different kinds of lonely, not enough paragraphs

Another day done.  I made it through our open house night at school and met several of my students.  I got to see some very special previous students and parents, which was lovely.  It was another day where we were gone and I was constantly doing one thing or another for over 11 hours.  I should have been asleep 2 hours ago.  I really do feel a bit like a ghost version of myself.  I’m discovering that there are even more types of loneliness than I ever would have guessed.  For much of the last year, I have felt the lonely that is a desire to be seen.  That encompasses several things…for example, when you have finally known what it is to be someone’s favorite person, and that someone dies so that you are no longer that special vision in a person’s day.  That is one layer of that kind of lonely.  That lonely where you can be read and understood three layers down with just a look.  The lonely of knowing your presence is no longer home to someone.  I remember when John and I were talking about living together.  He was still traveling with work.  We were in the hallway of my first townhouse, down the street from here.  I was crying.  He was confused.  He was saying that when he got back from traveling with his shows, he just wanted to have a place to come back to where he could relax and decompress and just not worry.  I just wanted that place to be with me beside him in the bed.  He was so reluctant to make that change!  He didn’t see how he could have that comfort, that place of his own, while living with me.  I remember how it hurt to have to fight him for that.  I did not have to fight him for the marriage proposal, or for any of the kids.  But those first few years, almost everything felt like a battle of wills with me pulling him to me and him standing still.  He wasn't ever pulling away.  He just wanted to stand still.  In the end, that was much of how our relationship worked.  I pulled and tugged and argued, then I took three large steps to him, and he took one toward me.  Of all his world and friends and life, there is very little I interact with anymore.  I am all on my own.  That is another layer of loneliness.  He was the friend in most of his relationships that did the calling and catching up with people.  Now that he is gone, most of those folks that were in and of his world have fallen to the far corners.  There is one in particular whom he had asked to share stories with the kids about him.  Because of my need for closeness and connection after John died, this friend cut all ties.  In the now and then random quiet moments, this makes me mad on a deep and burning level.  I want to throw every swear I know at this man, I want to take every ounce of my grandmother and every drop of Jew in me, and lay the guilt on him for abandoning this promise to his dying friend till he breaks.  Another kind of loneliness is the vast chasm of hollow echoes.  I see our things-our cups and dishes, pictures, his Japanese robes, all around this new house.  They are silent specters of him and of what our life might have been.  They are only things.  They are symbols of a life lost, of a touch I will never feel.

Perhaps the hardest loneliness right now is just not having his laugh.  He had a great laugh.  It feels heavy without it, this life I have now.  

sledding with voodoo dolls

It is interesting because the strategy that is working for me is to just take a moment and breathe.  You would think that breath was an automatic, all day, no matter the circumstance.  You’d be amazed at how fractured that idea is, if you could see the bizarre, intricate, circuitous patterns my brain takes when things get hard.  Seriously.  I’m proud of how well I took care of myself today.  My move at home has been hard on many levels.  I miss John so much it is like a silent strike of lightning burning behind my eyes in silent scarf dances.  I filled the shelf we made with books…more books than we ever had in our room since we moved in together.  I stacked them horizontal, to fit more.  It thrilled me to see my Dante, my Vonnegut, my Alice Walker novels, complete Shakespeare works, Tom Robbins, and The Satanic Verses all now living with me in my room again.  Yet each stack I made was a voodoo pin pricking my heart, reminding me John is not here.  So I spend the day working, aching from lifting and climbing and bending, bleeding invisible from a thousand fantasy punctures, saying nothing, moving on.  And today, I entered my classroom.  I had many people ask if I am happy to be back in 5^th.  I finally realized, I don’t really care.  It’s okay.  I’m happy to be with kids.  I don’t care what age.  What bothers me is that I missed the chance to teach some special people.  In that way, my old principal wins.  She pulled me from families I love, kids I have watched grow up.  All I did, when she moved me to second grade, was jump in with both feet and try to be the best teacher I could be…which is what I will do again.  But today I felt the heaviest alone feeling I have ever had at work.  It was deep and wide.  It was a SCUBA diving weight belt around my heart and head.  I wanted to find someone, anyone, to talk to about how heavy it was.  I didn’t.  I just kept working.  Some people helped me bits and pieces.  I just kept working.  It’s always easier to move forward with heavy, tedious things when you have someone to talk to while plodding. 

