12/31

12/30  Cool morning in Big Sur. Trader Joes instant coffee with organic half and half. Mittens. Sunrise . Surfers. Pelicans. Waves crashing. Campers. Outhouse. Old Creamery trail. Poison Oak. Twisted Sycamore (maybe) Nepenthe for 4 hours. Blue jay. Blue bird. Eggs Benedict with king crab and avocado, hollandaise on side.  Bottomless coffee cup. Freewrites. Hoi Toi Buddha x6. Sachets for J. Gorey tarot for E. Sweeping, Dizzying, Intoxicating… ocean views.  4 hours later….cartwheels on the beach as the sun sinks into the ocean. word associatIon game. So funny. So f’ing funny. Laughter. Billy Joel.  Ocean mist like rain. Spam: pork in ham. Dinner at Old Jerusalem between 25th and 26th on Mission. Falafel, hummus, babaganouj, ful, Arabian salad, cauliflower, eggplant, radishes, green olives, hot crispy pita. Ambrosia. Beautiful friends. Bay Bridge.  Light 75 bucks on fire. Sit. Sleep. Dream.

12/29  Happy Birthday!!! Presents. Hugs. 6 mile hike. Sudden oak death. Banana slug. 10 varieties of wild mushrooms! Red woods! Ocean!!! Poached eggs. Wild smoked salmon. Homemade oatmeal and molasses bread. Whipped cream cheese. Onion. Fried leeks. Tomato. Avocado. Yum. Henry Miller library!! Yay!! Read. Write. Be happy. Really happy. Pfieffer beach at sunset. Holy beauty batman! Play and scream like children. Rock climbing. Wet camera. Memory card salvaged. Hooray! Dog chasing stick into crashing waves. Purple sand. Hot pink sky. Ocean made of boiling liquid glass. Love. So much love. Write. Sleep. Dream.

12/28  Wake up smiling . Walk to French cafe. Drink French coffee. Eat organic pear and S’s salad greens. Queen. Another one bites the dust. Check out of Europa hotel and hostel. Bags carried by man who refused tip. He meant it. Hug S with my heart. Arms full of bags. Drive to Big Sur. Read Kerouac “Big Sur” aloud to S and S. Burritos on highway one. Hike. Check in. Salad. Boursin cheese. Crackers. Chips/salsa. Failed home made hot chocolate. Write. Sleep.

12/27  San Francisco. North beach. Fishermans wharf.  Coit tower. Parrots. China town. Dim sum. BART. Mission. Sunflower Vietnamese. Lemongrass tofu. Bus. Golden Gate park. Tea garden. DeJong museum. California Science Center. Salt rock lamp.  Judah Bus. Memories. PMS. Irish pub . Financial district. Wine and French fries. Bad Italian food in North Beach. Salad sent back. Pasta sent back. City Lights book store. Poets chair. Write. Buy Baca’s A Place To Stand. S buys Kerouac’s Big Sur. ( later as im reading… Mr. kerouac Refers to the bookstore; City Lights where S bought book.) North Beach=Beat Central. Sleep over strip club. Orange foam stuffed ears.

12/26  Cab to 310 Columbus avenue from BART. Europa hotel/hostel, 36 bucks a nite. One pillow. 2 towels. Bathroom in hall. North Beach. Beat poets. Little Darlin’s strip club. The Condor. The Stinking Rose. Garlic. The Saloon. Oldest bar in SF. Open since 1860. I say, b4 i understand what North Beach MEANS..” Jack Kerouac was here!!!” Lemmy look-alike. Scads of men. Black label and h20. Beautiful wasted artist type. Too drunk to use words to hit on me. No thanks. S  says she has been mind fucked by drunk German who refers to America as “pussyland!” Dance! Climb stairs. Sleep.

It was her voice that first made me pay attention, coarse and decorated with a Tennessee twang, it sounded like gravel rubbing up against sandpaper. She was so friendly and eager to get to know me, that I didn’t mind it when she moved in with her two dead sons just 2 weeks after she met my father. She kept Mickey, who was 16 when he was killed in a car accident, in a silver urn; he lived on top of the TV.  Alan was stuffed into a photo album, preserved in pictures; he wore a powder blue tuxedo on the day of his wake. Alan died of childhood leukemia, and camped out on the living room coffee table.  Barbara urged us, in her simple way, to call her mom,” ya’ll can just go right ahead and call me mom, if ya want,” and while my brother and sister did, I just couldn’t. She wasn’t my mom, and even though she took me shopping and bought me shiny black patent leather Mary-Jane’s the day after I met her, I wasn’t even tempted to call her mom. 

She sucked on her buckteeth while she smoked long, skinny, minty cigarettes, her skin was red, flaky, and scaly, and she wore tight polyester pants, men’s pocketed t-shirts, and a brown shoulder length wig to spare us the frightening site of her thinning stringy hair that was stuck to a red and scaly scalp.  She would dig at her skin with her long oval shaped nails, causing her loose skin flakes to liter our home.

