ka-ra-te

I seem to be harboring a tiny ninja. It is highly distracting/enjoyable.

couldn't ask for anything better

On Sunday morning we laid in bed and listened to the rain peter out, finally exhausted from it's nightlong temper tantrum, until bright gold rays lanced the blinds and the birdies outside said it was time to get up, get up, get up. Without the ceremony of showers or hair brushing or, if we're being honest, real clothes for any of us, we bundled P's nieces out the door and into the car and off to Denny's. A's tiny hand in mine, like a baby bunny's, warm and improbably small, across the parking lot and into a big booth by the window where water still dripped from the eves and made a lacy curtain of sparkles as it fell. R's intense adolescent persona softened, for once, as she colored her menu, and it was nice to see a calm little girl, if only briefly, in her stead.

We ordered breakfast, cheap and hot, and in between bites marveled quietly at the fancy church people in their pretty Easter clothes. Years ago, I would have felt self conscious under their eyes, but not now. I did not feel shabby, but shiny-bright and glorious and content. I looked around the table at those three complex and deeply lovely companions of mine and told them, I could not ask for anyone or anything better than you three, right here, right now. At a Denny's. On Easter morning.

this whole place is one long poem about ghosts

The notion of
ghosts is
uncomfortable
sometimes, only
sometimes
though
because
there are things
like abuse and
neglect and
doubt
and
mistrust and pain
and how

how

does
the world keep on
spinning on
and on

how

do we go on
when this thing is still
around -- even if it
has disintegrated
turned to dust and slime, it's
in the air, it's
taking shape again, changing
into something else
smaller, maybe
not so ugly, maybe
not so scary or strong but
still

there. And

the same is true
of golden things, of
happy things now gone
now turned to dust and sunshine
water
and flowers
and air and stars and
memory
and changing
always changing
into something new, something
that can't be touched, can't be
caught or kept and yet
(thank goodness)
still it's

there.

pointy, sharp

I think everyone has their pointy bits, but I think every so often we come across people soft bits first, and that's why we like them, and that's how they become our friends or lovers. Their pointy bits don't touch us except for maybe once in a great while, and then never on purpose, so we forgive them easily. And other people come at you pointy bits first, or they are just all over pointy, and you don't ever want to interact with those people again, and they are definitely NOT your friends... Unless you're really messed up and you only know how to be stabbed and jabbed, or think you deserve to be stabbed and jabbed, in which case you have an entirely different set of problems.

on pearls and oysters

Someone told me once that I am
like a pearl, and tried
earnestly
to explain it to me and
at the time I smiled
wanly, I'm sure
and nodded and thought it was
a nice, if somewhat empty, thing to say.

Now I think I am not at all
like a pearl, or at least
I don't really want to be
for a pearl, at it's heart
is sand, and sand
is broken rock, worn down
to nearly nothing, grey
or brown and dull and I hope
my heart cannot be described with such
dreary words as broken, grey, brown, or dull.

I hope that I am more like the oyster,
whose pain created the pearl.
The oyster, who did the hard work despite
the wounding foreign shard, who
wrapped and wrapped a grey and dull and
hurtful broken thing in
silky iridescence, covered it in
layers of beauty and mystery
and the joyful surprise of discovery and yet
will never forget that yes, there is
a secret bit of brokenness
at the heart of this lovely thing it has made.

journal

I'm trying to brace myself for the summer's coming grief. But it's hard to do -- and probably fruitless, really -- since I have no idea what it's going to look like this time around. So maybe I will try instead to simply let go of any kind of expectations I find myself developing, and just take the days as they come.

I know I'm stronger now. I've also had time to settle into my new environment. I miss my family still; but I've gotten used to not seeing them every day. It doesn't hurt so much anymore. And I guess with every year that goes by, in the same way, I get used to not seeing my kids every day, too. The ache will always be there; I'm not ever going to forget. And I will always think of them as my babies... But I also know that they are so much more than just my babies.

They are more than their tiny, unfinished bodies ever were. They are themselves. And while the flesh that housed them for so short a time is gone, and they could not stay here without it, they were always more than that, and what is essential about them still exists. I really do believe that. They are a part of my story, and a part of my heart. They have shaped me as a person, and will continue to shape me as a mother.

