small.

fact: I always check the dedications and special thanks sections in books and cds to see if I recognize any names.

ebb.

And then the very next afternoon I realize that all I really want to do is lie down and stare at the wall for a couple hours.

heart-garden.

It's the wrong season to talk about reaping what you sow, but that's what is happening for me these days.
Metaphorically speaking (always).

Though my literal garden is still in the heavy-lifting phase (think less dainty gardening gloves and wee little trowels, more excavating cinderblocks from reluctant clay) I'm staggered by the blessings I'm receiving in my personal life.

After my relationship ended, when I stopped keening I looked up and I found myself in a tiny room in the basement of a crowded house in the wrong part of town. Stuck in a job that gave me no pleasure, in a city that didn't mean much to me. Adrift in a body that didn't feel like home, with a heart all crowded with hurt and anxieties.

Nowhere to go. Giving up not an option. Doors were there to be opened, but I had to work at feeling worthy to walk through them.
So I put my head back down and worked at getting it right. At breaking old habits, pushing myself emotionally and physically, at setting new goals and letting go of others. I practiced hauling around a heavy heart, getting up and doing what has to be done, taking pleasure in accomplishments, telling myself the truth.

I've spent my time hustling to get more space in my life. More free time, less clutter, a stronger and more flexible body, deeper relationships, more responsibilities, fewer anxieties.
Many many nights I've gone to bed having done all I could do.
That, in itself, was enough for me.

And now. And now.
This is the last week at my job. I'm going to be nannying; responsibility, challenge, change, generous pay. The sweetest little boy who has already irrevocably changed me in only four months. It's wonderful and exciting.
Still, I'm daunted. Slowing down means more time to think. That's what gets me, every time.

If you push it until you can't go any further, the negative voice in your head is too tired to make itself heard.
If you can't expand into it, space is just...empty.

It makes me laugh, how perverse my mind is.
(Too afraid to accept what you've worked so hard to get.)
He laughs too, while I sit on his front step and worry, arms wrapped around my legs.
"The world is so big, much bigger than this little shell," and he pats my knee with a work-rough hand.
And it makes sense.

The world is lovely and I live a charmed life. It has always been so.
I'm healthy and strong, growing more beautiful inside and out. This has not always been so.

I know the world is cyclical and I'll once again find myself in a place where the pieces are scattered, but I'm starting to feel more hopeful. Perhaps the next time I find myself at the bottom of the wheel's revolution, I'll have acceptance. Grace.

Here's hoping.

Don't give up.
You already carry within yourself everything you have ever needed.
You have the peace, the love, the calm, the strength, the compassion.
Trust.
Let go.

pomegranate concentrate.

Waiting for snow to melt and waiting for blues to lift.

It's February. What did you expect?

Meanwhile I'm deepening my yoga practice and working on my patience. 

(Here is where I put a link to Radiohead's Lotus Flower, but youtube won't let me do that anymore.
You can find it for yourself.)

Remember: Darkness defines where the light is. 

I haven't mentioned it here, not knowing who is reading, but it's a big enough part of my life that it's starting to feel silly to not write about it. I'm in a wonderful relationship these days, and we're learning together. Even in the midst of the blues it's getting easier to remember that the world is full up of love.

Trust, and let go.

wail.

Curl the index finger so that it touches the fold between thumb and finger. Thumb rests on inside corner of the fingernail on the pinky finger. Middle and ring finger are extended. Maintain this mudra with both hands for several minutes and invite acceptance.

You choose to read it as a haunting but, darling, I'm no ghost.

I'm alive and well.
Breathing.
Bleeding red blood.
Messing it up and getting it right.
Despairing. Loving. Running.

Holy smokes, I'm learning so much.
It seems to me that the dead don't learn, but that hasn't been proven yet.

Don't speak of ghosts, boy.
Think of me, if and when you do, more as a Rottweiler puppy.
Big and dumb and not knowing my own strength.
All instinct and teeth and reckless animal heart.

Not that that's quite it, either.
But we're going to have to settle with these juvenile metaphors, if you feel better when I'm in the past tense.