Almost immediately after she and my father eloped, the rules were laid down. #1 Any grade less than a B on your report card would buy you 8 weeks worth of grounding in your room, coming out only to exercise your bathroom and kitchen privileges.  #2 If your bed wasn’t made before you went to school in the morning, you had to come home and make it, and then stay in your room until morning, enjoying the same privileges as the 8 week version  # 3 If you made your bed before school, after school, you were told to stay outside until sundown #4 Our home phone number got changed, and we weren’t allowed to know the number. We could make outgoing calls only; these could last no more than 5 minutes, and had to be in the living room where everyone could hear. Pretty soon, money started missing from my father’s wallet, and so we would all get super grounded until someone confessed, no one confessed, because none of us had stolen any money from my father.   Eventually we were let out of our rooms, even though no one came forward.

My clothes started going missing, and one morning I woke up to a huge bleach spot on the left pocket and leg of my new Jordache jeans that my grandmother had just bought for me. I loved these jeans; I loved them too much I guess, because as I would come to understand, loving things was a sure way to have them snatched away. Barbara went out of her way to try to help me fix my jeans, she bought fabric dye and we dyed them 6 times, never able to cover up the big white blob that kept bleeding through the dye. She said about the spot, “oh, you probably spilled some perfume on them.” It clearly wasn’t perfume. A. I didn’t own any perfume, and B. The jeans were still wet and reeked of bleach the morning I woke up and found them ruined. I knew it was her. I knew she was the one who stole money from my father, over and over again, and I knew she was to blame for all of my favorite things disappearing, my clothes, our pets, ( 2 of them we found dead, 1 of them just went missing) and finally, my father.  I knew these things, and I only spoke to two people about this knowing.  I told my sister, she knew too, and I told Barbara’s daughter, Janie, who was 15 years older than I was, and lived in a house down that street that my grandmother paid for.  It never occurred to us to go to our father, we were scared, maybe he was in on it too, even though we both really didn’t think so.  Our brother was always away from home riding his Italian ten speed around town, he made himself scarce..   

I had gotten close with Janie, I went there after school, and spent most of my time on weekends at her house. She was nice to me, and I grew to trust her as a confidante, when I told Janie my suspicions about her mother, she said, “I’m going to tell you a story, but if you repeat this to anyone, I’ll deny it, because she’s my mother, she’s my blood.”  When Janie was 16, she went into her parent’s room where they were both sleeping, and woke her mother saying, “Mom, I need some lunch money.” To which her mother replied, “you’re daddy’s wallet is right there on the dresser, go ahead and get some money.”  As soon as Janie had her father’s wallet in her hand, Barbara woke Janie’s father, saying, “Wake up! Look at your daughter, she’s stealing from you!” 

A few days after Janie told me this story, I’m in the car with Barbara, we are picking up one of her grandson’s, and waiting outside. She say’s, “little girls who talk too much get themselves into trouble, you know.” I’m looking out the window of the white cutlass supreme my grandmother bought for my father, a red cardinal is sitting on a telephone wire, and below him the thick bermuda grass is  go-light green,  big cypress trees dissect the setting sun. The sound of the car’s heater hums in my ears, while a monster sits next to me, I don’t look at the monster, and I don’t comment on the monster’s words. I just stare out the window, writing Duran Duran over and over on the cold window with my finger and watching squirrels run up mossy trees.  That night I will wake up screaming, but no one comes to check on me, because I do this all the time now.

One year ago today, I woke in the morning on my friend Bhavana’s floor, drove to Marks house to say goodbye, steered my car down Lakeshore blvd, pulled into one of the many empty parking places, dragged myself to the counter, smiled at the miracle of an empty line, ordered a triple grande soy latte, admired my freshly pedicured red toes, hopped back into my stuffed to overflowing beetle bug and headed south towards home. Other stuff happened too, but it would get wordy.

Today it’s been one year since I left California.

I’m listening to the Psychedelic Furs and sipping Well-Red, an organic red table wine that promises to be sulfite free. I’m drinking it because sulfites aren’t good for you, organic shit is good for you, well red is a double entendre, and because tomorrow I’m moving into my friends woman’s shelter to be a house monitor.

It’s 5:30 and the sky is blue and the clouds are pink, I turned off Pandora and I’m listening to my fingers tap-tap-tap.  Every now and then I stop tap-tap-ing to eat ceasar salad. I made the dressing from garlic, olive oil, lemons, and dijon mustard. I skipped the anchovy paste.  Tap-tap-tap….. Today after running a 5K with my work peeps, I came home and tried to nap, but the house down the road kept calling , so I rented a rug doctor and headed 2 miles north to clean the dark green carpet in my new room. It has a window that doesn’t open, the word “LOVE” painted on the bathroom sink in frosty pink nailpolish, a toilet that actually makes me shudder, and walls that are crying out in agony for a  fresh coat of paint. I had a moment of panic when I realized I hadn’t thought this through, so I called an iron-spined friend who talked me down, and then I got back to steaming. Tonite I’m sipping wine, ignoring the unpackedness of things, the knowledge  that unpackedness isn’t a word, and the absence of clues in my head.