I'm so sorry you never got to meet them.
They were impossibly lovely.

I will always be sorry that their siblings won't get to know them, too. That my third child will have all the trials and priveleges and common personality traits of a first. Firstborn, though not first borne. But I hope I can do a decent job of integrating Ailis and Noah into our lives, and that their names will be associated with joy and inclusiveness, familiar and sweet, instead of pain or sadness or separation.

I am beginning to subscribe more and more to the idea of neutrality; the idea that things and events simply Are, and it's what we do with and during and after them that matters.

And so I think I'll not say again that Ailis "should" be here or Noah "should" be here. It is too strong a word, and it hurts too much. And I think, perhaps, it takes away a little from the honor and the rights of the child who comes next.

(The one reason I can think of to be grateful not to have had a subsequent pregnancy immediately after my losses is that I do not have the confusion of bearing a child that "would not exist had the other not died." I'm not sure that I believe in that line of reasoning at all, and I hope it wouldn't have troubled me... but it is good to have the clarity that time and distance can bring.)

I choose to believe that everything that was ever essential about my children is now a part of everything I see. That they are reunited with the universe, and so are not really gone, as nothing that was ever here can ever really be completely gone. Stardust. We are all stardust. We are all made of the same stuff, and always were, and always will be.

So in the future, I will look at my children -- the ones who stay inside the fragile tents of their human bodies, the ones who grow and change and speak and reveal to me, little by little, their specific intricacies; and I will smile and I will love and I will drink them in. But I will also look at the sunshine and the dustmotes and the green growing things and the ocean and the stars... and I will smile at them, too. I will fling my arms wide, and embrace what I may of the vastness of the universe, and all that I love that dwells within it, until I am reunited as well.

For what is to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Kahlil Gibran

sweet child of mine

On Saturday some of my customers said "Happy Easter" to me -- most of them in a tone of voice that indicated they were offended that I hadn't said it to them first. (Ignorant bastards.) (Just kidding!) (Not really.)

I just sort of smiled grimly and nodded, because it would be decidedly unprofessional to say, "Fuck you, self-righteous customer with something to celebrate!"

I'm sorry, I'm just not feeling it this year.

----------

Sunday started off all right. A bit of morning banter with my great aunt and her cranky Italian husband, who I love. A little pre-brunch prep. Inspecting the beautiful cherry pies that I had spent four hours making the night before. Hiding some eggs, to be hunted later on.

I had a cheese danish and a coffee (both forbidden luxuries) and some cantelope... and then went back to bed. That part was lovely. I was drowsy from the sugar-crash and had plenty of time before I needed to do anything else. It felt like a holiday. Peaceful. Relaxed. Later, as the house filled with people, my anxiety began to rise; but I was pretty much holding my own. And then.

And then my cousin's idiot boyfriend made a joke about dead babies.

I spent the next 30 minutes bawling my eyes out in my bedroom, getting makeup all over my freshly laundered pillowcases. The worst part about it was knowing that no one was going to come down the hall and sit beside me while I cried. And I couldn't go back out until I was calm again, because I barely knew the 20-some people who were in the house, and I wasn't about to try to explain to them why I was upset. The minutes ticked by, and I felt terrible for isolating, but I didn't know what else to do. Anyone I could talk to about it was busy with family events of their own.

Eventually I had my breathing under control, and could go out and get some food and make small talk as was expected of me, puffy eyed but attempting to smile.

----------

I didn't say "Happy Easter" even once this year. I didn't go to church. I didn't ask anyone if they were doing something special for Sunday. I just plain didn't care.

And I've realized that it bothers me, that I don't care. I've always cared before. But I can't seem to muster a shred of reverence right now, no matter how abstract. I feel so jaded. So angry. So alone.

Supposedly that's who Jesus came for in the first place, though, right? People like me.

----------

I wonder about our traditions sometimes. All the happy-clappy-sunshine, nothing-is-wrong-because-Jesus-is-risen-he-is-risen-indeed. Is that really the only way to remember? It's what I grew up with. Every church service I've been to on Easter Sunday is full of what feels to me like forced optimism. The underlying message being: Somebody died because of you, you horrible person. But it's okay now, because they're alive again. Lucky! That means you're off the hook -- so be happy, damn it!

