ramblings

the world closes in, while it attempts to open.  I remember I wrote about juggling.  Dropping balls and being willing to continue trying, searching the corners of the room as they bounce and scatter after another failed attempt.  I see all of that.  I see that being with my kids has become easier...caring for them alone more common, manageable, comforting in fact.  I think, if only I hadn't also lost my job.  That would be pretty helpful.  But it's gone.  I feel so much stronger, but no less lost.  How is that a possible conversion?  So strange.

I have read that it takes about five years for a widow/widower to feel the strength to move on.  I know someone...this person had all the Virgina Woolfe bits...a room of her own.  And she is with someone.  I hate how much jealousy I feel.  Like I should have been able to heal and find a way through the way that she did...at the rate she did.  But I didn't just lose my husband.  And I'm not done with loss.  I lost him, my stability, my future...and I haven't found a way through yet.

I'm working on it...but it is not all within my control.  I keep coming back to sayings I hate:  god doesn't give you more than you can handle; everything happens for a reason.

I don't believe in that kind of god.  And I believe reason is something we give to things as we fight our way through and find things to pull us over the last lip. That is our reason.  We make it, we define it, we anoint it.

I had a muse once.  A man I shouldn't have had.  A secret.  Who wanted less from me than I wanted from him.  I gave it.  It may have been wrong.  And I know it hurt.  But it kept me doing more than just breathing.  As foolish, partial, and selfish as it was...and I so wanted him to be a version of my white knight.  I wanted him to come across states and save me from the emptiness that threatens to engulf me.

Perhaps I need to just engulf myself.  I know how to do so many versions of things that help me survive.  None of them include this amazing love I have for my kids.  It's like a draw to find the closest way of "right" that I can reach. And whatever will save me, however I save myself, I will not use my babies as the tools to get me through. They help. But they deserve more than that...it is not their responsibility to "save" me. I must find a way to survive myself, in their honor, and for myself above them...I must continue to learn to be my own best friend.

I can do this.  I know I can.  I have to...I have John inside me and he could do anything.  I just cannot seem to find the path to the small pieces I need.  I am fighting to find a way to be happy, while everything crumbles around me...

A friend told me that, when John went into his wheel chair, a part of me died.  He saw it.  He couldn't reach me.  Perhaps I need to embrace that.  Perhaps what I need to face is that I am dealing with a pregnancy, a birth, a new life.  Not one of those is easy...simple...fast...

There is months and months of joyful, strange, uncomfortable pain...culminating in labor.  work.  For me it began with almost three days of my body stalling...something inside trying to push...nothing inside working together...leaning on another...trying...stalling...pain...near death...to start again two years later.  And pain beyond the stars.  Like something ripping every limb from every grounding point.  No medication helped, so we used medication.  And still had to cut me apart.  Again.  And pushing.  So much pushing...the ramifications impressed the doctors and left me screaming for weeks..crying..whimpering.

When do I get to whimpering?  To accepting that another knife will cut me open.  Again.  I know I can do this.  I have done versions of it before.  And more.  So much more.

Can I not ask to be reborn, already?  To walk with new, healthy feet, upon the earth and search for a hand to hold that is strong enough?

I wonder, quietly, if the reality is that I had my hand.  From here, I walk alone.  Rebirth sometimes goes wrong.  Do I do this myself?  Do I await my own Doctor?  It doesn't seem to matter.  There is no one to ask.  There is only moving forward, attempting to find strength, wholeness, belief, integrity.  In a world where the guys seem to only want to get in your pants.  And the friends are too far away or too busy with their own lives.

None of this is an answer.  There are no answers.  There is just what is.  There is effort.  Attempts.  Hope.  Fear.  Wonder.  Mistakes.  Joy.  and sorrow.