working on my credo and my "commandments"

I believe that "religion" should be a set of values, ideas, or aspirations that set you on a path toward being the best person you can be.  I believe people should try to perceive and to create beauty in the world.
Beauty is not how a person or a thing looks.  It is how you love and how you speak and how you walk.  It is the way an experience or thing affects you, makes you stop and appreciate its existence.
I believe that belief is not what you find written by someone.  It is what makes your heart relax and what touches your center in a way that opens everything inside you to hope.

I believe that to let the rain touch my pores, to let my heart connect to the mist that caresses the crevices of each mountain nook, to take the time to notice the sunrise and the way the air can smell like different seasons allows me to live, without judgement, regardless of answers. 

I don't believe there really are answers.  There are questions cradled in the glowing sunsets, the sparkling sunrises, the crackling fires, and the smooth sleek tumbles of river waters, in each sorrow and joy we experience.

I believe there is nothing but what is here and can be felt, or created between each of us, be the pairing human, ursine, aquatic, somehow sentient, or solid and of the earth.

I believe it is for each of us to Find a path.  Hold a hand.  Touch something other than ourselves.  These simple things are what I believe in.  These connections.  These moments of clarity that breathe comfort into the indifference or pain which all too often engulfs us.  I do not believe There is a god or God, no Goddess or gods judging us, loving us, choosing among us, helping or hurting us...there is energy and I believe that this energy can sometimes respond to us, in different ways. There is expansion, growth, destruction, pain, death, sorrow...and love. If there is anything akin to being saved, it is feeling, finding, accepting LOVE. 

There is Divine Connection.

My idea of 6 Ethical Commandments, or perhaps Guidelines
1) Treat all life as sacred
2) Show compassion in all you do.  Remember to include in this both yourself and those you dislike
3) Speak and act honestly whenever possible
4) Accept and respect the idea that there are very few right and wrong thoughts/actions; rather, most  
    often there are ones we do understand and agree with, and ones we don't
5) Be brave enough to ask for help when needed- allowing others to do for you is a blessing because 
    it fosters Divine Connection
6) Share whenever possible, for this also honors Divine Connection
 
 

so many thoughts, without him...The house that love built.

In my Building Your Own Theology book "We behold the stars and write our own meanings in them"

On meditation:  it is to live with insight, tethered by reality and to reality, while still finding grace and peace and happiness.  It is not an escape or a denial, or a special place.

As Bhante Sujatha said today, you cross a river on a raft.  The idea is to be grateful for the raft that got you here, and leave that vehicle at the river bank...walk away from it, you do not need to carry it with you as you proceed.

And then, inside myself, the quiet is something I treasure, but do not always seek.  I acknowledge and embrace the idea that there is no wrong way to grieve, yet when I seek happiness, I feel as though there is betrayal there.  Again, I think of him...I know that this is wrong.  He would not want me to feel that.  Yet, how can I feel happy without him by my side?  How can I feel comfortable and confident in a search for happiness when I know all he wanted was to live forever, to be involved in the happiness and the search for as long as the search was possible?  Yet, when I stop and think, he did that.  Just not for as long as he had hoped.  For really nowhere near long enough.

So I search my soul, and I see I carry loneliness.  There is also a deep and painful sorrow.  Bitterness.  Anger and fear.  And then...there is a vast space inside me where there is nothing.  When I find myself coasting through this internal desert, that is when I can laugh and smile.  I do so, however, without foundation.  Yet, I can still do so...