I want to say I don’t really feel like a different person, but that would be a lie.  In fact, I even typed half of the sentence saying so, but had to go back and delete it…I am vastly different.  Which is odd, because I am still me.  I still panic and assume the worst.  I still laugh too loud.  I just understand pain and independence much more deeply.  I know what it means to deeply and almost tragically need help, and not have it be there.  I also know that sometimes, when you least expect it, you will find that it shows up.  Perhaps not for as long as you need it, but for a while.  Life is the ultimate team sport.  Some of us feel that.  For the rest, there is no way to teach them other than to live it yourself.  You give of yourself everything you have, and sometimes more than you thought you could find.  Because some day you will find that you are needing more than anyone is able to give.  And you will know that you have more inside you than you ever would have dreamed. 

So, it’s time to go to sleep.  I have anxiety buzzing low and soft under my rib cage.  I imagine it will be there for quite some time.  But I will learn to live with it and still fight to be the best person I can be, the best teacher I can be…because I deserve no less than that.  And of course, there is nothing else the kids deserve.  I hope people looking in from the outside see the way that I give.  I hope I have the strength to struggle alone when I need to, to remember that my job, for now, is still on the line…under scrutiny.  And I don’t know who I can trust.  So I will toe the line.  Ask for help and offer it…smile and keep going…find the strength to do however much I can do all on my own.  What I need to do is not allow the hurt of others allowing me to be alone to touch my already raw lonely spots.  Those invisibly bleeding pin pricks.  They need to reside on a different layer…an avatar. 

I don’t know who I am.  I don’t know how I am doing this.  I don’t know where I am headed or how I will get there.  But the sled has started down the hill and I’m holding on for dear life, screaming all the way.

vows and moments and movement

so here I am.  Starting another school year.  I have a teacher friend far away who is so anxious.  I don't feel that.  I wonder if it is because it is my 14th year teaching.  Or perhaps it is because I have so many things to be stressed over...I don't know.  I do know that my wrist is sore from trying to start my damn lawn mower.  I had to borrow my neighbor's but I got the lawn done.  And I got half (ish) of my room taken care of, as well as the finding the final box of special framed items and the cloth cube drawers for the kids' stuff in the living room.  It's such a strange thing, to be here today.  I was putting up these final special things on the walls:  a gorgeous painting we got in Peru on our Honeymoon, my Lithuanian flag piece, the Notre Dam drawing my mother and father got years ago that used to hang in my living room when I was growing up...and then there is this neat, oriental type writing thing.  It is actually English words, done in an ornate, oriental style.  John got it for me for Valentine's day several years ago.  It says our names.  I wanted to put it above the t.v. and I really struggled with that. I am thinking about when/if I find someone else, and where things will go then...the same way I am thinking about pictures of the kids as they get older and where those will go...but I decided to be here now.  So I put it up above the t.v.