It makes me nervous, the lack of clues, but only when I think about it, and what’s strange is I haven’t really been thinking about it.  I’m just doing the stuff I need to do to make the move, without much story telling. This is much different from the great California escape. Oh, the stories I told myself……I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. But now I know that I don’t know, and then I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

I’m enjoying the freedom of not knowing, and watching my minds judgement, fear, and total lack of understanding about what is going on.  It’s trying to puzzle together an explanation for it’s hosts behavior,  but it’s failing, and in this failing is where surrender, wine, and random semi-sensicle blogging comes in. 

I made a commitment to live in a woman’s shelter for 3 months. I’m going to fill a bookcase for them with all of my favorite word smeared paper sandwiches, and I’m considering leaving the word “LOVE”  on the bathroom sink.

It’s been wrong so many times.  I believe that much is true, because it told me all sorts of lies about California and what that was going to be,  and about the mountain man and what it meant when everything got so still and silent in front of Starbucks when we embraced in the Charlotte airport. I can no longer invest my hope in the ramblings of a maniac who chases happiness outside of this present experience. It’s nonsense. And there it goes again.

This last year has left me demanding answers. How can I ever again get behind something I believe in, something that feels so damn right?  My tendency towards dreaming has woken me up to some awful nightmare where I can no longer trust the part of me I thought was the truest part of me. My heart. Listen to your heart, follow your heart…..lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub.

I followed it.

It led me into a storm of confusion and despair, it led me to scream at the top of my lungs while driving down tree lined streets, fearing I may be going crazy, wondering if I’d end up like my Mother.  Sick and alone, counting on caregivers to wipe my ass. It led me to get down on my knees and pray to a god whose existence I began questioning. I was questioning god to his face.  What the fuck , god?  Where have you gone? What the hell does it all mean?!*!

I was alone, know what I mean?

That’s how bad it was.

I wanted it to be what I thought it was.  I wanted to be who I thought I was.  And it’s not. And I’m not. And god’s not either.

Everything has lost it’s meaning.  Existential crisis? Perhaps. Who cares. Just another label, a way to move away from the emptiness, and there’s no amount of yoga, meditation, medication, therapy, chanting, creative visualization, positive thinking, healthy eating, gratitude giving, accupuncture, neurolinguistic programing, relocating,  or fresh baked boyfriend making  that can make it meaningful, and it’s quite alright.  Finally, it’s a-okay.  I still do all that stuff, most of it anyway,  cause I’m programmed to do it….and….I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t help with the emptiness, it totally helps,  it’s grist for the mill. Just like the screaming and heartbreak.  I use it all.

 Still the questions keep coming.

Where have I been?  Where am I going?  Where am I now? 

I’m gonna say nowhere, and I’m gonna assume I’m probably wrong.  Again.

The sun does not need a life coach.

We made our way up the trail, I hear our feet crunching on loose rocks, birds tweeting, our bodies breathing hard, and my voice telling J that I’m thinking of hiring a life coach.  I need structure, I need to be accountable, I have so much to do, so many projects…..I need someone to manage me!  I’m an idea girl,  a visionary, I need someone to help me organize my chaotic  brilliance, and then I need them to follow-up.  I am willing to pay, because I’m frustrated and I know by now that if I don’t get this stuff out of me,  I will go MAD, like the woman I saw in the laundromat the other day who kept shouting obscenities and wrapped each piece of her laundry individually in plastic  grocery bags, and then washed it with  liquid blue dishwashing detergent. I will be my very own mad interpretation of her, I’ll bet she has hordes of unfinished projects,  acres of untapped potential, it’s all still inside of her pushing her around, fighting for airtime, demanding she pay attention, react to each and every urge, she is full of it all, no space for peace.

J tells me I can manage myself, she says there is no need to look outside of myself for structure, create it yourself she says.  Is she nuts? That’s a lovely idea, but I need HELP, I’m beat up from rolling around in my head…I eventually get some stuff out, but that’s a fraction of what’s in there. I’m impatient. I want to realize my full potential as a human being ASAP,  and I mean this in the most practical, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs kind of way.

I want to realize my SELF.  My whole self.  I’ve realized parts of myself, but I just realized that I have been looking outside of myself for a piece I long ago disowned.   Having a dead beat for a Dad, I never fully developed my male side, my male side is a bit like my Dad, a dead beat. And because we can only attract that which we already are, guess what kind of men I’ve been attracting?  I don’t mean to insult any of my previous lovers, and not all of them were dead beats, but none of them were  just right, cause I haven’t been just right. 

” You can’t receive from another that which you are unwilling to give yourself.” ~ Paul Ferrini

 They all had parts of him, but ultimately, they were just a way for me to keep up the game of distraction and projection.  I am grateful to all of them for playing their part in my education and evolution, all of them blessings disguised as cracks in my heart. My last romantic rumble threw me back into myself.  I’ve been digging through the rubble of my shattered projection looking for answers, and by the grace of GOD, I got them. I’ve been waiting for HIM to come along and straighten my shit out,  because I’m busy……… THINKING!   I don’t want to work power tools, or fix my car, I won’t buy a house because I don’t want to be bothered with the details of  interest rates and down payments, and what if something breaks?  The truth is, it scares me.  I take care of my stuff, but I do it late, and I do it with a clenched jaw and lots of overdue fees.  I help people die, but the thought of filing my taxes throws me into paroxysms of anxiety and terror.