I don't know, maybe that was just me?

I guess I feel betrayed. I feel like it was all such a sham. Those days when everyone got all excited; sang joyful songs and threw flowers in the air, hugged one another. It was over so quickly. Everything back again to the way it was before. Scary. Unpredictable. Painful.

So Jesus was here, great. But then he left. And now there's just this invisible force wandering around checking up on us, cause Jesus has other things to do.

Ummm?

Yeah; turns out, this is the bulk of the message that I gathered. Awesome. In reading all this over, I think I understand though. I liked Easter before because I felt like some kind of horrible yucky person who deserved bad things to happen to them, and here was this story my church gave me about how it's okay that I'm a bad person because Jesus will help me, thank goodness.

But guess what? I don't think I'm a horrible person anymore. I don't think bad things should happen to me anymore. And I don't think anyone is coming to save me.

----------

Maybe someday I'll believe again that there's a God who cares for me the way a parent should. I want so badly to be somebody's child, deeply loved.

impetus

Every time I travel, it's like a delayed-reaction catalyst for change upon my return. Australia was overwhelming, but when I got back, I was in awe of what I had experienced and it motivated me to reach for more when I got home. Being in Washington State was really hard, and I felt extremely tired the whole time, but now when I think about the handful of days I spent there, and the people I filled those days interacting with, I feel so happy because I love them all so very much and am so glad I got to do that, and I am equally glad now to be back in California, where I am so much more at ease, and look forward to building a better and better life here -- a life I could never have achieved before.

And I am relieved to have returned from a place I always viewed as an inescapable snare; to have proved it was not so inescapable after all, because here I am again, no longer there.

occupy, inhabit, own

I feel contained, in the same way the contents of an aerosol can are contained:

DO NOT EXPOSE TO EXTREME TEMPERATURES.
KEEP AWAY FROM OPEN FLAME.

I think that if, given total acceptance, a small amount of alcohol, and a bonfire, I might just do any number of interesting things. (Does this conflict with your impression of my state of mind when you saw me last, however recently? Do not worry; it conflicts with my own impression as well.)

I am bursting with the tumultuous energy of a million ideas, and I wonder what it would be like to feel like this all the time, or at least most of the time. I wonder if this is how "normal" people feel every day -- or just people who are on crack. Perhaps it is only so stimulating because I've been suppressing myself for so long?

Lately I've been thinking about my body, of it's power, of all that it is capable of; and how devastated I would be if I lost any of that power. I never used to think about my body. In fact, I used to not-think about my body as much as I possibly could. Now I find myself staring at it like an infant. My legs, my fingers; they do what I tell them to do. They are this shape; they are mine, not yours. It makes me want to dance, to fling myself about, to meditate, to breathe. To stare and stare and stare, because I think I've finally fully realized that this is mine, and it is not yours. My body, my life, my mind. You can't have it, you could never have it.

This is mine. And what I do with it is up to me.

rambling

It's so hard to know sometimes what I should put up here. I remember when I had no followers, and it felt like it was just me, tossing my words into the ether.

I saw them like handfuls of skelatal leaves, imagined them drifting away and away to I-knew-not-where. I wrote from my woundedness, bleeding in English, onto the lined pages of my journal and across my computer screen. Back when I was falling apart, or maybe just falling, like Alice down the rabbit hole, on and on, not knowing when or if I'd ever find the bottom, or rediscover which way was up. But I did; I found the bottom eventually, and to my astonishment there were other people there. People like me, whose worlds were scrambled as snow-globes. Loneliness made me happy to see them. Compassion made me sad. But perhaps the biggest shock of all was discovering how much I'd always been right about, after being told all my life that I was the one who was constantly wrong...


Oh, ruinous land of my mother and father! I shake off your dust from my feet.


----------


I'm trying to move forward, but I still have trouble separating who I was from who I am. I still panic when things take a turn for the better. I still expect to be punished for being alive. But maybe it won't always be this way.


----------


My heart is heavy lately, and so is my mind. I feel like I can barely lift my head sometimes, for the weightiness of my thoughts. Prioritizing is the hardest part of being an adult, I think. Deciding what takes precedence in one's own life, and knowing it is no one else's call. The line between responsibility and perfectionism. The line between laziness and self-care. It's hard for me to see, a lot of the time.

