introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- starting over and the baby slept. - 20 january 2015 "well, some days are better than others / but i fear no thing as long as you're with me."~you+me it has been so long. i always come back. i sat down with a beer a few days ago, so sure i knew what i wanted to say. the baby was sleeping soundly. there were a million instances while i was away when i wanted to sit and just write some of it down but it never worked out. instead of writing on saturday, i read back through those last few weeks...so much has changed that i don't even recognize that version of me. it made me cry. so beer and writing turned into beer and crying and then those few moments disappeared and it was time to feed that sweet little baby. i crossed off my scheduled me-time from the list for the day and moved on with the other tasks i had yet to complete before meeting a friend for a walk in the woods. i thought i knew what i wanted to say but...as everything has in these last months, things change so quickly. in my travels, i had the occasion to attend one of my favorite annual holiday parties. one of my best friend's parents open their house up to their families and friends. there are good beers and bad beers and the same stories every year, the details more fuzzy with age but the main points are part of our oral history, i suppose. brian and i have been friends since we were teenagers...ninth or tenth grade, maybe. we stuck together through high school and on into college and now we're grownups and i still count him among my dearest friends. this holiday party draws a mix of his family, our high school friends, and college friends. a typical introvert, i'm not generally comfortable at parties with this many people but i know pretty much everyone there at least basically and there are beers...good beers and bad beers. it was at this particular party that i realized how much these months on my own have changed me. i couldn't focus much on the retelling of all the old stories, truthfully. rather, i felt like i heard them from a distance, under water...until we'd gotten back far enough that it was time for someone to bring up that new year's eve weekend. we'd rented a cabin in clarion, pennsylvania and toby and i had done all the cooking--it was one of the first times i didn't participate in the cooking as much because he was starting to get brave and it was beautiful to watch and enjoy and help out where he needed it. i loved watching him cook just like i loved to watch him bowl. this isn't something unique to him, though. i enjoy watching anyone do something they're particularly good at. everyone has at least one thing that they do that is just utterly beautiful to watch...if you watch them long enough. the only difference was that i loved him, i suppose. and then that same woman, when she brings up that weekend--because it's one of the few that we had in common--she asks about him. this time, rather than feel the same old sad when i explained (again) that we don't keep in touch...rather than recounting all of it, i simply recognized that it has been a lot of years. this was the first year it wasn't even on my mind. there is no sad past moment that will take my mind off all this happiness i have, especially now that i'm on my own again. my depression will still be my depression and i'll still tangle with it here and there as i always have but i'm determined to keep my focus on the good things for this kiddo because that's what i suppose one ought to do when one is a parent. it isn't like i haven't been on my own before but i don't know that i've ever been so solitary, so far away, or been on my own for quite so long. those summer months in the country falling asleep outside where i couldn't tell the difference between the lightning bugs and the twinkle of all those stars. that summer i lived in indy with a few roommates and subsisted on macncheese and wrote every single night. that year in the house on south fifth street before tom moved in. those are the times when i've grown the most and all of them have been on my own...but this kind of alone was new and it has been good for me. it was the monastic life i think i was pining for to some degree. there are so many things that i finally figured out, worked out, and left behind me, dropping them like breadcrumbs stolen off by woodland creatures and birds on all those walks without even noticing it. i was surprised to discover i'd made it through december without all the usual december bullshit that, despite my best efforts year after year, cripples and destroys my heart for a few months as i recount all the arguments, the conversations in the car, the meals together in those last days, how we'd held on to each other until the last moment...and how i probably knew i'd never see him again when he disappeared into the crowd at the security checkpoint in the airport straight on through the phone conversations and emails that went on until valentine's day when i finally ended that for good. something about me forever vanished that day and, after all that time, i figured i was never going to recover fully. but it seems as though perhaps i have. perhaps....perhaps. when she brought up that weekend...when she asked the same old questions that are polite, this year, i didn't have much of an answer. it simply reminded me that i'd forgotten to remember. i don't know how to explain the relief...because if i forgot to remember that, then my heart will recover from most anything, i suspect. i am fearless. i am indestructible. i've changed. my priorities are aligned like i knew they'd be but i feel like i'm more realistic, more practical in a way that i've never been before. while crowds will likely still exhaust me mentally and i'm still going to be the introvert, i feel less afraid than i have in my whole life. i can't quite put my finger on what this means yet...and i suppose i don't have to right now, either...i just needed to start again. to start somewhere. to start over. there are so many other things to think about. a birth to celebrate and grieve at once. a heart that feels more open than it has in so long. so many strange challenges that i never calculated for...i'm already thinking about my next bold move...where do we go from here? it is cold where i am tonight. the river is heaved up and frozen solid and the layer of snow shimmered in the sunlight today. tonight, the skies are darker than they've been since i came home and the moon is new. it has been only a few months since i last wrote here but i feel like once again, i'm starting this whole thing over. what happened before was before. everything that happened needed to happen and all of it got me here. i'm thankful for it...but i'm present in a way that i haven't been in so long. there are no wasted words for the past. there is only what comes next. xo, ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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