Thus I find myself wondering about that emptiness...that void.  And perhaps that is the place he lived inside me.  That is the part of me that he made his home.  That is where he built a house for love and hope and trust and kindness.  Because before him, there were many people and moments that showed me those things, but there was not enough to create a stage, to build a skeleton or framework.  And now that he is gone, that space is still there.  I do not believe (perhaps it is more that I desperately hope?) that it will ever go away.  Since it was created, it now lives.  Yet it is vast.  And now it is mine to create.  Or rather to decorate?  We were not together so very long...in the scheme of things.  I had him by my side as my partner for more or less 12 years.  That amount of time is incredible vast, in comparison to what I had prior...yet it is tiny.  And so, without him, I find that it is not so full of things that I can move forward comfortably with what he left me...I wonder if that is the difference between me, and widows who had their love for longer?  I wonder if that is why some can comfortably and happily go for years and years without feeling the need for someone to be by their side.  But I feel like I was cheated from so much...like the rug was taken out from under me...I had just really begun the journey of believing that I would be loved by someone special no matter what.

What I want most of all, is to honor the fact that he loved me.  I want to show myself that much love, too.  I know he would want that.  He always did.  He hated when I was in pain.  He hated even more being the cause of that pain.  I look at his photos and see so many smiles.  I remember when he would cry.  I remember when I would push him to admit to me that he was terrified of leaving, of dying.  I don't think anyone else saw that.  What a gift!  That he loved and trusted me enough to let me see his fear and pain, if only for a moment.  What an honor.

His friend tags photos of him with #badass.  And he was, in so many ways.  He was MY bad ass.

street luge

 And my sweetheart, my savior, the owner of my heart, the man of my dreams, a pain in my ass, the most oblivious person I have ever known, the best lover I have ever had...he was exactly what I wanted.  Our love was real and messy and wonderful.  And now it is gone.  I know it never really will be GONE, but it is not here, it is not now.

And I think that to honor him, I must embrace my pain and anger and confusion and sorrow, but mostly I must learn to live in that empty place that he was trying to make a home.  Because that is where the best of me lies.  I just have to wade through everything else, all those other feelings, to figure out how to get there.  I have to use those things, and more, to decorate in here.  Because to do other than that, well, that would be to deny him.  And I will NEVER deny him.  I will never replace him.  I will search for love.  I will search for ways to love myself.  I will search for others worthy of my love.  Because the most powerful and meaningful thing in life, as far as I am concerned, is loving and being loved.  So that will be my legacy to him.  I don't think I will get there right away.  I am still in the muck and mire of screwing up and being selfish and foolish and messed up...and that is okay.  that is part of the construction.  If I could acknowledge that my amazing love for him was imperfect and messy and hard right along with all the lovely and amazing and sweet and sexy and true, well, then that is how I will build this new house.  The one that feels like it has no foundation.

Because really, it has one.  It has an amazing foundation.  It is the house that love built.  It is the home inside me that he helped to start.  Would I rather he was the one there building with me?  Oh HELL yeah...but I don't get that.  However, to allow it to fall to ruin, to give up, to cave in...oh, that would be so wrong.  It would be so very disrespectful to him.  And on this journey, I know I am likely to make wrong choices and choices that are harmful to me in some way.  But I will NOT disrespect him. Not if I am aware of it or if I can do anything about it.

This pain is larger than anything I thought existed.  And the only reason I know I will get through it well and with love, is because somewhere, somehow, he is with me.  And I know I am strong, I am a warrior...but HE was and will always be a bad ass...and he is in my corner.

after skydiving..note the necklaces

nothing shattered

let it go
let it slide through
your fingers
and watch it fall
to shatter

there's a quiet hum
inside
while you reach for things to make the pain
more physical than
emotional
and suddenly
the outside begins
to whisper
as the rain rolls in

squeezing my eyes shut
biting my lips
curling my toes and really?

nothing matters
there is nothing
i am nothing
i have nothing
and it is no one's fault

and that
makes nothing
easier.

