Is this my mind’s way of working through this all to make me finally accept that they are all actually gone? What a horrible, torturous process this is. I remember this well from when my Grandmother died. I would dream of being in her house, of being with her, of being in a world in which she was still alive. Every time I would wake up and realise that it was a dream I would lose her all over again. Sometimes I would cry, sometimes I would simply ache, sometimes I would cry out a guttural scream like a wounded animal, and sometimes the scream would be silent.

    All of this is part of this grief, this horrible grief. I want it to go. I want it to be over. I want them to be with me and I want them to let me live. I need to make my own home now, with my own family. I don’t know how I will ever replace these childhood homes, of my family and of my grandmother. I hope that I can at least add one, the home of my adulthood. I need to feel permanence; it has been too long. I have lived too many places, and none of them have been mine. I will inherit my mother’s home along with my sister, but we will probably not keep it forever as it is too sad. It was never our home but it was the one we made for her at the end of her life, to give her the happy ending that she so deeply deserved. Is that also happy for us? I am not sure but from where I stand now, I do not think so. I think we will keep it for awhile until we know that we will be ok, and then I think we will let it go. So I must buy a house of my own, for my self and my family, to belong once more. Maybe then the dreams will be happy, maybe I can welcome them all there too, these spirits of my family, to my new home. I need the grief to someday soon, I hope, to someday soon turn into an acceptance deep inside of me so that when I see them I can know that they are gone from the waking world, but that I can see them in my dreams, and it won’t have to be sad when I do, just more like a homecoming, for all of us.

    , , , , , , , , ,

  • Presence, Distractions, Avoidance

    Today is the 16th of January. It is getting very close to the year anniversary of my mother’s death, which is also my sister’s birthday. I want to call her, my sister that is, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to have a long conversation. I don’t want to choose the wrong words or say the wrong thing. Out of nervousness sometimes I just talk about myself, trying to make connections to what the other person is saying, a strange sort of narcissistic version of empathy that I learned from my mother, I think. You know that teenage habit of joyfully shouting over your best friends’ stories because oh my god how much can I relate and oh my god I get it. It’s a cacophony of belonging and feeling acceptance and wanting to share that deep understanding and comprehension because finally, someone else feels this way, too. Finally, after feeling so alone and weird and out cast. Finally, somebody else is going through it, too, and is of my god talking about it. Loud conversations with no end, bouncing around from one topic to the next because you are just so excited to finally be together, to be understood. It’s you, you all if you are very lucky, against the world, finally. Sometimes, I find it hard to listen, as my mind races but other times, it is because I feel so exposed, after cocooning in my own space, with no mirror, real or metaphorically. So exposed, that I cannot sit in myself. I cannot sit in my feelings because I don’t even know what they are, so I say random things that somehow relate to what you are saying. Knowing in my heart that it’s not what I am meant to do, this habit compound my feelings of wanting to disappear back into my cocoon, my dark room where no one can see me. I don’t mean to make it all about me. It is simply a defence mechanism, to distract from the awkwardness of not being grounded in my body, in my soul. You become my mirror, as the bright light of a winter’s day, finally sunny, exposes the grey, cloudy sadness on my face. Yes, I have been wallowing. No, I am not doing well, I wish I could say this, instead of pretending that actually yeah things are great. I lie, in my very presence, without saying an honest word. Instead, I fill the silence with stupid commentary and repeated anecdotes. I feel the same uncomfortable twinges in my being, afraid of being exposed. I shuffle in my seat, cover my rounded belly with my draping scarf, my belly that has grown through comfort eating and my sedentary life. I want to be empathetic, I want to listen, but all of my energy is consumed by my own insecurities, by trying to hide them, wish them away. I didn’t know how bad I was feeling until I came out of my room. I’ve been avoiding being present, avoiding the ickyness, avoiding it all. But here, in your sun-shining living room, surrounded by quiet beauty, I feel it, here, now. You can’t hide from another person who is in their vulnerability. Vulnerability exposes everything.

    Now it is today, the next day, the day after seeing a friend for the first time in ages and I must be honest with myself. I am not ok. This is hard. This is going to continue to suck and be sad and be hard and be dark, at least for awhile. There is a bottomless sadness inside of me that must be recognised. It must be recognised, seen, heard, felt, touched, held, and brought into the bright winter sunlight so that it may heal. I am not ok. I don’t want to pretend to be. All that I want is to be honest, to be real, to be a container for all of the things that are coming up, coming back, coming through me. I want to just be okay with what all of that is- not good, not better, not anything. I just want to be with it, no fake smiles, no cheap jokes about my lack of true self-care, of self-support. No – this is hard. This is me learning how to take care of my self for the first time in my life, without anyone having shown me before. This is about being deeply grateful for the friends, children, partners, family, and kind strangers that are all there – in their own ways – that create a web of support, not even support but just presence, empathy of being in this human experience in the same time as me. Everyone is going through something, and to have even one person who is going through something and sharing that experience with me – lessons, hardships, motivation – and setting an example by just going through it – for this I am deeply grateful.

    It is not easy to decide to take a full look at your life and to try to do things even a little bit differently. Now we are further into January when the resolutions start to wear off, if you have made them at the start of the new year. It is never easy to change, but to try to shift one’s life from avoidance to presence, to be present with the hard things, for me this has shown to be not only the hardest, but the most important, even essential thing. I realise that I have been so deeply suffering from the blessures of the past, the shadows, the hurt that I have carried with me for my whole life, for as long as I can remember. Yes, the happy memories are there too, so why is the sadness so much stronger? Is it because I have habitually avoided feeling the pain, afraid that it would break me? Distracting my self with medicines to avoid the pain, any kind, any way – sex, drugs, cigarettes, food, fighting, yelling, eating. I would use anything to escape, do anything but simply just being present with the feelings. Perhaps this too, I inherited from my mother.

    So now, can I be brave enough? Brave enough to sit with them, be silent, let them come into my cells and be a part of me, accepting them for what they are. Perhaps this is the key, perhaps they never go away, just like the happy memories. Perhaps I just have to not be afraid, to make space for them, to make room. Acceptance – is this all it might take to take away the fear? the thing is that strikes me so much is that although not everyone has the same pain, surely mine is worse that others but also is nothing compared to some others’, too. Although it is not the same as their’s, no two are alike, everyone is carrying pain with them, every day. We are all just tasked with hiding it. Pretending it’s not a part of us, it doesn’t effect us, pretending we are strong and inhuman. We are all carrying it through. To pretend that we are not is to deny our very humanity, our deepest commonality. So what if we all just stopped pretending it was fine, that we are great, that everything is lovely, and that it’s going well? Maybe it’s just me and my Anglo-American WASPy BS but nevertheless, it is difficult to know the extent of the problem unless we all start talking about it.

