Man, it is 8:30 and I have been close to nodding off for about an hour already. I have spent much of today thinking about reinvention, rejuvenation, letting go of anger, letting go of fear, opening doors I thought had been nailed, cemented, caulked, bricked in, and covered in poison ivy juice.
Finding out, once barricades were taken down, that there were connecting paths all along. No idea how, just saw that they are there. As in, my heart is connected from today, to the excited first year teacher I was when I met John, to the lonely and hurting grad student from 1999, to the voiceless college freshman, even all the way back to the little girl in the grocery store lines that talked to whomever was standing beside us and made friends with abandon .
Each of these events touches sparks across the others, all interwoven like the strands of a silken spiderweb. So inside me, I hold the power of a dozen goddesses, the fear of a lonely child, the screaming sibling being annoyed beyond rationality, the tortured teenager accused of things she would never have dreamed of doing, the young adult trying those messed up things, the kid worker in the battered women's shelter, the aid to the violent kids modeling how to apologize for mistakes and truly mean it...
I think of all the places I have been, the mistakes I have made, the adventures, the lovers, the pain, the crazy laughter....I remember being in Maine after the winter of broken rules and internal terror, lying in Jeremy's bed and, with a little chemical help that I will leave undefined here, laughing and giggling, at nothing, just at being there, alive and in the woods. Just gently laughing and laughing and full of life and joy. And that is in me. That is a part of me. Now, and even when I momentarily forget about it...that moment still fills me and shapes me.
When I think of the things I have done, the lives I have lived, it blows my mind. I have been people and places I never would have believed if you told me what was coming twenty years ago. How crazy that I have closed the doors all along as I have traveled. Even crazier to think of the rush of power and strength and truth that is coming at me now that I am trying to open them...
I see this journey as a gift from John. When he was alive, he loved me more than anyone ever had. Now that he is gone, I need to find a way to move forward. How in the hell do you move forward without that, once you have had that??
To move forward without him, I need to reach deep into myself to find whatever resources I can muster. So I am pulling out the key ring, the bulldozers, the wrecking ball. There are bits of me all over in here. It's time for a family reunion.
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