too much, too real...i have nothing

this just fucking sucks.  I feel like karma has to be kicking my ass.  and I know I did some stupid bad shit, but not like this!  and then I think about my kids.  what the hell did they do, to lose their dad?  it's just so hard to think outside of the story I thought I knew, where I was the lead.  we are all the lead in our own life story.  of course.  except for how self centered and selfish that seems.  and I just keep coming back to the idea that it doesn't matter.  nothing matters.  nothing.  and nothing is real.  and i realized, crying in the shower, that I only truly had him by my side, in a way I trusted and believed, for five years.  he had cancer for the last two and a half or so.  in that small time we did have, my mother died, i had three babies, gained 60 lbs, had my school under review with a crazy messed up principal at the helm...he never stopped being attracted to me...trying to be there for me...loving me...

he sucked.  I need to be honest.  he got turned on whenever I was close, but he was horrible at saying kind things to me.  I literally had to teach him, almost word for word, the sweet things he could say.  He never even really used my name, which was something I have always loved, my name.  He didn't say it often, he didn't type it often.

He was also amazing...he never pushed or demanded or whined about anything I wasn't ready to share...but the long and the short of it is that I did not have enough time with him

And how do I go through life feeling like that was not a punishment?  It was not about me.  okay.  I do get that....but then why couldn't I have found someone else to love?  I loved him, he loved me...and all I want is to take a knife and carve out my heart, my center, my soul...because he is gone.  yet knowing how positive and strong and amazing he was, I cannot allow that desire to even begin to manifest.  yet not allowing it to do so feels like a betrayal to how much love I felt, feel, for him.

I hate this.  I cannot say it enough.

and I also do not want to be alone.

and I hate the stupid idea of having to "date" again...what a load of shit.  I want to kiss and hug and make out, and let someone touch me...and if they can make me think, and laugh, and hope, and tingle, then maybe they can meet my kids...and after that, who the hell knows?  becuase how fucking long will it take to make all that other shit happen at the same (basic) time!?  If I believed in "god", which I don't, this is where I'd say "for god's sake", when the hell do I get a break??

The other thing I keep thinking, is how there is so much in my life, but simultaneously so much nothing.  I am "on" from 6:15 or so in the morning until 7:30 or 8:00 at night, if the kids more or less go to bed without a struggle.  I have three nights a week, right now, where I am doing something for me- for my soul, my pain, my creativity...but even those things are hard to keep up with.  because if I had my way, I would have quiet time to cry and sleep and cry some more and remember him.

I sincerely wonder if that is a good thing to desire.

What I know, is that there is nothing.  There is nothing for me.  I am speaking of me, the Woman, not the Mother.  The mother part of me is doing okay, is seeing the lovely value of the amazing friends watching my babies and being good influences, trying to live with the anger rules, trying to show Aiden how much I love him by articulating that love is shown through NOT hugging when he doesn't want a hug, through random gifts, through tiny gifts of peanuts and being willing to not force him to hold my hand when I wish he would just never let go.  He has to grieve John in his own way and I can't make him fit my heart or timeline or anything, really.  I just need to always be in the sidelines showing him I care.

I mean the Woman...that part of me always doubted...she has been betrayed and hurt and broken in so many ways in so many places...why is it that this is a truth for so many of us?  I watch characters kiss on t.v. shows and my whole body aches for some sort of physical connection, tenderness, love...and I have so much painful jealousy of those who have that kind of link, especially when they don't acknowledge it.

And so I say again...I have nothing.  I feel like just too much nothing.  Not only do I wish I were and miss being the most important thing in someone's life, but I wish I had someone to focus on, to love, to turn on, to keep safe in my grown up arms...I wish I had someone who sought my shoulder and my understanding and approval, support, something...I wish I mattered in that special sexual secret sensual way.

John's love was a gift.  He sucked and he was amazing, all in one package.  I never ever would have traded him.  Life took that choice away from me...and I don't know what the hell to do with the remnants of that....

what if it doesn't matter?

broken
falling
tearing at things that are only
partly there
and all the world around you is calling
for you
to fix this, make that better

the place where things should be able to be
fixed
is a very large hole
so what, pray tell, is the next
step?

