The Worry List

"I'm tired and twisted, barely breathing, buried in the dark...

A could've been.

Don't be concerned, that's just the power of a breaking heart....

How good am I at hiding it?..

Take me off your worry list, it'll be better that way."

~Blue October

My worries are a mile wide, 

Ten feet long, 

As tall as the weeping willow in my neighbor's yard.

They drag me down, they slow me up,

But I never break; I always bend.

I got this. 

These worries were do-able, bearable, 

Before you.

It was stifling, I was worn,

But I carried them and filed them neatly 

in stacks on my dresser, 

being sure to triage them when time was on my back as well. 

There was a comfortable misery in my known unknowns. 

I was the person others would marvel at:

"How do you do it?"

Smile. Grin. Bear it. Add another worry to the list. 

Since you-

powerful, mind-blowing, earth-shattering peace, 

smooth skin and strong hands-

my worries are heavier, 

weighted down with tear-stained hopes,

mingled with weeks of weary disgust at my weakness,

wrapped in your hoodie I sleep with now that you are gone. 

Who knew fear and loneliness were so powerful together?, 

Adding decades to the sadness under my eyes and drowning out the sound of your voice in my ear.  

Hope floats

"HOPE-

how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insidious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it."

~Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

That word resonates behind my eyeballs, bouncing around among all these damn words in my head: faith, love, strength, peace, perseverance, forgiveness, pain, ache, fear...

I found other things in that word-peace, comfort, strength- was able to carefully balance myself on the edge of it, and push forward. Or at least teeter slowly as I waited for my life to begin again. Even in the most painful of storms, it was my buoy, a bright light in many a dark nights. 

Now.

("If today I lose my hope, please remind me that your plans are better than my dream.")

I can't single out the word, or feel it's power. It has very little pull right now. It's just another word, one I want to push away so I can curl up in a bulletproof ball in my bed.

But it's like the weed growing wildly in the flowerbed in my backyard: insistent, obnoxious, overpowering, and disgustingly beautiful in all it's glory. 

I want to turn my back on it.
I cannot. 

I am titanium

I am not willing to ingest your hate, your negativity, your sadness. I will not. 

I am not willing to listen to your cruel words, or watch you hurt those I love. 

I will pray for you, but I will not pity you. 

I will protect myself and my loves from you, but I will not fall victim to your games. 

Cut me down, but it's you who'll have further to fall

 Ghost town and haunted love 

Raise your voice, sticks and stones may break my bones...... 

 You shoot me down, but I won't fall

 I am titanium

Falling Together

The bending of time always fascinates me. How can one day feel like a week, yet I could spend a week on a beach and feel as though I just arrived? I can lie in my dark room, silence pulling on my thoughts, and stare at the clock.....60 seconds seems irrationally slow when you are waiting for morning to show. But 5 minutes is never enough when I'm almost late for work. Or when I press the snooze button. 

55 days ago, an ending and a beginning. 

"Before you can have a new beginning, you must make peace with the ending. Endings come before beginnings."

First, the ending: 

Silence. Aching. Anger. Rage. Biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. Crying until sleep. Sleeping until more tears. Shattered ideas of dreams. Unasked questions. Wrong paths. Short paths. Almost lovers. One night stands. Disgust. Loss. Loneliness. Fear. Knocking down. Debris. Re-building. Distrust. Mistrust. Deception. Desertion. Actions blinded by tears. Love washed away by lies. 

Wiped clean. 

I had grown to expect loneliness. I wasn't willing to settle, but I was. After three years-approximately 1096 days-my present became my past. My now became my then. My this became my ending. 

A beginning. 

A night that I didn't want to end, went by too quickly. I had wished for this night for so long. As a girl, wishing for that romantic comedy, no real PERSON in mind, just that persistent feeling that my ONE was out there somewhere, that I would find him. For nearly a month, I had ached for this night, with HIM, specifically. And finally, when it happened...it flew by. 

But that moment. My beginning. It is forever etched on my heart, glowing just under the surface of my skin, touched by him. 

I sat at a table with him in a loud hole-in-the-wall restaurant. I grew lightheaded and dizzy when it hit me: my beginning. 

The thought resonated in my brain, bouncing behind my eyeballs, when he reached across the table and put his hand on my forearm: my one. My skin vibrated beneath the heat of his hand, and all the bullshit that is now my ending grew silent in my brain, and the silence was unbearably loud, but not as loud as the peace I felt within my heart. 

My beginning: 

Ache. Comfort. Hope. Peace. Joy. Simple sleep. Dreams. Soft touches. Trust. No doubt. Fearless. Fullness. New paths. Smiles. Connected hearts. Eyes upward. Eyes forward. Respect. Honesty. Loyal. Shared future. Love. 

He is my one. 
I try to tell him this every day. 
I have had no doubt since that night.
And the bending of time?--55 days has flown by, but I feel as though I have loved him for 1000 years. 
I know that I was made for him, and he for me. 
Two months in our time is just the blinking of an eye, the sliding down of one grain of sand in an hourglass, in God's time. 
He is my beginning, and I am his. 
My one. 

I got a girl, who wears cool shoes....

My girl, she has a fantastic sense of humor. I may have mentioned this before. She makes me full-on laugh to the point of tears or snorts (yes, snorts) daily. Sunday it was her response to my saying that I love the Rangers more than I love her: with a deadpan expression, she turned to me and gave me the ASL sign for "bullshit". (Yes, I taught her that....*gold star*)


Yesterday it was her worrying about how she looked out in public since she was home sick from school. She looked fine, in shorts and a shirt, and I made some not-really-paying-attention comment along the lines of "You look beautiful no matter what". Her response: She started to shuffle and sing "I'm sexy and I know it", ending with "I work out, out, out..."


