there is no answer

Learning new corners of
loneliness.  Sometimes, random people call and ask for different things...today it was someone with a quote for car insurance: So, it's just you and John, right?  awkward pause... and I get to say "He...is dead.  He died last summer."

I don't have anything to say.  Other than the things I feel I have been saying, in a variety of ways, for the last what seems like an eternity.  I want to be a better person.  I want to drink less.  I want to do, um, fewer things that hurt me.  I want to stop wishing I wasn't alone.  I want to NOT be alone.  I know I have far more than soooooooooo many people.  I also know that each of us have our own journey.  What we deal with is what he have.  We make of our "gifts" what we are able to make...whether or not they feel like actual gifts.

I remember when John was ill, I used to watch Super Nanny with my oldest sometimes.  We'd laugh and be shocked at some of the things the kids would do... he would say "Mom, I would NEVER do that!"  There was an ad for one of the episodes in which this woman had three kids who were just out of control.  She was hysterical, talking to the Nanny about how her husband had died and left her with three kids and she wasn't supposed to be doing all this alone.  I switched the channel and never watched it again.

I know that comparing yourself to others is not really ever helpful, which is fine because I don't even know who to compare myself to...if I look at that Super Nanny lady, I am KICKING ASS.  If I look at parts of my life and think about how my mother went down the drain, I am terrified.  If I think of some of the choices my mother-in-law made, I think I'm doing okay-ish...then, there is all my online friends who run.  I want to be that person!  I don't want to drink and wallow.  I want to do things that are active and healthy.  But this is what I do...pain makes you more of who you were anyway.  I am loving.  I am a great mom.  I am a sporadically okay house keeper.  I have a high mess tolerance.  I over think things.  I have a dorky sense of humor.  I love dancing and reading and being outside.  I have learned to accept help, mostly because I know how deeply I want to help other people, and because I remember how much time and heart I have spent doing just that.  And I write.  I love to write.  I write to understand what I am, who I am, what I want to do and how I want to be.

And now, I am going to bed.  Every day, I wonder so many times a day how I will continue to find my way.  I never have a f*cking answer.  I do what I do.  I just keep swimming.  And I know I have found my tribe.  My beliefs about myself, the universe, the people that matter and the things that matter...they are solidifying.  So at least there is that.

distant storms and almost butterflies- I want to sleep outside

love and sparks
and breezes

silent lightning
and small voices asking for help

a bed full
to the point of not moving
and empty to the tips
of cricket cries

breezes, again
the world sweeping
the past past you

air that smells like rain
(there is a word for that.  I almost learned it recently)

is there a word for
a heart that smells like love

that feels it in the lack of
atmospheric rumble

brushing immobile tendrils
of hair too used to being wrapped
in a ponytail

until the rumble comes
deep and distant

it doesn't even quiet the crickets
but it drives
the wind

and tells you
gently
in no uncertain terms
that you
are not
all there is

the silent noise that was
between
the souls that did nothing but touch

will never be
settled

so bask
in all of it.
the wind, the light, the chirp, the rumble
the empty and full and soft and hard

that is what
it all is

and all
we can ever
ask

mixture

faces
swim before me
after me
beneath me

so deeply desiring one
to swim with me

red lights
soft blinking lights

How do we get here
with thumping ceilings
and nights that are longer
than
non-poetic long things

I don't have poetry.  I have fear
I have this anger that I am alone
which has blended into a broken
heart.  A broken soul.  A broken being
and all I want is something not.

hands to hold me up
are everywhere
hands to help keep me moving
alive
hoping
guiding

but
there
is
no
real hand
no shoulder
nothing.

Nothing but my power
push
help
hope

And that means
my fears
concerns
short comings
confusion
loneliness

There's no time
to count to three
no counting at all

just try
or maybe
count fast

either way, for my love, I will
dive in
and never stop trying.

who

sometimes, my hands go numb.  And when that happens, I realize my brain is numb.  My heart is numb.  It's been a little over a year.  I feel like I should be able to shout my way to being okay.  I have passed just wanting to be touched, in a physical sense...although I still want that.  I miss his hands.  I miss his touch.  I find I am here, missing a partner...someone to help.

I have been fighting to find strength to miss the MAN I love.  Now I realize I have to find a way to miss and get over (not over, but move beyond without letting go of) the man who was my best friend...

I think I am far more broken than I have been willing to admit.  My shoulders seem sewed to my ears.  And I still do nothing.  My house is a tornado!

It's tough enough to be yourself.  Even when things go more or less like you hope.  I have so many things to be thankful for.  Yet I am still so scared.  So lost.  so quietly connected to so many people, but still so alone.

If anyone is reading this and you have a significant other to sit beside you, let them hold you extra long...kiss them slow and soft.  Tell them something you would otherwise have been embarrassed about...put your head on their shoulder, sigh, and stay just a little longer than normal.

I need to find my way beyond here, where i am lonely to my toes, but not totally alone.