At church today, I tried to write a poem.  I don't know how good it is, but I thought I'd share anyway. Sharing is good.
~~~~~~~~

Imbued with a strength
so soft
it sways

a veil-thin
gauze cloak
draped loosely over
longing shoulders

the body beneath
naked
scarred and tattooed
arms filled with the feat
of lifting a dying man
back into bed

breasts heavy with
the memory of milk
for the sweet babes now too big
for the breast

a belly soft, sliced open
stitched back together
a powerful symbol
my manifestation of
the crucible I've crawled through
cried through
fallen in
crumbled in
climbed up
searched through
longing to find the guide
in the ongoing search
of my part of the vow
till MY death do we part.

confessions

Last night, when I lay down to sleep, I put my hand out beside me and imagined I held John's hand in mine for a while before I closed my eyes.

I get angry when I see people doing well.  I have a "friend" who is a young widow and she posts pictures of her with friends and doing runs.  I remember, because she did not have to worry about money and her mother is around, she took more than one trip with her kids to far away beaches her first year.  In small ways, I hate her for being able to do that.

When I see pictures of friends with kids, doing things with both parents, I get pissed off.  I go to the hardware store with my kids and after 3 minutes I am ready to tear their arms off and staple their butts to the floor.  Since the moving stuff started, the only "fun" time they get is when friends help out and take them to play.  I thought it might be nice to take them out for dinner last night...until I realized it's just me...no buffer, no help, no second set of hands.  And that would just have been asking for more of the same *see arms and butts comment above.

Seriously...it makes me so bleeping angry to see people who have someone to hold hands with, to sit beside, to help set the table.  John used to be able to help me relax, make me laugh, when we were out and I was getting frustrated.  Not always, but he always tried.

When I bought my first house, my mother gave me the down payment and was then able to deduct it from her taxes, like many parents do for their child's first home.  I never worried too much about owning my own place, because I bought it to be here in Frederick County, near John.  I knew he would help if I needed anything fixed or looked at, and I knew if he couldn't fix it or didn't know what was going on, his dad was right there to help.  The only other single family home I have owned, because that first one was a townhouse, was in Hagerstown when John and I were finally married.  Aiden was born when we lived in that house.  John put the fence in, he built shelves for the basement.  He built a gate for the fence on the porch so that Nikko and Aiden could be out there and we could relax and not worry they'd run into the street.  Here, I'm going to have to roll up my sleeves a hell of a lot more.  I am going to have to call for help, learn how to watch youtube videos to fix and do things...

All while raising my babies on my own.  While not knowing how in the world to date.  While desperately not wanting to shut myself off from the possibility of dating.  While mourning the loss of my puppies.  While trying to fit about 2100 sq feet of stuff into about 1300 sq feet of space.  While grieving the man of my dreams.  While teaching.  While trying to get my three and six year old kiddos to eat more than just mac and cheese, pizza, and hot dogs without shoving their adorable faces into plates of new and, apparently, "disgusting" entrees.

I just want to be seen.  I want to go from a place where I am cared for immensely and helped deeply, and easily forgotten about for days, to a place where I am someone's everything...or almost.  I want that look in a pair of eyes...that look that says "I'm home" when he sees me, regardless of where we actually find ourselves.  I want to allow myself to dream again, to find another man of my dreams.  Problem is, I don't know how I did it the first time.

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/234/f/a/what_dreams_may_come___commission_by_annmariebone-d591wkr.jpg

mixed up

perhaps there are those of you who read this, and are not direct friends with me.  In that case, I should tell you, I have been absent for a bit because I have moved.  Six years ago, when I was pregnant with my daughter, John and I moved out of the basement of his parents' place to a rental.  It was a good place.  It was a luxury townhouse.  It was not ours.  For that entire time, I would spend evenings looking at homes for sale, trying to find us a place with a yard, a porch...something that could be ours.  Two winters ago, we were working with a friend to find a place, and discovered the Interfaith Housing Coalition...the first time I noticed him dragging his leg was during our searches.  We were in their office going over paperwork and they needed his ID.  He went to the car and I watched him through the window behind the woman.  When I asked him if he felt anything, he brushed it off and said it was the winter boots. It wasn't.