Last nite  a miracle happened, I got it.  I’ve been praying and searching…and some profound answers have been given to me. I need to go back to the bottom, to the basic stuff before I go blasting off into my wild imagination full of …well, you’ll see.  I have been so consumed with my ideas and wasted potential, that I abandoned the foundation which makes it possible for me to fly. No wonder I havent been catching any air, I don’t have a landing pad in place.

 After a cooking myself a tasty dinner, I sat for 20 minutes, received an angelic voice recording of The Prayer of St Teresa , and went to sleep feeling settled and happy.

 Then I met him.

He was tall, dark, beautiful, and he was very sick. He came to me in my dream with a terrible prognosis. He had been looking for me. The others told him there was no hope, could I help him? He thought I was the only one who could help him, he modestly shared that he was the heir to a great fortune. This would help us to heal him. He was full of bruises and from his arm hung a central line, a catheter that went directly to his heart. It was dirty and there was no dressing in place to keep foreign invaders out of his bloodstream. He had been neglected. He kissed me several times, and even though he  kind of looked dead, I let him. I loved him, no question, he was gorgeous. He was ME. He was my sun energy. My commitment, my will, my focus. He was my life coach. He had been neglected for so long, he was weak and in need of great care. He’s not a dead beat, he’s just starving for attention. My attention.

  We are rich, we are in love, we are basically strangers, but  we are commited to healing and deep intimacy.   

I am the only one that can save Him.

Today I’m going to take a workshop with one of my teachers. I’ve been lugging around her giant book for over a decade,  just recently diving in deep and taking serious notes for a workshop series I’m planning, and today I get to spend 3 hours with her….Yay!  I even brought her big book with me on my trip, so when M and I went to a yoga class, and I saw the flyer for her workshop, even though I  paid 200 bucks to go home early, I changed it back.  This was a rare opportunity, at THE PERFECT time.  I had no idea she would be in Berkeley, so after some gentle internal wrestling and questioning, followed by forgiveness, I decided to stay.

I was so uncomfortable my first day here, the old familiar anxiety and loneliness settled in, and I wanted the hell out of here. My Brother and his family were in the desert visiting, so I thought it was a perfect excuse to flee myself. The self that arises when I am here.  San Francisco exacerbates all of my bipolar tendencies. I get SUPERsized happiness, and I get SUPERsized anxiety and sadness.  This city SUPERsizes me, it excites me. It scares me.  I’m sitting with it, dancing with it, observing it, and, oh, I just know….growing from it.

This just in from my investigative reporter……

It’s a mini redo from last year when I ran away, another chance to integrate some strange alien self that wants to be known in this particular environment. 

It was one year ago today that I left my safe and cozy home in the desert.  I stuffed my tiny car with all my necessaries, having recently let go of my unecessaries, and hit the road, on my way to my brave new life in the state that has been taunting and tempting me since I was a kid.  I was ripe for change, and exploding with big plans,  ideas,  dreams…..I had BIG expectations. 

My friends all said, “you can always come back,”  but I shook my head from side to side, they clearly didn’t understand that I had absolutely no intention of returning to Phoenix for anything other than a visit. “I’m not coming back.”  I said this from my gut, I said it from a  hot place of will and power. I meant it.  I said no thank you when my boss called me into her office before I left to offer me a supplementary positon. I would fly to Phoenix once a month, work my 3 shifts, and be done, keeping my status as a Mayo employee. No,  thank you.  I wanted to be gone, free and clear….. with no life lines. 

Turns out I have life lines galore, and even though I felt defeated and embarassed,  had to suffer through the extensive training AGAIN at The Mayo Clinic as a new employee, went into debt buying all new EVERYTHING, since I got rid of everything…..well….so what. I also grew bigger balls and greater compassion.  Big balls, expanded compassion and self knowledge can be expensive, but so what, it’s totally worth it.

9 months have passed since I left this  lonely, congested, cold and hard place and returned to my desert womb.I did what I came here to do, even though my investigative reporter is still on the job, trying to explain…WHAT HAPPENED? I dwell in peace, knowing that no mistakes are ever made. I sit in the belly of this great city, and she keeps speaking to me,  but she speaks in tongues….and I am moved in so many directons at once, and my heart swells with love, leaking out of my pores, and I only know this ONE thing for sure……….I am in the perfect place at the perfect time. I am aware of the pulling and twisting, the rolling and the swelling. 

I make no sudden moves.  I just watch my brave new life reveal itself.  Moment by SUPERsized moment.

Last night it stormed. The sound of the sky cracking open and spilling wet rain was the soundtrack for my dreaming.  3 broken cell phones, marijuana shaped like marbles stuffed in my right pocket, libraries with too much security, boys gracefully riding bikes on the backs of blow up rafts being tossed like toys around the ocean,  getting on the last bus going to San Francisco, fittings for a super-hero suit, J with a straw in the side of his head draining rust colored fluid, he is unable to communicate because his brain is being emptied of some exotic poison, so I just watch and wait….and then I leave, unable to withstand the one sided nature of our conversations.