    So for today, this cold winter morning, I will say that I am not ok. I am ready to face being not ok. Ready to take care of my basic needs with love – eating right, sleeping well, even taking some exercise. I will smile to say hello but I will not apologise for my low mood. I will admit that doing my hair was the most I’ve done for myself in a week. I will admit that doing both my hair and my make up on the same day seemed an insurmountable task. I will admit that making a date with myself to buy some new plants is to prove that I can actually make myself feel better by creating an environment that is clean and filled with the fragrance and promise of the coming spring. I will admit that I am terrified of the anniversary that is coming up. I will tell my friends that I appreciate their presence and I want to be there for them, too. I will learn to listen from an honest place. I will be ok with being seen for exactly how I am for this is not about me, it is about all of us, being seen in the depths of all of it, finished making excuses, finished covering up the truth, just being it the depths of all of it, ok with this part of life too, knowing that we will all get through it, somehow. For now, I will try to be present in this soupyness of feelings, try to recognise avoidance and let go of distractions, and to see what I might actually finally be able to resolve, or at least integrate when I do so. I am, at the very least, optimistic, and feel grounded in the fact that this is undeniably the right choice.

    , , , , , , , , ,

  • On Writing

    Well, I’ve done it. Eighty thousand words on my life. Notes, ramblings, thoughts, pain, pleasure, reflections, all of them finally pasted into one big document. Sometime into this I thought I should try to turn them into a book. Six months ago, while doing a coaching program in project development that was really at the core about personal development, I decided to really give that a try. I tried to not let that long-away goal effect my writing, though I do have to admit there are a few things I’ve left out as I am just not ready to share. Plus, it’s like therapy – if you talk about absolutely everything then it will never end. One must be focused on the desired outcome or you just end up like some lifer like a Woody Allen character, living in the knowing of their neurosis without ever letting go of them. Instead they become part of their personality . You might know one of these folks – the kind that within minutes of meeting them they tell you all of their labels and all of their traumas, as if you asked. Then they will likely talk about themselves non-stop, explaining how and why they ended up that way, completely unaware of your disinterest. Well, that’s what I don’t want the book to be like, that at least I know.

    What is it about then? That is the question. One must have a theme, and be able to describe what it’s about in just two sentences. This still remains for me to figure out. Well, I guess I could start by explaining the ‘why’, that’s what they say should be at the center of everything nowadays, anyway. I started writing because I had no one to talk to. No one who I wanted to bother with all of this, no one who was interested. See, I am quite a strange bird. I enjoy solitude, but can get very lonely alone. I love people, but can’t be around them too much. I don’t really know how to act around them. I have had very few friends in my life, as I found most people painfully uninteresting, and when I find those that I do like, I assume that they wouldn’t like me in return. I never call people, rarely reach out, I think this is rooted in early rejection. When moving to a new city, I would soon forget the friends in the previous town, not because I didn’t care for them but because I figured they didn’t miss me, perhaps a lack of object permanence as well. In short, I am completely lost when it comes to relationships. I have no idea what a ‘normal’ relationship looks like. I started writing here to have someone to write to, to talk to, that wouldn’t feel burdened by all of it. Even better than talking to a therapist, not only was this free, but I wouldn’t be encumbered by spoken language, as for me it almost always feels like a performance. The written word is different. It is quiet, still, reflective. I can stop, restart, go back, erase. I read the words as I write them and there is this circular action of expression and then understanding, going deeper with each cycle, unconcerned with the reaction of another person, if I am taking up their time, talking too much about myself.

    All of these strange tendencies - to wonder, to hesitate, to hold back, all of these and more – I think, unfortunately, that I have carried over from my relationship with my mother from when I was very, very small. They say that your attachment style is determined from these first relationships and from most importantly, your mother. Is this sexist? I mean, I did come out of her. Connected from before birth, I do think that this one is the most important. She was disconnected no just from me, but from her very self. This carried to me, to all of us, not just as a child but for all of my life. I have to remind myself of this, even now, as the tendency when someone dies is to idealise them. One one hand, this is a beautiful thing. I feel that when she died she left all of the bad things, the hard things, the pain here on earth with her body and left it here, free. I have to remind myself that even until the end, she was disconnected. The only time she could show love was either after a fight or after much demanding from one of us kids. It was a habit, or lack thereof, that was so deeply entrenched in her that I don’t even think she realised that it might be possible to show love. My father was similar, disconnected, if warm. He had his moments of connection, and availability, but they were not deep or often.

    I can’t make light of how important these initial connections have been in the total development of my personality. I felt unworthy of love, angry at them and the world that I perceived other children, in other families, treated differently. I had to fight to receive love, demanding it to come at the end with the resolution. What a strange thing to realise, only now, after 48 years, of that 30 years of trying to find love through arguments. How terribly sad, even tragic.

    So I try to show my kids love all of the time, through words, actions, hugs, and deeds. I remain at times unavailable, in ways unavailable, and I imagine how this effects them. They surely have their own personalities, the ones they arrived with, but I worry that their attachment to me and their father has effected them, too. At least, though, now I am aware and trying to do better. But this is a process that must be completely absorbed by the person, the parent, in this case, me. There is only so much trying to change that one can do at once. To be able to step outside normal behaviour to do better, this is real work – healing and parenting at once. When tired at the end of the day, this is a real challenge. Bedtime, when kids need us most to say goodbye to the waking world for almost ten hours. When we are tired, too. They don’t want to go, to leave me, they are afraid. What is it that I’ve done, or not done, to perpetuate this fear? Something to do with my own fears, my own anger, my own feelings of unworthiness that have carried over, of that I am sure.

    So for now, I keep writing, in hopes that I will keep going through this process, in hopes that I will keep getting better and keep doing better for my self and my kids. Keep trying to figure it out, the roots and the causes. Keep trying to find solutions and to heal. Writing has helped me so much thus far, as so often the truth comes out as I write. The realisations happen as I’m writing. It is through this process I am able to let the information that has been hiding in my subconscious into awareness and then learn from it. It is like a magical cycle, this process. As long as I keep showing up, keep writing, whether it’s sense or nonsense that comes out, it seems to be, slowly but steadily working.

    I am not yet sure of that big ‘why’. I know I want to share my story, but not every detail. I don’t want to do it for vanity, no. I do want to talk about grief, about loss, and about recovery after. I want to talk about the integration of many selves from different parts of life, from different eras, different relationships. I want to talk about coming home to one’s self, after feeling lost and unanchored for so very long. I feel like those statements are circling around the main truth, the main ‘why’. I am sure I can flesh it out if I just keep writing.