I thank John for our babies and I thank the universe for the amazing people out there who have never let me go, and for those sweet souls new to my world who hold me up.

If I prayed, which is still awkward for me, I'd pray for the strength to make all those people proud.  I am imperfect in my ineptitude and beautiful in my confusion.  I am swollen with the "bruty" of life (Glennon's brutality and beauty)...and I can do nothing to avoid any of it...I will keep stepping, keep swimming, keep dancing.  I will fall on my ass, read more than I clean, and hide more than I should.  But I will also love deeper than anyone ever would have believed.  Inside fear and loss and grief, I will love and try and make an ass of myself, over and over.  For John.  For my mother and grandmothers.  For my daughter.  For my sons.  Because I am good at loving and falling on my face.

step step, spin, twirl, fall, step again.  keep on dancing, keep on swimming.

even though I am scared beyond the understanding of terror.  I smile still.  It's who I am.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Sunset_Party_Dancing_Girl_Silhouette.jpg

noting beliefs and concerns...this sure is a marathon

such a confusing journey I am on right now.  I know that comparing myself to the "progress" of others has never been a helpful thing to do.  I have known for a long time, in my own small way, that each of us journeys on our own path and rules do not apply.  Now, in grief, I feel for the first time like I should be "keeping up" with certain ideals and people.  But I still acknowledge that I have my own past, my own path, my own journey full of ups and downs, strengths and mistakes.  And by accepting this, how can I assume my path through this particular hell will be like any one else's?

The community I found last week helps more in silent ways that I yet know.  I see my youngest sleeping.  I want, with tenderness and love, to beat the knowledge of his father into his brain.  This is not a thing that can happen

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I don't feel right saying my old desperate shameful mantra "I am nothing, I have nothing".

I don't feel the deep and desperate, breathless connection I had to a past love.

I feel John deeper.

I sense there is strength beneath the surface

I still am encompassed by inaction

My house is a chaotic maelstrom of my desire to pack or clean and inability to decide which comes first...the confusion results in inaction.  which then exacerbates the conundrum.
in other words, it is a colossal mess.  Even for me

At least I am reading a lot.  I wish there was more to it than that.  My load of camp clothes have been washed and dry and remain in the drier because all the laundry baskets are full.  so the load of towels remains in the wash...festering.  I will have to wash them again soon.

Plus there is the summer budget crises, advanced course.  getting through this time has always been hard, even when we had John to run camps and diving stuff.  Last year the only reason we made it through was because of donations from random friends and a cancer support organization.  I tried so desperately to find a home to buy before the end of July so that I wouldn't have to pay rent or mortgage.  That failed.  At least I had been able to save the money to cover rent.  Although not bills.  Or really food.  I have $500 left in my savings.  And that is all we have until the first paycheck of the year in mid August.

We will find a way.  Not because I believe in god.  But because I believe in people.

And because I have no choice but TO believe.

more

I feel caught and tangled in a foolish, human conundrum.  I feel my grief.  I only hide from it in places where I am told I must.  And I do not hide from my desire to find a way forward.  I know, however, that "forward" is a relative term.  It doesn't necessarily mean "ahead".  It refers, more aptly, to movement.  Not for movement's sake, exactly.  But for what the motion brings you...when you remain stagnant, your limbs and joints lock up.  So even if motion is stumbling, awkward, incomplete...it keeps the moving parts nimble.

What do I want?  I want a different place to live.  I mean that on so many levels.  How foolish and self centered is my heart?  I believe, at my core, that if things worked the way I wished, so many of us would be better off.  If we could just leave off judgement, jealousy, fear, hatred, and nastiness.  If we could just, as a PEOPLE and not a culture, embrace caring and helping, loving, connection, touch, tenderness, hope, and comfort...how much better off we would all be.

Why do we need "power over" when we can have connection that means so much more...that gives one a depth of "power", both over self and others...one that is more of a power WITH instead of power "over".

We are one.  ONE.  One soul, one body, one hope, one desire and one need.  Each "one" has so many names and faces that we get confused.  If only we could strip all that, and close our collective eyes and TOUCH each other...with sound and hand and hope and heart.  We could create and do and be so much more.  If only patience were as prolific as pain.  If only hope stronger than hatred...

Instead, we are caught and tangled.  Confused and closed and trying to find a way to "win".  When really, no one can do that..."win".  We are finite.  We are imperfect.  If only we could embrace that, embrace each other...we would be so much more.

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only I can,,,a Journey without a grounded goal

I feel less empty
yet empty still

I feel more connected
yet when I look, there is
no more of a "presence" beside me

here we rest
here we reside
yet "here" is not the only moment of
transcendence, of corporeal connection

there are
questions
a search for something
difficult to define

I have felt the power of people
caring beyond words
well up and spill into the reality of action
based on reaction

A story told
becomes a wish fulfilled

and I wonder how to tell the story
of my deepest need
to my deepest self
to find a way to

wholeness