This hole ingests
things that care
the parts of me that find a way to hope
but then,  the fact is
that empty space
calls for something
to fill it

and what fills holes better than
large
amounts of hope

and hope made flesh
gives gifts that grow, multiply

So it seems
what I need is
hope
made flesh

till time stalls and something sad
seeps into every single cell
and there's
no flesh

but the memories that fill me, memories of him,
make holes
in the whole heart
that he helped heal

So my only question now
is
now what?

mangled and incomplete

I told someone recently that it feels like I am dying.  And it does.  Or at least I imagine in some ways it might.  It's as if all the things that made me, not so much who I am, but solid, are being pulled away.  Like I am a magic trick, the one where the tablecloth is pulled out from under you and all the dishes stay standing.  But instead of being pulled out swiftly, the threads that support me are constantly being unraveled. They began with the diagnosis, in October of 2010, three years ago.  When John died, the candles in the center fell and now, in addition to my tablecloth being unraveled, everything is on fire.  Things are still recognizable.  Some things are still lovely.  But mostly the tattered and charred and smoldering bits and pieces leave me confused, scared, angry.

I try to think of who I was, in his eyes.  And I don't really know.  So I try to think about who I was when I met him, but that would be backtracking on a significant amount of progress.  Although I do wish I could tap into the joy I felt at finally being able to teach my own class.  That was an immense and wonderful feeling.  So I try to think of the things that I embraced through our relationship.  I feel like so many of those things are beyond ethereal...traveling was a big one.  I had gone through Europe in a whirlwind tour that was a dream come true that I never ever thought I'd realize.  Then, I took myself to Australia to get my SCUBA license on the Barrier Reef, I tried surfing, rode in a Tiger Moth, went skydiving...What a treasure and magical gift those adventures were.  I got to announce dive shows to literally hundreds of people at Thorpe Park in London while he set himself on fire and did goofy dances day after day.  And our honeymoon was in South America, the Galapagos Islands and Machu Pichu.  That was something we had talked about, dreamed about, when we were dating and I was living in La Plata.  We were emailing a lot at the time, living two hours away.  A relationship through letters and phone calls, and weekends full of passion and playfulness and desperation.

I can't afford to travel anymore.  I have no one to watch the dogs and it would mean tickets and accommodations for four.  I barely make enough to get bills paid and take a few trips to Luray Caverns, see a few movies, and buy clothes for their growing bodies and my fluctuating one.

I was loving Tae Kwan Do at the time and learning to bounce on his trampoline team.  Now, not only do I not have the time for classes, I had a hard time finding a martial arts studio I liked when I moved here.  Plus, my damn body hurts!  My knees are the worst.  And as for flipping again, I couldn't keep up pace with simply bouncing at this point.  These things feel a little more like excuses than the money issues, I have to admit.  But I do feel like right now, I have three days of activities during the week, and church on Sundays.  That leaves Monday, Friday, and Saturday to rest, spend time with the kids, do what seems like three hundred loads of laundry, go grocery shopping, and try to do some tiny little version of cleaning something in the house.  I can't add anything else right now.

Who else was I, that he fell in love with?  It was so much easier to maintain a smile and a laugh.  I feel like I still laugh a lot, but there is this deep dark gray that lurks under the covers.  Even if you can't see it out there, it squeezes everything inside me.  All the time.  I was not naive.  I had already experienced quite a lot.  But there was a tenderness to my hope.  I haven't really let go of hope.  But it doesn't feel tender anymore.  It feels mildly bitter, it feels frayed, certainly subdued, almost violated.

It is too early to look for someone to walk beside me, to hold my hand, to help things feel lighter.  To help me laugh.  But I think of my babies and how much easier it is for the younger ones to accept a big change and how hard they might fight someone coming into our family the longer they have only me to rely on.  And I think of the fact that I am 39.  Perhaps 40 would have been a hard age to face even with John alive and well...but it doesn't seem that way when I think back.  What feels scary is that I am a 39 year old widow with three small kids, 60 extra pounds that won't go away no matter how well I eat (thank you, stress...and wine), and far more than what feels like my fair share of baggage to wade through.  Who the HELL would be willing to wade through all the crap I carry to jump into life with me?  With anyone who carried this much?  Maybe if I was younger...or if I were older and the kids were older, almost grown...or if I was my strong and healthy weight?