    , , , , , , ,

  • Boxing Day

    It’s December 26th, the day after Christmas. I made it through The Day. I made it through the first one without my mother here on earth. Not my mother, my father, or my grandmothers are still here, a fact that I only realised the other day. Christmas felt like my first one really alone as an adult. But I wasn’t alone, I have my family; my husband and my children. They are my family, the one I made on my own, by my own choices, my labor and my sometimes fortitude. Oh how lucky I am, I tell myself often. I tell myself often as to not forget that, as they say, what I have now I once hoped for, prayed for, and could only dream of. So as to not forget that life’s accomplishments are not simply professional, artistic, or financial but personal, too. Creating a family is not a given, nor is stability, safety, security. It should not just be another box to be ticked while striving in all other areas of life. It is, it can be, an accomplishment all on its own. For me at least, it was the goal, the only goal that ever really mattered to me and I am just now coming to terms with this. Perhaps by now you might understand why. If you have read a bit of the stories I’ve put down here and blindly shared with you. Whoever you are, reading these, you might understand why the only thing that I ever cared about was creating a life of my own with a family of my own, as to leave behind the one of my origin. My mother and father are now both gone. I no longer have the weight of their lives around my neck, pulling me down, making me heavy. I no longer have the confusion and panic cursing through my mind, and veins. Or do I? It’s a sad, sick irony that I still act on these body memories. I still have the stored histories and they too often play out as insecurities and assumptions and defences in my life today. They are still in me, these previous lives. Just like, even after two long summers of work, there is still junk in the shed at my mom’s house, just like there has always been in every house, in every shed. There are still boxes to go through, boxes and boxes of stuff. There are boxes of Christmas decorations that were never used, that my mother lovingly compiled and saved. Boxes that we couldn’t bring ourselves to go through. We’ll save those for another trip, I said to my sister, and tucked them away in the back.

    We did a little tour of the junk together before she had to leave to go to work in late summer as I stayed on to do what I could with the things in the shed. We were determined to get rid of the papers, at least, as there were at least 30 years of boxes of papers. Unopened bills, magazine tear-ings, old New Yorkers, letters, notes, lists, dissertations. I think she may have even written a book. She never talked about anything, though, anything that she had done in her life. She just saved it, saved it for later. There were quotes she loved, and comic strips, sometime there would be a bundle in a little plastic bag, zipped up. They were like little collages, tucked away. I have saved a few because there was such a feeling of the essence of her in them. These little packets held some significance that was evident only to her., so much so that she preserved them in zipped up plastic pouches. The whole process was like an excavation of some strange tomb of objects and timestamps of her lifetime, of both her inner world and the outer world at large. It was all there, waiting to be pieced back together by some loving conservator, hoping that someone would finally come along to notice what she’d noticed and bring it to light.

    All that was left, after her passing, was everything she’d ever thought worth saving – which was a lot – and me and my sister. We were the keepers, by default. No one else saw the boxes for what they were, besides junk, besides a problem to be dealt with, to be thrown away, finally, because she was no longer there to protest. We saw them for what they were – evidence. Evidence that she had lived, that she had been there, even when no one else saw her. Even when she was alone, engulfed in her clutter. Her whole life was there, in souvenirs, a word which means ‘memories’ in French. It was all there, in property deeds, receipts, patterns for crafts of all sorts. There were quotes that she’d copied from books, lists of radio programs she’d liked, events that she’d hoped to attend. It was all there. Left for us to piece together, if we choose to do so.

    One of the funny things mom said in the days before she died, perhaps a little high on morphine, was Papers are great! To which I laughed whole heartedly, and told her she was right, and that I loved her. Towards the end of her life, when Camille and I came to visit and to help her get through the cancer treatments, we found out just how little our brother had done to help her. So we dove right in, to sort through the mess for her, once and for all, we’d hoped. Before that trip, I had a phone call with Mom to assess the situation. I told her not to be ashamed, or embarrassed, that I just wanted to see it ahead of time as to not be shocked when I arrived after the two day journey it would take to get to her from France. She showed me the house on a video call so that I could see. She answered questions about what my brother had done, and not done for her. There wasn’t much on the positive side. He had mostly left her, alone, in a house full of boxes and mess. She was at the point, finally, that she knew she couldn’t handle it alone, not anymore. Not with the cancers. – she had not one but two that sh’d have to fight. She couldn’t handle any of it, she could finally admit, and thank God we were coming, me and my sister. So we did, we came to help her, and she finally was fully ready to accept it. We went through boxes and boxes of papers and treasures and junk and keepsakes – sometimes all of these things in one box.

    We couldn’t, or didn’t want to, just throw boxes away, as it seemed that in every box there was one thing worth keeping. At the point that we realised this, perhaps just days into the work, we decided to divide and conquer. We would divide the boxes into categories such as Christmas, papers, photos, kitchen, toys, tableware, keepsakes, crafts, yarn, books, and just-can’t-deal-with-this-right-now. Photos, books, and useful tablewares stayed inside. Papers were gone through until I thought I had all the financial information that we needed to understand her accounts. Toys stayed in the back room in hopes that the grandkids could one day soon come over to play. Crafts and yarns went into the tiny room/large, unfinished closet that we made up to be the craft room that she always wanted. Christmas – there was so much of it – was all set to the back right side of the storage shed, to be dealt with later. There was even a spot stacked high with boxes of only just cookie cutters.

    At the end of that summer, we’d put everything that belonged in the house away, having made spots for things, finally. The rest was also away, in the shed, to be dealt with later. Later and later, it seemed. There was a huge section of just papers, boxes and boxes of papers that had proved too much for me and my sister. They would have taken too much time, but also mental and emotional energy. It is not easy to open these boxes and to see, to understand, just how bad off she was at the time they were made. These boxes were like time capsules from her life. We could see the times when she was really bad off, when she saved things that didn’t really make much sense. She’d filled countless of those clear page portfolios with pages from magazines on every which subject, with ads, with nonsense. Was it from when she was fighting a lot with my brother? Falling out of love with my father? Some of them had to be from after he died and none of us talked to her, angry at the part we all felt that she’d played in his death, by negligence. It was all there, from every era. All the evidence, of all the times, of her life.

    It was after my father had died that she repacked her things once more. Some of them were still in boxes from when she moved out of the house that they’d owned in Corona, California. She packed her things this time to move out to Lakeland, Florida, to be by her mom and her sister, where she had by the grace of God found a teaching job. It was during this packing that she sent me my boxes to close out that chapter of our family life. She sent these boxes to my high-rise apartment in Chevy Chase, MD, just across the city line of DC. I sat them in a nook in my living room and hid them behind a Japanese paper screen. I slowly unpacked them, full of my personal effects but also Christmas ornaments and small antiques left behind by my Grandmother, for my father. I wondered how she’d chosen the things that she sent me. There was an army trunk that belonged to my Grandfather, with every voyage marked on it, including its last one, from Illinois to California, in my aunt’s pretty handwriting. I then repacked all of it again when I left the US behind, taking only what I could fit in three suitcases. These boxes that still sit in a storage in Maryland. These boxes of memories, boxes of life, boxes of death. There is even one box marked ‘Dad’. One of the movers joked – Hey, is your dad in here? – to which my sister and I answered, in unison, after exchanging a knowing look and a slightly sadistic smirk said, yes, to which he fell silent, first confused and then understanding. There are still his ashes left to scatter, left in the dark and quiet storage cube in Maryland. This spring my aunt, my mother’s sister, when speaking of the details of the service she was planning for my mother, said that she felt it wasn’t right that mom’s ashes had been waiting so long to be interred. It had been about three months. If she only knew about Dad, I thought. But she didn’t, only Camille and I knew. Well us and Dad, I would assume. I don’t think he’d really care though, to be honest, or I would have done something about it already. Maybe that is the final act that can end this chapter – to plan a family service to spread his ashes somewhere. I can’t even imagine it – mostly because I’d have to invite my brother. But maybe I wouldn’t have to, as I did as he’d asked me, I ‘d had made a little marble urn of Dad’s ashes, a little part of him, as my brother’d requested. It’s all, he’s all, in the same box, in storage.