 I woke up hoping that today the weather would match my mood,  that the soundtrack of my dreams would play throughout the day.  I’m stormy and dark.  I’ve decided to commit to a decision I’ve been trying to make for months, no matter how much pain I must endure, its for the best, and my job is to take exquisite care of myself and weather the inevitable storms of despair. Sometimes doing the healthy thing is excruciating, that’s why it can take a really long time to let go of something that no longer serves us, because I suppose, the holding on is serving the part that doesn’t want to suffer in this particular way. The way of letting go. Again with the work of letting go, this life is one big letting go. It’s much more comfortable to surrender to the storms of despair during a wicked monsoon, damn it.  But it’s like this in summer,  the storms move fast. I’m disappointed, and again, as always during summer, pissed off at the audacity of sunshine. The big hot ball is always so greedy and hungry to swallow beautiful dark storms and own the sky. Interminable heat and brightness. Fuck you, sunshine.

 I’ve decided to ignore the day, I’ll show you sunshine!  I’ll just hide in the cool darkness of my cottage. For a while, this  brings some peace.  I bury my nose in Hemingway, I am studying his craft, not trying to get to the end. I take my time, using the thick glossary in the back,  discovering the Spanish word for the lump of muscle that erupts from the neck of a fighting bull when it is angry, morillo.  Miraculously, I feel like I’ve been allowed to slip out of my mind, and into the mind of this so-called great. I stop and take a moment to feel the ballooning of my heart, full of thanks for having a friend who knows me well enough, knows writing well enough, and knows himself well enough..to walk me through the point of carefully and wholeheartedly reading something you don’t want to read.  I’m pulled away from my new-found friendliness towards EH by my grumbling belly and the memory of being carried up a hill on J’s back in the freezing rain…..

I eat a brown rice cake I frosted with almond butter, drizzled with agave nectar, and sprinkled with cayenne pepper and sesame seeds, it’s weight serves to settle me down some, dulls the sharp emotional memories, and quiets me enough to feel a smile spread across my munching mouth,  corners turning up at the birds outside singing their happy sunshine song. I decide that I enjoy bird songs so very much because we are vibrating on the same wavelength….I’ve never heard a bird song that doesn’t snap me out of whatever inner obsessing I’m investing my awareness in. Whit wheat, tweet tweet. Just for a few moments I forget that I would be  absolutely content if  the sky was heavy with black clouds dumping buckets of  gods tears on every inch of everything, because for those few tweet moments I already am.

I snap out of my contentedness just in time to talk myself out of yoga and into a nap. What would happen if I just took the day off from living?  No one would care if I just took a rain check on life , today no one would notice. No one is counting on me to show up for anything, is it possible to stay in bed all day with Hemingway and my red notebook, drifting in and out of dream filled sleep? I decide to give it a shot, because I’m convinced that the sunshine and  penetrating heat will only exacerbate my delicate suffering.  Just as I’m starting to doze, I’m pulled out of bed and am slipping my legs through stretchy black pants, pulling on a blue halter, rolling up my Manduka, and sticking my feet in ageless black Teva flip-flops,  because apparently, to yoga I am going. It wasn’t a conscious choice, I was tricked by some reverse aspect of my psyche…or something like that.

It’s hot outside, but I am delighted to discover that last nights rain cleansed my little car of the dirt coat that it was forced to wear after Tuesday’s haboob. I refuse to wash my car during monsoon season, because monsoon season washes my car. I’m aware of being half alive as I’m driving my car,  thinking it may not be safe to be driving, I wonder if  I’m sleep driving? 

Once safely on my mat, I drop into my practice…it’s deep and quieting, and I’m only 25 percent annoyed that K is blasting hiphop music full of  inane lyrics and music vibrating out of  synch with my wavelength….its a much shorter wave than that of bird songs and Kate’s song. It barely matters that she is practically screaming out confusing cues, because I am just my breath and my body, which has surprisingly shown up strong and full of sunny energy. I toss some tears on my mat, it’s my way, it’s my emotional detox, it’s my gift to emote and surrender at regular intervals.

I’m just so fucking lucky to be able to feel, feel, feel……each slight shift within myself and outside of myself, every  pull….every push….and not react as much as I might…I want to take drugs sometimes to temper my feeling, but that too has been decided for me, the answer is NO.  Sure, I sit here with a  half eaten blueberry scone as my companion, but that’s just  sweet compassion, a little bump of serotonin.  Sleeping the day away would have been fine too,  as would the easy distraction and attention of another man,  instead I’m sitting here writing this on a dark day full of sunshine, quite surprised at the deep peace and awareness I’m witnessing as the truest part of who I am in this moment. Dark and light, showing up all at once.  I think I’ll take my peaceful ass up a mountain…..

And with this awareness I am going to now  interpret the meaning of some of these big events. I am going to overlay personal meaning onto a reality that has absolutely no agenda to wake me up. Or does it?

I don’t know, but……

I met a man I’ll call J. J is a man with some kids. 2 kids. 2 little girl kids.  Human kids, not goats.  We fell into something like love. That’s my interpretation of some stuff that happened that caused me to feel some emotions.  Lalalalalalallalalalla, LOVE!   Anyhow….he’s got lots of troubles, some have called them fatal flaws.  It’s still hard for me to wrap my head, (and it’s damn stretchy…big too…) around his situation. To balance out his flaws, (enormous legal troubles, custody battles,  the very real possibility of jail time, a trifecta of ex-wives, one of them rabid, and the absence of any sort of emotional boundaries with other women, etc…. yes, there’s etc….) he’s just about everything I want in a partner…which tells you, J’s pretty damn awesome, or I’m pretty damn crazy. I think both are true.