(It's a hard lesson, I know. I'm struggling with it myself these days.)

May, Alex Colville.

When you build a house you've got to pick up the hammer. When on the road you put the hammer down. - Shotgun Jimmie Kilpatrick

This picture is almost exactly how I feel right now.

Blew through Sackville on the VIA rail this weekend. It was strange to being seeing it from the tracks, Sackville from the back. I had my forehead pressed to the glass for about half an hour before landmarks started to get familiar, but nostalgia would hit with avengence. The eerie row of guard houses across from the Dorchester Pen. The half-finished castle/house. Seeing the road that leads out to Frosty Hollow. Lorne Street. The firing range. The broken bridge. (Oh, to be moving over the trestle bridge, existing in that space I'd contemplated for years.) All these beautiful afternoons spent biking, going anywhere/nowhere, just needing to get out of that small small town.

And that's the thing.

I've ached for Sackville for as long as I've been away from it, but didn't I just as often ache to get away? What am I really aching for? I don't want to go back and live there, and I don't want to go back and re-live what I lived there. Nostalgia is the pain of coming home, and it hurts that you can't go back. Like it hurts to realize that I now stand taller than my dear dear grandfather, who always seemed to me an unbreakable strength. Like it hurts to miss the sweet half of my life with Matthew, and steel myself by remembering the ugly half. Like it hurts to have a heart that overflows with gentle things to say, and a mouth that habitually goes tight and grim.

I'm home with my family for a much-too-brief period of time. Everything has changed, very little has changed. I very deeply feel a change in myself. Somehow it hurts to be moving in the right direction, but I've spent the last seven months learning on my yoga mat that pain is an opportunity to learn. Pain is energy you haven't reconciled with.

Trust, and let go.

Click!

Oh, constant reader. How's every little thing?

Today was a low day. A mean day. A grey day.
No. Worse than all those. I don't have the words for it.
Today was a snowy spring day and everyone felt alright.
Today was the day that nothing in particular went wrong.
Today was the day that I almost choked on my grief.
Today was the day that went just as every other day has gone in the past four months: I feel like I won't be able to get through it, and then I just get through it.

Got an email from Matt today. Long awaited, though I knew everything it would contain:
Orders to cease and desist.
See, I'm guilty of being selfish. Sending him emails - only a few, but too many- and being too honest.
I miss you. I pray for you. I'm kind of a mess.
That tired old song and dance. I mean, come on. Right?

Wrote it like poetry but the meaning remains the same.
Cease and fucking desist, woman. Stop caring. Don't call don't write.
He did, however, tack a few kind words on, words that my heart has just been keening for for months. So, there's that.
Matt, I might live off those kinds words for a little while, if it's all the same to you.

Anyway, point being that he shouldn't have had to write it.
Something in me needs him to put it into words, and that's so weak.
I needled at him (with such gently teeny needles) until he pushed back. That's my modus operandi, people.


You know what I wanted?

I wanted him to go away over Christmas. I wanted us to have time to think and space to breathe. I wanted to be alone, if I was going to be so lonely anyway. I wanted him to miss me like a heart attack. I wanted to see him for his real self when he came back. I wanted us to be like we were when it was summer and we were on the back porch and the sun was setting. I wanted him to wake up to his potential. I wanted to put down my burden. I wanted to be calm. I wanted to trust him with everything.

Mainly what I want these days is for my chest to stop threatening to supernova.

I promise that I'm not always this much of a mess. As recently as this week I've been known to laugh in genuine delight, and to have my tired tired heart skip beats at such things as sunrises and flocks of birds. It's just that... well, I'm a bit of a mess.

No shame in that.

If you could see where I'm living right now, you'd understand. However, as recently as a week ago I was told "I keep having to remind myself that five months ago you were in school and in a relationship. You're getting through this and you're doing so well."

I really am. Though, I will also tell you that I was offered a hug today by a woman who is little more than a stranger to me, and so quick was I to step into her arms that my shoulder bumped her jaw shut.

Click! went her teeth.