    This summer was the second round of going through the boxes and throwing things away, again just me and my sister. Mom’s sister, her daughter, her brother and his wife had all offered to help, an offer we only sometimes politely, but always declined. We knew it had to be just us, as by this point we were just trying to minimise any further trauma to both of us. We are the only ones who understand it all, we agreed and so we did what we could. She went through at least twenty boxes of papers before I got there, pulling out things of interest, of some kind of value, with some story, pieces of the puzzle that was Mom’s life. When I arrived in July with my children, she already gone through them and they sat under a tarp in the back garden, protected from the humidity and rain as to not weigh them down, as the cost at the dump is determined by the weight of the materials to be thrown out . At one point in my weeks of working on it all alone, I took off the tarp and started to look through these already examined boxes. With exhaustion, I stopped my self, slowed my frantic pace and looked at them as one insurmountable task. I resigned myself. I knew at that point that I had to trust my sister’s work, judgement, and wisdom. I put the tarp back over the pile of boxes of papers. I knew I had to let go of all of it, of all the chances to find something, the maybe missed clues that were in that overwhelming mound. I had to accept that I might never know certain parts of my mother’s story that were perhaps still hidden in that mountain of boxes filled with countless papers and whatever else. I was sad but I knew it was the only way. There was just too much left to do. So I covered it back up, and went on back into the shed, and went through every last one of the unopened boxes.

    The very last one must have been one sent by my aunt to my father, after she cleared out their mother’s house, alone. In this box were some postcards, a few photos, but below all of that there were letters, letters from and old high school girlfriend mostly, and a couple other of Dad’s friends. They were written in a language, and a manner, and with an innocence that was so long forgotten. It must have been his first real girlfriend, and her name was Susie, too. I wondered if when he met Mom, he thought of this first Susie, too. Maybe it made him think it was a sign, significant that she shared this name with his first love. From these letters, I could tell that they had known each other while living on a base, perhaps when they had lived in California. He had moved away, probably to Lebanon, Illinois, where my grandmother would much later run the print shop at the charming college there. I’d spend happy days there with her, in summer, walking freely on the campus, covered with a canopy of trees, or in the theater that was attached by a corridor to the print shop. I never strayed far, but felt a sense of simple freedom there, nonetheless. I heard stories of the big beautiful house that they’d lived in there while the kids were in high school there. Where my dad had played baseball and was offered a full scholarship for it. He excelled in school, too. He had so much promise then, I think. It was odd but comforting to read those letters, to imagine him, then. It was funny that that was the very last box that was opened, such a special one. It felt right, meant to be, reassuring and comforting. It was not time to throw those things away, either. No, they could stay a bit longer, be read by my sister and perhaps by me again, too. So I put the contents all back in the box, back on a pile. I looked around and thought wow, we’ve finally opened every last box. Finally, for this round at least, we were done.

    A few days later, the workers came to take away all of the boxes we’d decided could go. It seemed almost too easy, as they loaded the truck. They took all of the rubbish and the random bits and pieces first. Then they uncovered the pile, taking off the tarp, and using a dolly, took the boxes away four at a time. I saw that great collection of papers finally disappear. I thought again that no matter what I might have found in those boxes, I would never fully know her, or understand her. Perhaps this was to reassure my self or perhaps it was just to really say goodbye to any remaining sense of possibility. I knew that what I had kept would have to be enough. To have had kept more would have risked my own sanity, would have kept me running in circles, obsessively digging through details just as she had obsessively saved them, and I just wasn’t willing to do that to my self, not anymore. I had kept enough, even too much, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to reconcile my memories with these remaining artefacts. There was not going to be any magic moment when it all made sense. It would never all make sense. Maybe that is why she kept everything herself – in hopes that she could make it all make sense at some time. Perhaps she had hoped to one day stop time and step outside of herself and have a look back at all of the papers and things that she had saved to say oh, that’s why, that’s the reason, that’s the real important thing. But she never did, because it all piled up until none of it made any sense anymore, until it was all so completely insurmountable that she couldn’t do anything at all with it. So she just left it there, all of the remnants of an un-lived life, the plans, the activities, the interests. All of the quilts she never quilted and the scarves she never knitted. All of the books she never read with the answers that might have helped her to finally heal herself. All of them. All of them left for us to unpack for her, and to keep unpacking, until all we would have left are the artefacts of a life that she wished she had lived, in a house that we tried to make a home for her, finally, so that she could die knowing that her happiness and comfort did matter. She could die knowing that she deserved good things, and to be loved by us, her girls, safe and loved in a home of her own.

    I don’t really know how to end this story, on this Boxing Day, the 26th of December. When I sat down to write, I didn’t think that this would be what I would write about. I did not intend to write about boxes, but of course that is what has come out. My whole life with my family of origin, I was surrounded by boxes, by mess, by an unsettled life and home. I think that finally, now, I am able to see that it is ok that I the thing that I wanted most in my adult life was to be free of these boxes and of everything that they represent. I have only recently come to realise that the thing I most cared about in my adult life was creating a real life for myself, in a real home, with a real family, with a husband that cared about having these things, too. For before this, with my original family, this never seemed to be important and it was something that I wanted so badly, and never got, from them. I wanted it not only for its materiality but for what it represents – safety, security, predictability, attention, care, respect, pride, worth, and love. I spent my entire adult life wanting to create this for myself and finally, I have. The fact that I was able to then do this for my mother, through our reconciliation, by caring for her and supporting her in the end of her life, and by helping her to have the home she always wanted, this, all of this, was perhaps the greatest gift and the greatest lesson of all.

    , , , , , , ,

  • At Last

    Somehow I’ve broken my habit of writing. There were times this past year when I wrote every day, not wanting to go through what I was going through on my own, it seemed the only way to stay present, to process, to understand the complex feelings I was experiencing. The day my mother died, the day after, the day I was homebound – these were all such intense, peculiar times that I did not want to let them pass without documentation. Now, it is December 18th, a day like any other, and I am sat down to write. I am lying down, to be honest, on top of a made bed. It is cold outside and I am, happily, still in pajamas. I will sleep again, and am looking forward to the exhaustion that only a good writing session will bring. Looking forward to reaching into wherever this exercise takes me, I realise there are certain things that I am not quite ready to deal with. I don’t know if I ever will be.

    I am haunted by the memory of the madman that my father became when he got sick, in the short years before he died in 2008. Stripped of his jolly, fat exterior by a bad gastric bypass surgery, he had become a skeleton. His behavior was erratic, as though the loss of the weight that had grounded him for his whole life had suddenly let him fly any which way as the wind gust, fully untethered. He had turned into someone that none of us recognised. This transformation has made me wonder who he really, truly was, in fact.

