Dark Ramblings

The overwhelm is everywhere, you just have to look around. It's the dishes in the sink. It's the dresser drawers hanging open, bras and socks spilling out. It's the dead roses in the vintage white pitcher. It's the plants dying, the cat box that needs scooping, the trash on the floor that requires too much effort to bend and pick up.

It's the dirty house, the dirty car, the dirty garage, the dirty feet, the dirty secrets.

It's the brain that refuses to work. Except to manufacture terrifying thoughts and images in living color that could win awards.

It's the wrinkled, haggard face that stares back at me from the mirror.

It's surgery; your daughter's illness; family dynamics; trauma. It's a country gone mad, a planet that's dying, so much suffering you have no idea where to put it. It's evil, it's terror, it's despair; it's sobbing in the shower and in the pillow while you lie in the fetal position.

Waiting for my daughter to come out of her appointment with the rheumatologist wondering if it will be lupus, I realize there is no one to reach out to; not one person in the whole world to text and say I'm waiting and I'm scared. I'm scared it will be lupus and I'm scared it won't be lupus. (Lupus would at least explain things.) Can you please keep me company? Can you hear what this last year has been like? Do you know what it's like to watch her walk to the car, how her body almost refuses to move, how long it takes to traverse the short distance to the curb, the strain I see painted all over her beautiful face?

I'm long past the polite posts, the pretty pictures, the hopefully clever prose, the inspiring tales. I don't know how to live with all this brokenness, how to live without someone, anyone, to share it with.

I pick up my phone and find a video of my grand baby, my other daughter's precious little girl, and watch it over and over and over. Tears stream as I watch her climb the play structure, narrating as she does, announce that the first slide is too "liddle" for her, then slide down the big slide, land on her bum on the ground, dust herself off and get back up for more.

My daughter makes it to the car. It's not lupus. Not yet anyway. But the doctor will monitor her because some of the symptoms are there, and because it's true she's lost her life.

Just Thoughts

Fantastic arbor with pale pink roses. Carmel By The Sea.

Mornings have gone quiet. The birds are busy now raising their young. Sometimes, mid-day, I hear the babies, and as much as I miss the early morning melodies, my heart does swell at the rambunctious energetic chirping of the fledglings.

The only thing certain is change; or so they say.

Years ago gardening taught me about the seasons of life. Both literal and figurative; how to work with the earth's and life's turnings, how to not only honor, but trust each new season. It especially taught me to trust the dark, the time of cold and barrenness, the time to go inside, and rest. Let go and let life work, let her do what she does, down there in the deep fertile earth. Down here deep inside me.

It's hard to know how to breathe, let alone trust, without my garden; without the day to day reminder, without the sanctuary of my hands in the soil, the sun on my back, the delicate colors, the heady scent of that cherished piece of earth.

I used to write poems in my garden. Bad, ridiculous poems. Over the top maudlin poems. Love poems to the One I Never Got Over. Much to my joy and shame. (The not getting over part and the poems part.) About his eyes, and his lips, and his hands. The flat-out miracle of him. The way he would scoop me to his chest, his taut waist warm against my forearms. How one day over his kitchen table, Christmas lights blazing against the gray bowl of a sky outside, not even a half a day from his rumpled sheets, he ended it. Just like that. Sometimes I would lay naked in my garden. Not a soul knows about that. Even I had forgotten. Talk about shame. (I had a friend once who had a framed photo of herself in her bedroom, lying naked in the forest by a stream ~ right there on the white wall next to the door.)

It's painful to live when you can't find yourself. When you've vacated the premises and are somewhere, god only knows where, else. Dissociation is the clinical term. It's what happens when your world isn't safe. It was a good thing because it helped you to survive, helped you when you were so overwhelmed and so alone you thought you would die; though later it just steals your life.

Some things never change. Some things you never get over losing. Not so far anyway.

Walking under the redwoods, the hot wind whips their perfume right into my body, and suddenly, for a split second, it remembers everything.

That night I would dream I was coming home.