I wasn’t a priority in his life. With his never-ending list of gruesome responsibilities, I couldn’t be. He had his daughters ripped from his life, and interestingly,  I am a daughter who was ripped from her Father. I would never respect a man who didn’t put his children first…..But I still wanted to be first, or at least second…. I am also the daughter of a Father who would eventually after getting his children back, chose a woman over his children.  My Father didn’t put me first, I wasn’t a priority. In one of our recent conversations, J confessed that maybe it would be easier to let his kids go, to stop fighting because it was creating so much hardship for him, I just listened, I knew he wouldn’t do it….but,  I must shamefully and honestly admit….a part of me wished he would.

In the end, I had to let him go, because, in the end, I chose to interpret the situation as one that wasn’t going to bring me joy, based upon the absence of joy I was experiencing. I say “in the end” as if I know…but, it feels like the end, based upon my intrpretation of what the end feels like.

I thought I knew what our relationship was about…but, I don’t know what it was about. Not entirely. Probably not even close. But,  through our interface with each other, I have been exposed to parts of myself that have been suffering for most of my life, parts that have remained mostly dormant, save for the times they are triggered, and I react out of reflex rather than act out of awareness.  These parts have been brought to the surface of my mind….standing in line to be acknowledged, dusty and tight, scared and exposed.

When I was three my Mother took me away from my Father and told me he was dead. When I was 10 my Mother and my very much alive Father reunited for an itty bitty bit of time. I don’t remember questioning my father’s resurection. Maybe I never believed he was dead.  My parents reunion was my Father’s succesful bid to steal us back from my Mother. My parents were emotional and mental midgets. After my Mother left us, my Father went out and found a scaly hillbilly to be our Stepmother.  After some time, my wicked Stepmother convinced my Father to give us back to my Mother. He chose a psychotic, bucktoothed, wig-wearing, grave-digger over his three beautiful children. Maybe she was a wizard in bed, I don’t know. She was later found dead hanging from a rope in the backyard of a house my deceased Grandmother paid for.  

I don’t speak to my Father, and I have yet to completely forgive him, whatever that means.  Hearing my love speak about his girls, seeing his tears, holding him while he shared his anger and pain at having lost something so precious, opened me up a bit more to forgiving a man who did walk away. Maybe my Father wasn’t strong enough to bounce back after all those years of estrangement, maybe my Mother’s evil deed forever severed the bond for him, because…I remember a bond. A deep bond, and it seems lost now.

I’m certain there is a bond that exists between a Father and a Daughter, I wonder where it lives… and I wonder if it can be repaired once severed.

I  just had the honor of caring for another Daughter’s Father while he was dying. I wondered where his Daughter was as her Stepmother cradled her Father while he struggled with the hard work of leaving his tumor-filled body.  My wondering stopped when she called me just before the end of my shift. She told me that she had just talked to her Stepmother who asked her not to come because her Father would be dead before she got there. She asked for my opinion, did I think she should come?  This man had been hanging on for 2 days,causing me to wonder what he was waiting for….His wife told him it was okay to leave,  and I expected him to stop breathing for good at any moment, but he just didn’t.  I assumed his Daughter must live in another state for her Stepmother to say such a thing, but when I asked her, it turned out she was just down the street. Knowing that I might be causing some drama,  I said, ” If it was my Father, I would come.”  She said, “Thanks, that’s what I needed to hear.”   And she did come, and I went home. And I wondered…was it true? If it was my Father, would I go?  And I thought, I am the Stepmother and I am the Daughter, and through this experience, I was able to open to forgiving him a little more, to forgiving everything a little more.

I doubt that my relationship with J was simply about healing my Daddy wound,  but I am certainly closer to my innocence than I was before we met. I don’t know if god put me in charge of pushing morphine into a dying mans veins while he waited in his wife’s arms for his estranged daughter to come say goodbye,  simply to show me myself.  I just don’t know a damn thing , do I?  No, but I have interpretations that sometimes make me feel good, and sometimes bad. Maybe the truth is neutral.

But, if  all really is ONE….

Hmmm…

I’m amazed.

Click, click!——click!——click,click,click,click,click!—–click,click!——click!!!!!!!!

I wake up with drool on my face, and to what sounds a lot like morse code. My ceiling fan is trying to tell me something. I decipher the code while wiping my face with an Egyptian cotton pillow case, it seems to be saying, “Get up and write!”

 It’s always the same….afternoon naps leave me feeling grumpy, like I’ve been dragging myself across the bottom of the earth with 1000 lbs of bricks strapped across my shoulders. I feel like I did when I was a kid after waking up from a nap…I want my Mom and I want a cookie.  It’s hard for me to come back from the nap attacks, but I am a slave to the mini afternoon death call, for I know they restore me in ways that aren’t immediately apparent. And I need to be restored.