    Now, it is 4 hours later and I am awaken from a very long nap by an alarm that I set on my phone to insure that I did not sleep through the entire day. The last thing I remember dreaming is not at all about my father or my family. No, it is about me, and my questioning of my self. I was standing in a check-out line, buying art supplies. In the line next to me, there is a woman who is buying a book on Urban Architecture. I see this, and I start to cry. I am sad that I am checking out to be an artist, that I didn’t choose what she did.

    I should begin by saying that at one point, I thought of my self as an Artist, capital “A”. I wanted to be a exhibing artist, having shows, selling work, getting paid to do something that I was really quite good at, and most importantly, enjoyed doing. I have always had an eye for aesthetics, but it was more than that, being an Artist. It was about communicating something at once personal and universal. Communicating without words. Expressing meaning in the ambiguous. As emotions are not always clear, it is possible to visualize the same alchemy, the same experience. It was something that I liked and something I was good at. But the strange thing is, I never actually tried to do what I wanted to do – to become an exhibiting, selling artist who lived of the sales of their work. I never actually got myself together and did the leg work it takes to become what I wanted to be for just one reason – I was so afraid that I would fail that I never actually tried in the first place. I never put my understanding of sales and marketing towards myself. I wasted it on others’ products, as those were easy to pick apart, to judge, to frame through a commercial mindset. In thinking back I wonder just how I wasted my opportunity to make this a reality. Thinking back, I remember the reality of my life, then. After school, living in Washington, getting back to my art, when I got into printmaking, my life was kind of perfect. I had a job, had an apartment, and lived on my own. I found my stride in taking a class at the printmaking lab that was down the street. Just off of Wisconsin Ave, there was the Georgetown print lab, which at that time belonged to The Corcoran. It took just a short walk to get there. On my days off, I would go there to continue my work. I steered away from the self-indulgent self-portraits that I had lovingly made in art school. I left behind the performance art that I toyed with after, the latter an extension of the former. I wanted to try something new – I wanted to focus on beauty, and on seeing.

    Before arriving to the street on which to turn to find the print lab, there was an old cemetary. It was a little unkept, which only added to its charm. In the early spring, in those first days of warmth and sunshine, I would stop there to enjoy the patchy meadows of wildflowers. It wasn’t mowed often, just enought to keep it from going completely wild, so these lovely little clusters of flowers would appear. With my compact digital camera, I would take close-up pictures of the flowers in this urban pasture, where it seemed that tiem had stopped. I would sit there, enjoying the first warm breezes of the season. I decided that this woudl be what I would print, making abstractions and patterns first in the computer and then printing them with silkcreens into lovely works on fine paper. I wanted to emphasise the beauty of these simple flowers by looking closely at their forms and blossoms, by venerating them, lifting them up in an almost ecclesiastical way. They were miracles of nature, how could we just pass them by, on our way to something better? Stop, look, and witness the divinity of these tiny little miracles. How many thousands of years did it take them to get here, to be so beautiful? How could we possibly just walk by them, unfased, on our way to something better? How could anything possibly be better than this?

    Sitting in this cemetary meadow, amongst these tiny miracles, I felt at home. It remnded me of the same kinds of days I spent at home, as a child, in the country, when I had nothing to do but to be, to lay in the soft grass in the field behind our house, in a sleepy mid-afternoon haze, almost asleep. This bliss, this scene, is one that I think of often. I think that every time that I’ve reached for contentment, it was to feel this simple bliss. No where to go, nothing to do, no-one to be. Just laying down in a soft spring pasture of wildflowers, feeling the warm air and soft breezes, with a dog close by and the woods not too far away, in the center of nowhere special. Maybe this is my gift to share, this deep appreciation of beauty, of being still. In an world so busy and full of things to do, so full of burnout, maybe this is the thing to be found again, this simple bliss.

    At the time in my life when I was making these pictures, I was content. Artmaking gave me something to love, something to make me feel good about, something to make me feel less lonely in myself. I remember I enjoying being alone and being around others that enjoyed being alone, too. These were my people. There is something special about printmakers. They share a love for art, and for process, for techique and also for experimentation. No matter where they come from, or what they make, it seems we all share a few common traits, enough that when together, there seems to be a shared common ground that we all stand on, together.

    In asking myself why, why I never really tried, I think of what else was going on then. My father was sick. My parents were divorcing. For them, after so long, everything was all finally falling apart. Finally, when I was starting to find my stride, as a young adult (ok, I’d hit 30 but still felt so young), I was sucked back into their drama even as they were a world away, in California. My sister was finishing high school and had no plan. She at that time was living with my father. When I visited them for Thanksgiving, I was shocked at the state of their apartment. I can still feel that shock today. It was like a band-aid had been ripped off and denial was no longer possible; there was a pussing wound below. They were living in a cavernous apartment, overpowered by the antiques that my grandmother left to him. There was too much stuff in too little space. My sister’s room was that of a teenager who’d been left to fend for herself with piles of stuff everywhere, with a double bed and not much else in the way of furniture. My father’s bedroom was much more frightening, as the disaray was indicative of a much larger problem than what I’d been able to see before. It was squalor, there is no other word for it. He looked like a sick, destitute man, living the end of his life surrounded by poverty and filth of his own creation. It was clear to me at that time that he was not able to care for himself. That was the biggest shock of all. My father – the man who I was supposed to be able to turn to, to lean on, my rock, my Dad – was sleeping on a single mattress on the floor, surrounded by a mess created through a great disregard for himself. He could not take care of himself. Most likely, he never had been able to, he’d just been surrounded his whole life by people that made it ok-enough for him to keep going. Now, with a broken heart and a broken body, he couldn’t do anything for himself, anymore. I panicked, and while he pretended to be ok, he clearly wasn’t. I panicked, at at the end of that trip I ran away, back to my life, a life that I’d just been able to construct for myself.

    The dates are still confusing to me, I’ve mixed up a few memories, that is sure. My sister was still in high school, which means she was not yet living with me. Maybe this was the year I had convinced my friend Lola to come stay with me, as we were together that Christmas. That was the same Thanksgiving that he came to see me and our family that was getting together in Baltimore. He met Lola then, too. He took us out to dinner and abruptly left the table to go out into the street, where he bought us a rose. Camille was there, too. Perhaps this home memory was the year before, or another holiday? It’s too much to try to remember now. Too many details, details that I have blended together into one large chapter that I’d just as well like to forget. Well, the body keeps the score, they say. It doesn’t forget. It remebers all too well, even if the memories are distant and foggy, it remembers how it all felt and it carries on feeling that way, deep inside. So I guess in order to move on, to let go of those bad feelings, I am going to have to remember. This is a good start, I think.