But these are all "what ifs" and I don't normally do those much.  I never saw the point.  So there is another change.

I do feel like I am dying...like the woman he loved died with him and was burned up as his body was incinerated...pieces of her, melting into him.  And I feel like I am still burning up and reforming...like I am metal in a forge...and life keeps whacking the hell out of me, a blacksmith with a hammer and no clear plan of what they are making.  I want out.  I want to be done.  And I can scream all I want from inside the flames, but there's no one who can hear me. 


Besides, I don't want to come out all mangled and incomplete.  So I have to stay in...I have to stay feeling like I am dying till the fire burns out. 

moving forward, moving back...mostly deflated

For a while, I was laughing and smiling and moving along pretty well.  And then I realized the crutch I was using was not something that was mine to use.  So I put it down.  And when I did, I looked around me and saw, so deeply, that John was not there.  My insides crumbled again.  But when you are a mom and you support your kids all alone, you don't get to stop.  So I kept moving. 

There are small things that help with that.  But damn, this hand is f*cking hard to play.  Today, I stayed home and did 5 (yes five) loads of laundry, made pancakes for breakfast, another batch of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, cut up fresh fruit and cheese to have with carrots hummus and cheese for lunch, watch Star Wars 4 (again) with the kids, and literally just crawled through an empty shitty lonely day.  I think of all of you out there that have someone beside you.  Even if they are annoying and frustrating and don't get it a lot of the time, you are still not alone.  And those of you who would tell me that I have kids, you just don't understand.  If you stop and think a moment, you would know that is not what I mean. 

The washing machine seems to have a leak of some sort.  As does the faucet in the kitchen sink.  And no matter how much I bust my ass, nothing is ever clean.  

In my support group, there is this sweet woman who brings her husband's shirt.  It is just one of his t-shirts.  Nothing too special.  But she sprays it with his cologne.  And so it smells like him.  And she said her daughters (who are older- I forget how old, teens?) come in to her room sometimes to get a sniff.  She said she heard the one who is married talking about what she is going to do when she loses her husband because he doesn't wear cologne.  She wondered if she would end up rubbing his deodorant all over a shirt.  And that is just what I was thinking while she was talking, because John didn't wear cologne!  So tonight, when I got in my jammies (a new red, silky nighty I bought myself) I put his deodorant on.  Because of course I haven't gotten rid of it.  At first it didn't really smell like him, but now that I am sweating a little, it sort of does.  It is bitter sweet.

And our homework was to write a letter to him, to our husbands.  Just the statement made me cry.  And I wrote it last night.  I haven't sobbed that hard since the week after he died.  It's not even that I don't know what to do without him.  It's more that I don't WANT to know what to do without him.  I want HIM BACK.  We were not a perfect couple.  We had work to do.  But he loved me so much!  And I have never felt love like that- no matter what happened, I trusted him, believed in him, I knew he would be there for me.  And now all I have is an echo of him in everything I do.  I suppose I'm honored to have that, but it's just not enough.

The other thing, since I put that crutch down, is that the anger is visible below the surface again.  Close enough that it rears it's head a couple times a day.  It isn't as nasty.  But it is still as strong.  

I remember how I felt on our wedding day, in small ways.  I look at our pictures, and I remember feeling so full of joy, I was buzzing...every part of my body felt like it was alive and full of everything powerful.  I was excited and I knew that nothing was going to work out perfectly and it would all still be beautiful because I was walking the path to meet HIM.  He was so different from anyone I had ever known, from anyone I ever dreamed would love me.  I didn't have to be tough or cool to impress him.  I just had to be me.