the Blog

Reconciliation, Denied.

I realized something this morning and it burns like the ocean water does when you didn’t even know you had an abrasion.

I cannot be trusted.  

You realized this and told me so.

You said, “…I will never allow…a crazy person like you to have that control over me again.  Sadly, that was your nadir as far as I am concerned. And you will never be able to convince me to allow myself to be vulnerable to your demons again.”

Really?

Who speaks like that? Who says that?

No one does, unless he has practiced and rehearsed it in his mind.

I roll my eyes.

Oh, Dear Reader,

I nearly forgot the introductory sentence:

“You are unstable and dangerous (i.e. location of final  destruction between us).  That was when I learned your true nature….”

When we imagine a lover saying something intimate to us, we are never thinking it will begin with, “you are unstable and dangerous.”

My response was sincere.

There are things I get wrong, but 

I didn’t get you wrong. 

I see the best and shiny parts of you, and I have seen the ugly and mean parts too.  Perhaps a wiser version of me would have ~ should have ~  turned away.

But I didn’t ~ this was a knot of something that I had to work out, even though I didn’t intellectually understand the why of it.  

Perhaps I could sort it out.

I once smoothed out a rough patch on a shiny river pebble by rubbing my finger against it, incessantly.

My thoughts found purchase and I figured it out. 

Something about words and the perception of a threat.

We look to mythology to impose order and sense upon our own stories and experiences.

I have always found resonance in Circe.

I understand Circe: a kindred spirit ~ my mythological soulmate.

In my best moments, I can be beautiful and artful ~ metaphorically magical and such.

In lesser moments, I can be petty, vindictive, hurtful,  and unforgiving.

I do try to lean into the light when I am conscious of my own inclinations. 

I am not always.

What I didn’t understand was that part of me is also Charybdis.

Charybdis, who lives in a channel of currents but tends to stay under a small rock.  She came to dwell in those dark regions when Zeus used his thunderbolt to fling her into the sea.  Freed, cursed, or – both at the same time, she could storm and rage about, churling-up her waters to trap, entangle, disorient, frighten, and harm.

 Charybdis and her choppy ways have always been a part of my nature too. 

It had simply never occurred to me – 

How could I have known something was a part of me when I didn’t even know it existed?

There was no paradigm I could use to understand this; I could merely look back and observe the effects of my storms:  the destruction, the brokenness, the driftwood that has come to rest on the shores but can no longer support new growth, the backs of those who turned away.

Here it is:  when my seas are choppy and dangerous, anyone in my currents, regardless of his/her intent,  ~ malicious or benign ~  is likely to go down with me, at worst, and, at best, be thrown off-kilter.

I hate this.

 I don’t think it is fair.

And it is very real. 

Now you are probably rolling your eyes thinking, “crazy chick ~ I don’t know why you are telling me this…”

While contemplating the demise of our relationship and friendship, I put the puzzle together and have been forced to acknowledge something I have  never even wanted to know, much less own.

The realization is the inhale you take when you have been gasping and constricted.

I always thought we had some sort of connection.

I could not have predicted it, nor would I have believed you if you told me this ahead of time but our combustible nature corrected the path of my soul when I was stuck, too still, stagnated ~ barely living.

I was taking the slightest bits of air into my body trying to convince myself that that, in of itself, was living.

It wasn’t.

And when you showed up, you were able to clearly see that I was tangled and paralyzed by my own storm.

You must have thought I was exaggerating when I told you that I lost years to not living. I perfected counterfeit efforts at engagement and attention.

You knew better than to accept this broken version of me.

It’s probably because your own preferred habitats are the dark crevices and caves, but you know you cannot live in those dark, compressed places forever.

You forced me to untangle the knots and come up for air.  You coaxed me back into the world and nudged me into engaging and creating my life.  

Of course I feel a connection and a loyalty to you.  

You helped save me, quite literally.

But this is where it got sticky:  you did NOT intend for me to attach myself to you like a bloody barnacle.  

For that I am sorry.

I didn’t mean to.

I just couldn’t figure it out so I kept trying to figure all of it out. 

I am just coming to know these things that probably

seem obvious to the people around me. 

Perhaps they are even more obvious to those who had 

to walk away.

I don’t know everything, but I do know this.  

The sparkly things in you that captivated me are very real and inherently good.

Don’t negate them because some churned-up, half-mad girl saw them and said they were you.

And thank you.

I say this with the deepest sense of gratitude that I can muster.

You have been both a blessing to me and a curse.

But through our relationship I came to understand parts of me that I had merely glimpsed in shadow and debris.

And, dear one, I will always be grateful for that, and thus, for you. 

When Grief Forces You Open

Tragedy has woven its way into our community, and I am as heartbroken as much as every other mom, except the mom whose son did not return home on Sunday night.

When life happens to me ~ or around me ~ I turn to words to make sense of things. Yesterday I was searching for words, words to calm ~ metaphorical tourniquets to lessen my son’s pain.

I decided to offer him a favorite poem of mine by Mary Oliver. I wish I had a better balm to offer, but this is all I’ve got.

"In Blackwater Woods"

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies 
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able 
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.

---

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