    When I wake up from my nap, on this uneventful afternoon of December 18th, 2023, I remember this last part of my dream, in which I am crying about having chosen my artist dream, having seen the lady next to me with he books on Urban Architecture. How strange, I think, and yet how helpful. I pick up my phone, deciding not to fall back to sleep. I open Instagram and see a post, hear it say “You didn’t miss your chance, you missed a chance.” I don’t let it finish, I close my phone. I understand enough. This great disappointment I have in my self, in my life, I don’t need to carry with me. I missed a chance perhaps, but not the chance.

    For years, for my whole life, perhaps, I have been unsure what to make of my self. I have been afraid to make a choice, to make the wrong choice. Art, design, commerce, or even Urban Architecture. For the past few years, as my childen have entered school and I’ve learned enough French to make it even possible for me to work here, I have wondered what I might do with the rest of my professional life, a good 20 years ahead of me. I continued to be unsure, then became almost too sure that I had, in fact, stumbled upon my new dream – to improve the town centers of small towns in France, to create new businesses and give new life to these downtrodden places. This is a gift of creativity – to be able to see the potential, the possibility of places and spaces. I became sure of this, began writing plans for where I lived before, and then again for where I live now. I was so sure of this new calling that I forgot to stop to think that maybe what was required to do this was an actual set of skills, not just a passion, a drive, and a slew of ideas. Again, I wished and wrote instead of planning and doing. I wanted to prove that I could, tried to pretend that I was already, almost like I used to do when I played pretend as a little girl. What is this in me, to act this way? Emboldened by a fake-it-till-you-make-it, be-the-change-you-want-to-see, if-you-can-dream-it-you-can-be-it kind of culture, I thought if I said that I was, I would fall into a lucky break, somehow. I wanted to prove that I could do it, and with my ego front and center, I waited for someone to notice how special I was. Instead of asking smart questions, admitting what I didn’t know, asking for help along the way, I thought if I was clever enough, perhaps no one would notice that I had really no experience at all. What a silly fool I was. I realised this recently, after an exciting opportunity did fall in my lap and I realised, when a deadline made me face the truth, that I had no idea what I was doing. I was full of ideas but no method, no network, no skills, and no company behind me to provide the services needed to support my grand ideas.

    And so, my ego crashed and crumbled. I had to admit, to myself, that I could not do what I so badly wanted to do. I felt like a complete failure. But also, I felt a great relief. I no longer had to go on pretending to be something that I was not. I could however, just be. I looked at a complex problem – an urban renewal project – for which I had so desperately wanted to create a solution and said to myself: It’s not my problem. I don’t have to solve it. I realised that there was nothing that I had to do. I have gone through hell, many times, to get to this point in my life and now, I don’t have to prove to my self, or to anyone else, that I am capable. I know that I am. I also know that there are things in this life that I cannot change, particularly the very real circumstances that make up the professional world around me. Most importantly, my value is not tied to my professional accomplishments. I don’t have to prove my value by doing something amazing. I am amazing. My life is a miracle just because it is. I am as much of a miracle as those tiny little flowers in the forgotten garden of the old Georgetown cemetary.

    Here I am, on this ordinary day, now on the other side of this rupture. I am taking pleasure in slowing down. I have lowered my expectations, still burdened with greif, I have decided to be kind to my self. I am no longer denying the inevitability of my emotions. Why should I? My uncle used to lecture me about setting myself up for success. Oh, how he meant well. So now, I am setting my self up to not be disappointed, at least. Content seems a stretch – perhaps I am simply setting myself up for the season ahead, another season of hibernation, but this one much different than the last. This is one full of sorrow and grief. It will also be full of healing and change, and comfort. Filled with learning to love and care for myself, at last. No more running, no more denying, just feeling the feelings and giving myself grace. This is a time of knowing my own limit and of accepting the way that things are. Of giving the best of myself to others, no matter for how short of a time, and then resting up, knowing that I will be able to do it again, soon. Most importantly, this will be a time of respecting the needs that I have to be still and quiet, to grieve, to rest, and to recover so that at some point again in the future I will be again able to move forward. Yet this time I am determined, at last, to be whole in myself, radically accepting all parts of me as me. Loving myself as I would if I were my child. Caring for the basics first, shutting out the demands of the world, protecting myself. Lying in, as they call it, when you first have a baby, is that special time when the world stays at bay, so that the mother and child can bond, and be whole. I think I will do that with my self, for my self, this season, at last.

    , , , , , , , ,

  • The Process

    Here I am, again, Sunday morning in a coffee shop. Same coffee shop, different city, but they are basically the same. No alarms and no surprises, please. I will take the predictability at this point, the comfort of consistent banality over anything else. For I am drowning and at least this gives me a life preserver to cling to in its simple, if corporate, stability. I know exactly what I will get here, even the variations are known by heart. But I have not come here to complain today. No, quite the opposite. I am here to get myself back on to the solid ground of faith – in tomorrow and the next day and the process. This too, shall pass and the season to bloom will come again. Now the skies are dark and drizzly, and bleak. My head is full, not only with my thoughts but in actuality, with a stuffy head cold that is for sure here to amplify the ridiculousness of everything with a touch of sadistic irony.

    I have had moments lately when I realise that I just feel bad. There is no other way to describe it, as in these moments my physical and emotional realms are one, and I just feel bad. So I hunt for dopamine bursts in sugar and chocolate that are never quite enough. I know if I exercise I will feel better and will in turn, do better and in turn, feel even better. But for now I am so tired and just want to take to the bed, a southern saying that is so perfect that I can’t believe I’ve never heard it before this year. Perhaps I had, and just didn’t notice it because it didn’t apply to my life. But I’ve always had times like this, so this must be the first time – take to the bed. Turn off the world, draw the curtains, and let my self be consumed by it all until I am ready to emerge again. For now, I am deep in it, deep in some sort of existential despair that is amplified by a simple head cold and the changing weather. In total, I feel like it could be the end of me. However, in hearing this phrase I feel like I am not alone in this terrible, dark, complex psychic state. It tells me there have been generations of women before me that have needed to, wanted to do the same, and have done it, until they could gather the strength to get up and face the world outside their chamber, again.

    Oh how I long for the bed, but it will have to wait. I have one more week of juggling and then I’m taking a break. Perhaps I will take to the bed next week, but most likely I will not. Most likely, this too will have passed, as it always does. But this time, this time I am truly listening to what my body and spirit is telling me, to rest, to stop, to take inventory of how far I’ve come and how far I still must go, to gather the strength and the fortitude, and to map out what steps I will take to get there. The tricky, sticky thing about sobriety is that you are slowly uncovering the reality of the past and figuring out a new future from a new perspective. There are a lot of emotions that come up in this process – regret, sadness, grief, acceptance, anger, sorrow, frustration, – and they don’t come up once and just go away. They come at you like a tank. Indestructible and unstoppable, they roll over you, with all of their wheels bound together to survive any terrain and resistance. After you stand up and think it’s over, more come, relentlessly. The only way to get it to end is to surrender – again and again – and fall down on the earth and let them crush you with their stark, hard-to-fathom reality. Easy to say but harder to do, as with each new realisation is followed by another round of tanks, from opportunities missed, chances not taken, or finally understanding the sad ‘why’ of so many actions and inactions. It is hard not only because of the emotions, the realisations, the ripple effect of all of it but probably mostly because I am not used to dealing with anything sober. The softening effects of cannabis are no longer an option. The champagne buzz when everything feels light and possible is no longer an option. There is no escaping it, no pause from it all. I long for help, for relief, but all I can do is wait, to sleep, to hope that the skies will clear and that the sun will come again.