I’m still waking up as I write. My bed is calling me from the other room, but I won’t give in, even though…I’m still tired. I’ve been tired lately. Really tired. My energy has been siphoned out of my body by intangible hands, or maybe the hands pushing these keys are to blame for my insatiable desire to sleep.

Maybe my tendency to trauma bond is to blame for my exhaustion. Thanks to my cherished friend Josette, I now have a word for my not-so-healthy habit of connecting with people and their wounds, be they physical, emotional, spiritual, or mental. I’m naturally empathic, I feel other people’s emotions, and recently I’ve been having a hard time discerning what’s mine, and what’s not mine.

Or maybe, I’m just beginning to question what’s mine, and what’s not mine?

I’ve been noticing strange things at work. I was teaching my patient’s daughter how to give her Mother an injection in her deltoid muscle, because this woman would need to receive B12 shots monthly for the rest of her days. I went into detail about bony landmarks, expelling air from the syringe, and needle size, and then I plunged the long, sharp, skinny dagger into the woman’s fleshy arm, seeking to deposit the pink syrupy liquid into the meaty muscle buried below the fat. She didn’t grimace or flinch, instead, she commented on how painless it was. I’m patting myself on the back for a job well done, when I realize my right deltoid muscle is twitching under my skin. It’s twitching so much, it’s visible. I show some of the other nurses my twitching muscle while telling my tale of having just given a shot to my patient in her RIGHT DELTOID!  They all agree it is indeed strange, but to me it’s really flipping strange, because….

Earlier in the week I was taking care of a patient who had surgery because her stomach was swallowing her esophagus. The surgeons went in and pulled her hungry belly back down into her center, making her all better.  This surgery requires that patients eat a very specific diet while healing from the separation, but this woman managed to get the wrong tray, and before I could stop it, she had gobbled down some pasta with meat sauce, and soon began complaining of tightness in her throat and trouble swallowing. I got on the phone to dietary, scolding them and requesting they bring this woman the proper diet tray, NOW!!!  She recovered quickly, but I didn’t. My throat feels tight, and I find myself coughing and clearing my throat, it feels funny, it feels tight. I go into the room next door to the choking lady to speak to a patient about her advance directives. I’m no longer coughing, but my throat still feels tight. I spend at least 10 minutes gathering information from her sister about her history and wishes while she eats her dinner. I leave the room to go chart, and  the living will lady’s call light goes off. I walk into her room, and she claims to be having esophageal spasms, her food is stuck in her throat. This woman is in the hospital for something totally unrelated to her esophagus. I have her drink some warm liquid and walk around the nurses station, and it passes…but I can’t help wondering….

What the hell is going on? And, why am I so tired?

I notice I’m breathing shallow as I fall asleep after spending two days caring for a man I’ll call Bob, who was dying of lung cancer. I can’t help feeling what it’s like to be suffocating like Bob. I think and feel this while I am caring for him, listening to the doctor tell him he may not live through the night, that we can’t send him home because we can help him die peacefully here in the hospital, but at home it would be painful and ugly. This man’s family lives in England, and they aren’t coming for another 24 hours. I phone the on-call barber and schedule a haircut for Bob, because he wants to look nice for his family, hoping they make it in time. His lips and his fingers are blue. That night, I go to sleep with a weight on my chest, and I wake up at 3am barely breathing and call the nurse caring for Bob to see if he is still alive. She tells me that his family came early, and that he is about the same. He’s still alive, hair trimmed and face freshly shaven;  his family is at his bedside.

I share my concern about absorbing my patient’s energy with a few friends. The most enlightening thing I got was from Eric, who said, “Stop it!”

Most recently there was stomach trauma lady. This woman was my age with a 15 year history of abdominal surgeries gone bad. Real bad. She could no longer eat, and she wasn’t tolerating the tube feeds pumping nutrition into her teeny gastric bypassed belly.  It all started with a C-section, and ended up with her writhing in pain on my watch, unable to find relief.  Two days in a row I cared for her, as her face grew into a perpetual grimace. Nothing I did made her feel better; narcotics every hour, reiki, movement, therapeutic communication. Endless calls to the doctor, and switching her drug therapies failed, and all the fancy scans showed nothing new or out of the ordinary. I went down to the CT scan with her and saw the tube that she claimed was hurting her on her left side, all curled up under her diaphragm.  She claimed it felt like a knife every time she breathed. The tube was draining her “remnant stomach” the part that they shut down during gastric bypass surgery. Hers was full of stinky brown fluid that was draining into a bag hanging off her belly. Nothing helped her pain.  She was ill. She was also emotionally sick, I read her history, and that was enough to make me feel sick too.  

 By the end of my second day with her, I started to have a sharp pain in my left side when I took a breath( ??????!!!!!).  I tried to stretch it out, I thought maybe it was gas, but it lasted during much of my two days off.  Eventually it let up after I had lunch with Josette, oh, and after I  decided to let go of Joe.  I described to Josette what had been happening at work, and I talked with her about my romantic relationship, and how I was trying to overlook his pile of baggage, inevitably getting sucked in to his emotional pain and drama. This stuff wasn’t mine, I knew it wasn’t mine, but it was draining me. I was so damn tired!