Maybe this is just how it is. Maybe this is life. I can't help wondering, though, how much more difficult certain things are for me, and always will be. There's no way of knowing. Our experiences are ours alone. But I have hope, still, much as it annoys me sometimes: I hope that my life has simply had it's seasons out of order.

I was born into a hundred year's winter, ice and snow and silent malice all around, each day lived as under a curse. A curse that I have broken, now, through sheer force of will. (While breaking curses is all very well, it still takes time for that much frost to melt.) But spring will come, I suppose. Eventually.

theology of the downtrodden

[excerpt from a letter I recently wrote]

I am in a stubborn mood, and so I won't commit to whether or not God is "real" -- especially not in the way most people understand God to be. But for the sake of argument and of comfort and of logic, I will say, if God is any kind of real: I don't (and never will) believe God knew my parents would fuck it up this badly... God only knew that they could.

I didn't have to suffer. I didn't HAVE to be hurt. But I was. None of it had to happen. But it did. And that is all on them, on my parents. I was entrusted to their care. They could have made better choices. They didn't. I could have been rescued any number of times, by any number of people. But I wasn't. And here we are.

(I also didn't have to be raped. There is no moral to that story, and I can't tell you how many people I've wanted to punch for implying that there might be. The only thing I might concede to is that my babies had to die... but not for any cosmic reason, and not to teach me anything, and not because God "needed" them in Heaven (what the fuck does that even mean?!) but for the simple fact that my poor body could not support their lives and my own at the same time. This is the saddest fact of my life and I don't know if I can ever truly forgive the people whose fault it is. I do know it's certainly not my own.)

So. I just wanted to offer this to you, despite my ambivilance: never believe for one second that God would want this for me, would choose this for me. That is too ugly to be borne, and it will shatter you. Know that every human makes a choice every minute of their life, and the choices are entirely their own. That is what is so desperate and holy and beautiful and terrifying about humanity, what we wish we could deny. That WE did this. All of us. With our creative power, we did THIS. But we can turn it around, too. That is what power is for. For making things happen. Like it or not, we can't deny our power, or the responsibility that comes with it; we can only decide if we are going to use it to make good things happen, or bad.

variations on a theme

I've been thinking lately about how the first event of my year seems to ultimately wind up being its thesis. Going to The Center last January was such a huge precedent for the rest of 2010. Last year was about separation, and also integration. It was about sorting things out, about turning the topsy-turvy world I'd always lived in right-side-up.

I was absolutely driven by the idea of distance. I wanted distance -- physical and chronological separation -- from the past and from the people who had done me harm. And I found that the farther I got from Them, the closer I got to my Self. And that was good.

----------

2011 began, for me, in Australia; and I don't see how anything could really be a better prelude to a year of Potentially Unmatched Awesome than that. I hope that this will be a year of saying "Yes!" and of taking hold of whatever other priceless opportunities come my way, big or small. Of being less sensible, and more spontaneous. Of being bold. Of being free.

Of being.

When I was in Australia, I had this sudden realization that I was the person on Facebook who was getting to do something completely awesome and talk about it in my status updates. That I was having this experience, and it was happening right now. I have (and had) such a hard time being totally present, but there were times when I know I succeeded, and that is comforting. I can see my growth. But I want more. I want this to be the year when I come into my power -- and not quietly, either. For the first time in my life, I want to be noticed. (Which says a lot, actually, about how much safer I feel in my own skin these days.)

I have a good feeling about all this. I hope it doesn't fade. I hope that by the time Christmas comes around again, I am spending it with Pam and Gretchen and Jill and Jeff and the kids... and that I am positively crackling with vitality. Watch out, my dears!! It's gonna be awesome.

priority

Most women, at some point or other, suddenly realize that their baby's life has become more valuable to them than their own. Given the choice, we would do anything to keep that baby from harm, even to our own detriment. (This is not remotely rational, but there it is.) And yet, our bodies do not follow suit. Our bodies will choose us, every time.

Poor bodies. You were only following your tidy algorithms, your infallible logic. You did not know we would rather our child had lived, and we had not. You did not know we would resent you, regardless of whether you had anything to do with it at all. That we would think you had betrayed us, and therefore we had somehow betrayed our child.