    I realise bit by bit how much is left to still unpack, to face, and my ego only lets in a bit at a time, to protect me from having a total mental breakdown. For that I am grateful, but also I have to continually come to terms with the idea that this is truly a process and that I am in the middle of it. Can I do something to hurry it up? Perhaps. Perhaps if I keep up with the positive actions I can hurry it up. No more social media doom scrolling, no more escapist TV. Better food, better habits. More feeling, less pushing the emotions away. My god, this is exhausting. I am exhausted, and yet I have to get up every day, at least for the kids. They deserve to see my happiness, or at least my attempts at getting there, because doesn’t that count, too? The trying, the grit of just getting up and trying again to create a soft safe place to live in, in this in-between time of having started but having not yet finished, of living in the process. In between heaven and hell is earth, where we are now, living, breathing, and struggling, trying over and over again. I just have to accept that this is all part of the process, and show them, too, that this is part of life. Things will not always be perfect, but we will be together, and we will get through it, together. We will make cosy, reassuring fires and play Clue and bake cakes and watch movies where the good guys always win. When we get scared, we will pull closer still, all sleep in the same room if we need to, to feel that it is us against the world. It is ok, I remind my self, as I read the words as I write them. I can be ok with this in-between time, as well. I can get through it, it is not just them who I am showing, it is my self, too. This is the reward of being sober, at least now I know that the downward pull is temporary. Even if my body does not yet feel this way, my head knows this. This too, is temporary, this hell that I am feeling, and I must just keep going through it. At least now I can recognise it for what it is, a temporary passing state, part of the process. Being aware definitely isn’t easy, for now I feel what I am feeling, and can begin to understand why I feel the way I do, too.

    I have these whispering notions in me. They are gentle whispers, for now at least, as they don’t want to blow me right open. What if? What if things had been different, what if I had tried harder, or even tried, to make something of my true self? For now I have realised, and I am aware, that trying by wishing and hoping and thinking about it in my head does not mean that I actually have tried in the real world. Even most recently, I fear bringing the ideas that I have into the real world. I think I have failed to launch – failed without even trying. Failed because I was afraid of failing. What a terrible, unfortunate cliché. Overall, in my life, there has also been the overarching theme of wanting to be noticed, rescued, discovered, saved… Why, oh why is this? I mean, besides the fact that this idea is pervasive in every part of society and culture, besides the fact that I never had a guiding parent in my life, besides the fact that all along I have just been trying to survive life itself, besides the fact that I found it all so incredibly hard to figure out, besides all that, it is a wonder that I survived in tact at all. At home, in her mind at least, my mother was a feminist, but in the context of the real world, she was not. She stayed home with the kids and was somehow under the thumb of my father, a situation that I have unwittingly repeated with my own life, and shown my own daughter. Half the reason I have decided to stay in the marriage is to write a different ending for my own daughter, to show her that this is not the way, this is not the end to my story. I will not burn my bridges just to prove that I am right for there is too much at stake, too many innocent victims. I feel that if I were to walk away now I’d just be creating a-whole-nother mess of me trying to do everything myself to prove that I can, all while breaking up the family home, and for what? Can I even trust my own judgement at this point, in this state that I am in? At least from inside it, still in it, can I try to fix what I have broken. As I crawl out of a hole of my own making to live again above the surface of life, I can show her, and my boys, that this is not, in fact, ok. I am not crazy, not worthless, nor destined to be sad and powerless, no, in fact, I am a whole person and am determined to live my life as one. They must see me grow and blossom, and make amends for the damage that I have caused in my wake of not-knowingness, they must.

    This sad story must end with me, the story of the female shacked to her mate, somehow defined by him and making up for his shortcomings, because someone has to do it. No, quite the contrary, I plan to hold me accountable for my self and he for him.

    No, I am not here to hold you up, as I have. I am not here to let you live your best life at the expense of mine, no. I am here to live with you, besides you, because I care for you, we are a family, and we are in this together. I am the one who will do the saving now, of my self and my family, and you are lucky to be counted among us. I am not afraid of you going, as I know, even if you don’t, that I can do this on my own, as I have been in great part doing it alone for so very long already. I am no longer waiting to be saved, I will save myself now, and you will save you.

    Our children will see two adults, taking care of themselves, and if it turns out that I am in fact, the stronger one, they will see this, too. I know for sure that I cannot leave, not now, and I must continue to finish what I’ve started, with my own happy ending. So these whispers will continue to grow louder, probably until they scream their truth. I tried to run away and leave it all behind, but the whispers will never leave me, this I now know. I must go out into the world. As I get my house in order, I will step out more and more, to satisfy these whispers, finally. For now perhaps, in this season, I will continue to hibernate, to heal, to calm my nervous system and heal my family. This is enough, this is the process. Perhaps now that I have written these words I can truly enjoy this time for what it is.

    “If you’re going through hell, keep going”. – Winston Churchill

  • Detour

    Last night about 9pm I realised that I was, in fact, on the wrong train. I’d done just what I thought I was supposed to do, went to the right track, the right car, even stopped to ask directions to my car of a man in a train workers costume. Right car, wrong train, apparently. No one scanned my ticket, not before I boarded nor while on the train. Once I did realise I was headed to Strasbourg, there was no one to be found to speak to about it, not like it would have changed anything. I missed going home, the only place I wanted to be, and ended up spending a restless night in a corporate hotel across from the station in Strasbourg.

    It was restless not because I was alone with my thoughts, but because I avoided them, I think. I indulged in my last remaining numbing practice – binge TV watching. My preference is horror shows. I think this is because they give a place to my anxiety and fears, they house them in gore and death, murder and evil. I also enjoy murder documentaries; no matter how bad I feel in my head, at least I’m not Alec Murdoch. He must have had a real terrible time in his head. Still is having, probably. I watch these shows until I am sleeping while falling asleep and then, in that brief moment after I turn them off, I am wide awake again. Last night it was just before 2am when I entered into the silence. I was, for a moment, terrified to be back in reality and then, I felt a small miracle. I was no longer holding the fear and trepidation in my body as I once did. The overwhelming feeling of a sadness that I can’t manage, can’t integrate, is gone. The work I’m doing, it’s working. How wonderful, I thought, as I drifted off to sleep instead of just passing into unconsciousness. I realised in this haze that I have been holding a fear, deep inside my unconsciousness, of dreaming terrible dreams and so have avoided going to sleep. Avoided through binge watching, lately, again, as I’ve fallen back into this comfortable pattern of existing, avoiding my feelings, in hopes that they will just go away. Or, perhaps my dreams will deal in horrors of a lesser kind, like hauntings of evil spirits that are not my own, evil spirits from another story that prove less terrifying than mine. Do I find a strange solace in a tale of someone descending into madness, facing death with regrets, haunted by the spirits that are waiting for them to cross over and spend eternity in purgatory, with them? Why yes, I think I do. I must not be alone, considering the supply of these shows, there must be a demand. The most recent of which, The Fall of the House of Usher, is rooted in the tales of Poe, a gothic master of darkness that honestly I know little more about than what I’ve just written. Perhaps a deeper dive into the when, how, and why of this era would prove satisfying to me, perhaps I will report back on this, later.