We had hoped to find a home to call our own before he died.  I'm not sure if it is good or bad that this did not come to fruition.  I put the pictures of our kids up in the stairwell today.  There is one picture of our wedding I did not hesitate to put on the wall of my room.  It's not our room.  That hurts.  I wonder if it helps a tiny, messed up bit, too?  But there are wedding pictures that I contemplated, that I did not put up...I will never leave him out of our family pictures.  An old friend with a special connection told me how his wife's mother died when she was young.  Her father took down all her pictures.  I promised him I would not do that.  I wouldn't have anyway.  But that story helped.

I love and hate that this place is my own...mine and my kids.  What never ceases to amaze me is how many lovely people step up to the plate and help!!  It doesn't matter if it is time and sweat, or listening, or ideas, or money.  If you open your heart and are honest about your pain and fear and need, for me, anyway, people are there.  Not for everything.  But for so much.  And it makes me feel so honored.  So blessed.

I am feeling such a strange combination of afraid and strong right now that it boggles my mind.  Help me, hold me, love me...that is my mantra.  I am almost ashamed to admit that.

I want to type about the things I need, want, miss, wish for, feel will never be mine...I'm not sure there is strength in admitting those things.  I still strive for strength.

My world has not only been shattered, it has been shaken, moved, redefined, rattled, mixed up and turned on its head.

But I am still here. I still refuse to give up on love and hope and healing and connection.  Each connection you make matters...it can spread light in any direction at any time.  Hold fast to those touches.  Appreciate the energy you are given, that is shared with you...it is unlikely it will be perfect, but inside its tiny, amazing self, it is everything there is from that person.  Give and accept all you can.  That is all that matters.

flood waters and forest fires

each one
is a tearing
ripping
rending
breaking
emptying
healing
lifting
lightening
renewing
revitalizing
soothing
searing

salt water wells
over flowing
in aqueous rivers

at times
the beating muscle in your chest
allows a breach in the dam

and they come

until they are done
no sooner

and like a forest fire
the evisceration of the path
clears away infertile things
allowing, in its almost perfect way
for propitious growth

beyond anything you dreamed
before the flood

circuitous journeys in confusing deep vastness

I try to be open hearted.  Open to love in its many forms.  But I don't always interpret it correctly.  I accept it without judgement.  But other people give with defining regulations, whether or not they admit it.  If I lived in my world, we would all have some weird version of a hippie commune.  We could touch and hold and comfort, kiss and cry and yell.  We would listen and work out to the best of our ability.  We'd learn when to push an issue and when to offer space.

All I have ever wanted, really, is to be loved in a comforting and safe place.  To FEEL the idea of not alone.  And I had that.  Perhaps people don't get that often.  Perhaps what happens is we all get it, but in sparing and strange dollops, like a cinnamon crumble topping on a blueberry dessert bread.  For a while, we have too much...perhaps we take it for granted.  And then all of a sudden there is none.

I don't think I ever took John for granted.  The depth and simplicity of his love amazed me.  I thought today, about something totally unrelated, what would John say about this?  And then I thought that it might help if I applied that to other parts of my life.  Specifically this big lonely that I carry.  But that didn't work, because he'd tell me to stop flirting with anyone I was flirting with and love on him. Which I would do gladly...

The Id doesn't learn.  It wants.  Regardless of social skills...we all fantasize and reach for whatever seems close, suggestive in its libidinousness, tender in its clarity, safe in the distance of it all...

Things don't work out how you plan, even when you don't plan.  I shunned planning.  John was the second best accident of my life, aside from our Neil.  And he was perfect in his imperfection, everything I needed not because he was everything, but because he knew that he wasn't, that I wasn't, and he wanted me anyway.

Because of my past I wonder more than I might...I know the power of being alone.  I know that only by loving yourself and being in a strong and confident place are you likely to find whole and healthy relationships.  I also know that, as a mother, if you duck your head and focus on your babies and getting through, you might look up and realize you missed most of your life and you are now almost dead.

I had an amazing chance.  I didn't blow it.  I took it and rode it till the end. Yet I am left with a responsibility that loves me back deeply, but that needs beyond my borders.  I am left with my smile, my community, my pets, my fear, my

Lonely

I want to wear it the right way.  I want to respect it, my Lonely.  I want to acknowledge it so that I can honor John and his love.  And I want to move on in order to do the same.  And, really, I don't know how to do any of it.

I just want a safe, made up place, full of love and tenderness, free of judgment and definition...so I look for places where my mind can spin and my fingers go numb.  A place where I can wonder and think and hope.  A place that isn't anywhere.