Most of my pictures of her the past year or so have been ridiculously silly. I get smartass grins or hand gestures, and it always makes me laugh. Is she inappropriate at times? Oh, yes. Is it my fault? Probably. But the kid? She knows what to say, and when. And I LOVE that she has picked up one of the traits I love about myself: finding humor in shitty situations. 


So, today. 


We run to Target for a pair of flip flops for her. She outgrew last summer's, and I have been calling them trip flops since that is all she does in them. I actually threw them in the recycling bin a couple of weeks ago, and kept putting off this damn task of trying on 1200 pairs of flip flops until she finds the pair THAT FITS JUST RIGHT, IT IS TOO TIGHT, OH, I WANT IT TO BE SOFTER, MY FOOT FEELS FAT,THEY ARE TOO BIG, THEY ARE TOO SMALL, THEY ARE PERFECT BUT I WANT ANOTHER COLOR....omg. OMG. 


So. She's home sick again today, so we go. I don't know what I'm thinking. I am uber stressed with the closing on the house this week and moving this weekend and being deathly afraid of having enough money, so I already knew I had very little patience for.... (cueing the ASL sign) bullshit. 


But anyway. She didn't find a pair of flip flops she liked. She explanation above. But that isn't the point here.


Walking through the baby section, we both point out various adorable infant outfits. "Awwww." "Look at this one!" "I love this!" 
Blah blah blah.
My daughter knows me well enough to know I want more children. She also knows me well enough to know that it hurts to see people having babies and to even see cute little outfits. I don't say anything, but I don't need to. She just knows. 


We walk on in silence, and I feel her hand find mine, her thumb rub softly on the top of my hand. I look down at her, looking up at me, broad smile shining. 


"Mom."
"Yes honey."
"When are you going to get a boyfriend?"
"Uh.....good question."
"You have been alone too long."
"Who ARE you, kid?"
"Your daughter, who wants you to get a boyfriend."
"Why?"
"Because I know you want more babies."
"Yes, you are right, but it isn't that simple...."
"Sure it is!"
"......."


We walk out of the store in silence.


"Mom."
"Yes...."
"When you have another baby...."
"Yes....."
"Could you have a black baby please?"
"WHAT?"


I couldn't stop laughing. I love this kid. 


"Mom, you always say they are beautiful, and I like their hair, so we both win!"


Seriously. She is soooo mine. 

Music Lover Monday-My relaxation

Mourning the death of marriage

I drive by the same 2 cemeteries almost every day on my way home from work. I know a handful of people in one, and none in the other. I gaze at the stones, some dusty and broken; others, standing strong and proud, fresh flowers or flags gracing the presence of the deceased. 


A source of comfort for some: a resting place of a loved one,  a spot to visit, placing flowers on the headstone and losing time speaking to those gone from here. 
For others I know it is a place to fear. So many of us fear death (myself included, at times), so we can't  handle to have it shoved in our faces, so loud, so cruel and final. 


But what about the final resting place of something so very integral to our lives? Where do you go to mourn the death of a marriage? There is no stone, nowhere to place flowers and fill the air with our apologies. 

For two years, I have felt this post brewing inside my soul. I have talked with close friends who have gone through divorce, and there are similarities. There's a sense of alone-ness, isolation, unforgiveness. 



I mourned the death of my marriage by burying myself in my last 2 semesters of grad school. I sought comfort in my girl's face: her broad smile, her sparkling eyes, the never-ending affection in her words. I turned my back on the pain all day long, pushed the thoughts away, so I could keep putting one foot in front of the other. I smiled, I reassured everyone that I was okay as I bandaged their own wounds (mine gaping open, draining me of necessary energy).


The day I moved out of my home, and into my mother's, my bed was the last thing moved. I vividly remember standing in the middle of my bedroom, empty except for the elliptical machine, a pile of his belongings on the floor, and that bed. I thought of all of the ridiculous things said about "the marriage bed", and how many nights I had spent alone in that bed. The space and silence in the room overwhelmed me.


I have mourned the death of my marriage in this bed. 


It has been a comfort. It is where I long to go to cuddle my girl at night. It is where I curl up around the ball of fur that is Max in the dead of the night. I have cried here, slept, had nightmares and daydreams, died, lost sleep. It is where I have rehashed every conversation, every word, and where I cried for apologies unspoken. It is where I hide, when things get to be too much. It is where I have spent so many nights alone. It is where I have lost hope, begging and pleading for peace and touch. It is where I have cried myself to sleep, and prayed myself to sleep as well. 


Over these 2 years, this bed has become MINE again. Not ours. It isn't ours anymore. I cannot fathom that this is the same bed I laid on with the man I was married to. I cannot fathom that this is the same bed where we whispered in the dark, hushed voices full of dreams and plans.
It is now MY BED. 
As I have grown to feel that my loneliness is MINE. My isolation MINE. My fear MINE. I have all these feelings and beliefs and truths and semi-truths tangled in these bed sheets with my bare legs, and I realize that this death is long over; the slate was wiped clean of this marriage. Yet, just like the death of a loved one, the grief never really goes away. It hangs, comes and goes, ebbs and flows, and there are little (or big, king-sized) reminders that bring it all back sometimes.