    For now, I will let this darkness in, seep into my body and being, and revel in it, rot in it just a little. Why not? It is an always has been a part of me. I remember scaring myself as young as 10, perhaps, with tales of vampires and hauntings by terrible evils. I remember being afraid of the swooping of vampires in the afternoon, alone, outside of my house, in the barren autumn countryside with the licking of the crisp air around me and its threat of the cold winter to come. I remember the tales of an evil spirit that lived in a boarding house in London, it must have been in the east, that was so terrifying and evil that it drove patrons to their death, as they would throw themselves out of an upper story window to escape it. I think this was the first time that I really wanted to go to London, to find this place and to see if I could make it through a night there. In these tales it wasn’t just the spirit that was terrifying, but the social warning implied, as this place was not a hotel but more of a poor house, as I saw it. If you lived here, or stayed here, you were very close to having nothing, having no money nor social standing. You were close to destitute and this was perhaps the most frightening prospect of all. Perhaps these poor souls jumped to their deaths not to flee the evil spirit but their own hopeless, endless lives of destitution. Maybe they’d just had enough. Maybe the sprit just tempted them with eternal sleep and rest and no more problems nor the shame of being poor.

    Always, it was this time of year, especially, that laid the background for these tales. In this season of mid-October the earth is dying, once again. The leaves, in golden, brown, and bloody tones, fall like tears from the trees. Their gentle rustling is punctuated by the dull thumping of dropping chestnuts, too. We pile them up and jump into the dead as an act of celebration and then we pile them up again and burn them once we are tired of their charm. The dust and seedlings in the air make me sleepy, always have. The light lengthens and wanes, as though giving out its best, last, joyful breath before becoming blue and sad for the winter. Persephone retreats once more, to sleep in the darkness of the underworld. To finally rest from all the eyes of the world looking upon her, devouring her. She is tired and welcomes the repose. It is in this changing of the seasons that I have always felt the heaviness of the passing of time. The lengthening of the light, the slowing of time, a time to reflect and to mourn, to feel our own mortality as the leaves fall, the plants seed and die, resigned to their own mortality as well. They have enjoyed the summer too, their flowering, their brief lives. They have made their seeds and will come again but now, they know, they must, too, rest. Resigned to their fate, they must rest.

    Today, we tell people that if the feel sad at this time of year that they have a disorder, and the doctors have had the audacity to call it SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder. Are we not allowed to feel anything? We have Samhain, Halloween, All Saints Day, and all the other cultural traditions around this time of year, huge bonfires and celebrations of the dead and the spirits that still walk the earth. These celebrations and rituals exist for a reason, we have always needed to explain this death of the earth, to celebrate it, to get out our feelings in a certain debauchery, to ask for protection and hope to get us through the season of death that is upon us. The time of October is a gateway into this darkness, and we have always been sad and afraid, and wary of evil. We have always needed assurance and hope. Why is this now thought of as a disorder? I choose to embrace it, celebrate it, wallow in it for this brief and fleeting window of time while the earth folds in upon itself. Once winter is here, it will be cold and clear and difficult and we will batten down and muddle thorough with earnest conviction and solemnity. But for now, as Persephone reaches out before descending, breathes the last gasps of the warm and golden, intoxicating air, why not burn the fires and revel in it, too? Why have we been made to not feel this, too?

    I woke up this morning with a hangover from watching too many episodes of this Usher show. I had its bloody, fleshy images in my mind, its digestible gore. Why do I do this to my self, I thought. Because it’s easier, I answered. Easier than the images and stories on the news of real world horror, with no resolution. Easier that the infinite sadness of my own dreams and loss. Easier than trying to absorb the treatment of random acts of violence as an Islamiste problem in the French press. Easier.

    The things we avoid are often just what we need to face to bring about what it is that we are truly seeking. This is an idea that has kept returning to me as of late. It is returning because I see in my life how it is true. The projects I am avoiding are challenging, but conquering them will bring me perhaps success or failure but for sure, resolution. The outcome is not as important as simply reaching an ending. An ending enables the closing of the work, the chapter, and the opening of the next. This is what I truly desire, not the result but the progress, the moving on to the next thing, whatever that is. The death of this season and the birth of the next. The thing that I am avoiding by watching television is the same thing that I was avoiding by drinking or using cannabis – the emotions, the feelings, the pain. Now I know that if I simply sit with them, allow them to happen, they will move through me and be gone, or be integrated. Again, the result is not the even important, the process is, as I know that no matter what, I will be ok and what I will get to on the other side is what I really want – the next season.

    As I went to catch the train this morning, on another full-price ticket to get back home, the second in a day, I was annoyed by the fact that here, at this train, were two conductors, scanning tickets and directing passengers to their train car. Where were you last night when I needed you, I thought, as I finalised my purchase while waiting in line. I got on the train and waited to board as a woman older than me came up too close behind me, anxious to get inside the doors of a train that was not at all close to leaving. Ok, enough, pardon, I said as I gently pushed by the tall, younger man in front of me who was not pressed to get inside the cabin to the left. I pushed by towards the stairway on the right. Of course she followed, of course she sat down across from me in the almost empty cabin and of course, she reminded me so much of my dead mother.

    I sat there for a few minutes and tried to not look at her. Finally, I realised that I couldn’t sit there anymore, as tears bubbled up from me. Luckily, there was a lone empty seat by the window. I sat there and rested my tired head in my hands and softly cried. I was fine with this, and as I breathed gently through it I heard my mother’s words, It’s ok to cry, as she had reminded me as she prepared to die. It’s ok, she said, as if she somehow knew I would need to hear it. I knew then that she had really come a long way in her own understanding of herself in this world. She knew that her mind had been limited, had been changed by of years of her own sadness, loneliness, chaos, and mistreatment. It as though she’d come to peace with her own, complicated story and had said, ok, it’s ok. I don’t have to have all the answers. I don’t know how to explain – I don’t think I need to, but I do know it will be ok. So cry, let it out of you, you don’t have to hold it anymore.

    ***

    When I was in college, in art school, making these pictures of bodies, with text, there was one that I did where I wrote, on my friend’s back, a little poem, I guess. She had a muscular back and arms, and she held her arms up with her hands on her head, in her dark, shiny hair, in a bun. I cannot remember the words, exactly, and have been trying to remember them, to see them in my head. The picture is not fully there, but he memory of its feeling remains.

    This thing once her’s felt not her’s anymore

    Her body – tired, bruised, broken, unnecessary

    Breathing reminds her of pleasures