She helped me to see that I was “trauma bonding” with my patients and in my relationship, and somehow, these two words shed bright rays of light on my tendencies to be receptive and empathetic to a fault,  and the fault is in hurting myself. On a molecular level all really is one, and I can become very subtle, to the point of experiencing this…..but there has to be a better way, a way to stay grounded in Kate while still doing my duty and having deep intimate relationships with the opposite sex.  Josette shared some tools, and I remembered some of my own. I’ve used them during the last week with my patients, and I must say,I do feel better. I feel energized, happy, motivated, inspired,  more full of…ME. ME. MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

 I still succumb to regular nap attacks. I’m catching up, making space inside for more of this delicious self…recharging and healing. ME, ME, ME!!!  I’m still learning about boundaries, and that’s a tough lesson….. especially when  you realize in a very deep experiential way, that there AREN”T ANY.

Not really.

This is day 2 of my four-day weekend, I worked hard to schedule time with friends, to keep myself busy, because the thought of too much time alone filled me with tightness and worry. I wasn’t ready to go into the deep grief that I knew was waiting just under the flimsy surface of my brave face. I am mostly at peace regarding my decision, it makes too much sense, even to my heart,  but I know that I’m sad.  I am profoundly sad. I spent Monday night crying my eyes into flesh-colored golf balls, and soothing them Tuesday morning with frozen tablespoons. Hours spent crying…that was enough, ok? …..let’s move on, I’ve got mountains of  important things  to do. Pretty please? My plan was to get distracted, and stay distracted…until I could no longer outrun myself. I wasn’t ready to raise the white flag of surrender.

It was to be raised for me.

 When Kristin had to cancel our dinner plans last night because she forgot Sophia still needed a pirate costume for her dance recital on Saturday, I panicked. Immediately I was on my phone trying to make other plans, and as the invitations rolled in, I realized….I needed to stay home. Be alone. I graciously declined J’s offer to cancel her date, and N’s invite for cocktails. Even though I didn’t want to sink below the dark waters, I knew I had some work to do down there. I typically don’t run away from myself, but this hurts, and it’s gonna hurt some more. I’m tired of hurting.  Someone, quick…Call a waaaaaaaaaambulance!!!  After  pumping iron,  shopping, cleaning, and eating cheese pizza, the ultimate comfort food…there was nothing left to do, just get down to  the grieving. So I did. I wrote and wrote…and I wrote some more. . And I cried from the bottom of my toes, great  powerful sobs of loss and disappointment.  Bottomlessness. The pain is bottomless, and it is has been asking me to feel it for lifetimes.  I’ve felt it so often, so often…it’s never ending. The pain of the entire universe was moving through me. I used a whole roll of Trader Joe’s toilet paper to absorb the tears and snot.  Exhausted and peaceful, I fell into a deep sleep at 9:00. A wild Friday nite spent falling way down deep into the core of myself. Unrivaled fun, I recommend it.

 Metabolizing May kicked my ass.

The fifth month moved through me fast, demanding me to chase desire and to struggle with most everything, so I did. In May, the urges arose  two by two, opposing each other,  fist shaking and swinging, leaving me exhausted and burned out. Heart and head in the ring, beating the shit out of each other, again. I am obedient when it comes to internal urges.  A slave to the dream, cause, I’m a dreamer, and a slave to the pragmatic, cause I’m a realist. I’m all sorts of contradictory stuff.  Obviously, these two fight a lot, and eventually, after spilling lots of blood and tears, they somehow become harmonized. It’s none of my business how and when this miracle happens, but it happens. It always does, I’m just not able to predict when. May was a blog free month, oh…I have shit loads to say, butt loads of insights, but…..it’s not quite time to share the details of the adventure I’ve been on, it was a super concentrated experience, 5 years lived in 3.5 months,  I was living in dog years….. I’m still digesting it, and it’s RUFF!   Yet, the harmony has happened,  and it seems grieving must follow this surrender. Finally, I’m resting with what would have happened anyhow……what is happening…despite the fighting.  I don’t know why I fight, I just do. It’s how god made me, I’m a fighter. 

  While I’m not ready to share specifics, they are mine for now; I will share that I fell in love with an exotic, wonderful and…..errrr…. interesting man.

Our timing was divine….

Or hellish…

Depending on our perspective.

I’m going with the perspective of the dreamer, the part of me that moves from the inside out. The part that sees the world with pink lenses, and refuses to consider that mistakes happen on god’s watch…and god is always watching. I don’t yet know what the lesson, the gift, or the whatever- the- hell- you- want- to- call- it is. And I don’t know that my time with this man is over. I do know, that I wouldn’t take it back, because the journey into the center of my heart with him as my guide has been one of the richest so far.  But, there is a time for stepping back, for letting go. A time for dropping all agenda’s, for getting quiet. A time for pulling our energy back to our center, and allowing it to inform and re-inform us of the many truths that are always right here.  This time is NOW. My heart and head are cuddling, spooning, they are resting, having finally come to an agreement they can both live with.

Let go.

Trust.

Everything is just as it should be.

No mistakes are ever made.

RELAX.

I have been on a great adventure, to be followed by many, many more.