Five Month Post-Break-Up

I am a good person.
I am worthy of love
I am a good person
I am worth of joy.
I am stronger than I remember and I am going to be okay.

I write the words over and over, trying to inoculate myself against pain, doubt, sorrow, weakness, and suffering that keeps washing up against my feet, chilling me and dragging me down...

I am worthy of love
I am worthy of good love
I want love, and I see myself as worthy...
maybe not all the time,
but often enough
to know
The tears on my cheeks and my desk and smeared across the backs of my hands will dry.
Because I deserve my fair measure of joy.
Not more than my share, just enough.  Just enough to love the sunrise again, and delight in the little things again.

Just enough to feel the warm waves of hope at my feet again.
Instead of these cold waves of loneliness, doubt, and hopelessness.

When Doves Cry...I guess.

Mourning Doves always remind me of my grandmother.  My paternal grandmother, my dad’s mother, did not really like people much.  She preferred animals and kept a variety of them in large quantities in her home all of the time I knew her.  On the balcony off her bedroom (which was later converted to a room for her literal hundreds of mice) was a cage of mourning doves, and the sound of them calling always makes me think of her, makes me feel like I might be six years old and in awe of everything again.  I feel light shining through dirty glass windows, I feel warm and that magical nothing-can-be-that-wrong feeling you only have when you are very young and innocent. 

It took me a long time to realize that they are mourning doves, not morning doves, and I actually like that so much better.  

Sitting now, in my father's house, as he and I both age and with my grandmother long gone, I listen for the sound of my little boy, listen for him stirring from his afternoon nap.  I hear the doves calling in through the windows, and it strikes me suddenly, that they sound just like my little boy when he first wakes up, when he's entertaining himself and speaking garbled half words to himself.  He sounds like summer light shining through glass, like the magical innocence of youth and possibility.

He sounds like love.

Solace in the Forest.

There are times when life, and the problems that come with it, feel too big.  Much too big.  Too big to manage.
It is comforting, though, that in these times, the scale of nature can be so reassuring. When life is too big, the ocean is always bigger.  A proper forest filled with redwoods growing over their fallen brethren is bigger.  The life outside my head is bigger.

That has been a huge part of the solace I've found in running away to the North Coast in the last few weeks; immersing myself in nature is a balm to my tattered soul, letting me feel healed, even for a moment.  Letting the scope of my view expand so far beyond my own troubles that they seem manageable.  Letting my eyes rest on unreachable horizons, wander unknowable labyrinths of ferns and wildflowers.  Letting the cool air blow through my dark head, refreshing my thoughts, even if only for a moment.

In dark, heavy times, nature is salve.  It can feel like the only salve.

For the Fisrt Time in Forever...

It took me a while to put my finger on it, to actual find the words to describe the feeling of meeting someone new.  There's an enthusiasm and optimism that can be difficult to place, but I think what it comes down to is hope.
When you meet someone new, and there is some kind of connection, there is the flash of hope that this might be one of those rare gemstones of a person who might see you, who might understand you.  And that is thrilling.

I feel like most of life is spent walking around partitioned; you have a work self and a family, maybe different versions of your self you share with different friend groups.  But there are those special folks who see the whole person,the light and the dark, the silly and the serious, and can make one truly feel seen.  Like, Seen, with a capital S.

And I believe that is one of the goals of life, one of the touchstones of a life well lived.  I think we are all wandering around hoping to find someone who looks at us and says, "Yes, that is incongruent and confusing, but cool.  Show me more."  I read somewhere once that the point of falling in love and sharing your life with someone was to have someone to bear witness to your life, so that you could have that one shred of evidence that life was not being lived completely alone.  Actually, it was in a  movie and I'm trying to sound smart, but the point remains.  That rings true like a thousand bulky church bells in my heart, and I don't think it's just romantic love that can give us that sense of being seen, of existing in a world with understanding rather than in the cold, indifferent vacuum of casual acquaintances and lost friends.  We all want to be seen, have witness borne, have our trivial triumphs and minor disasters dissected by someone willing to take our side, see it from our perspective.

And that's the optimistic euphoria that bubbles up when you first meet someone and wonder, holy shit, is this someone who might actually be interested in my mundane existence?

It's The End of the World....Again

Not much more than 5 years after my divorce from my secret husband, whom I loved very much but was also a narcissist who more or less tried to separate me from my family and sense of self to fully engulf me in his world, I am at another cross roads.
and not the drinking-game movie with Britney Spears

My boyfriend...of almost five years, with whom I have an amazing child, is leaving me.  Someday.
Until then he is drinking again, after struggling to get sober 4 months ago, hurling insults at me, and generally trying to prove how much better he is than me by absolving himself of responsibility.

and the usual thoughts creep in.

What is wrong with me that this is happening again?!

Today, at work, while trying desperately to compartmentalize so that I could lecture a bunch of twenty-somethings about product safety, I thought of Friends, and Ross Geller.  Three divorces.

I don't know it I am grateful to not have to claim another divorce, or frustrated that the words I have to describe my situations are so disappointing.
My boyfriend is breaking up with me.  My son's father is moving out.  My baby daddy is over it?  I'm going through a split up?
I don't know.  It doesn't feel like any of those appropriate phrases explain it properly.  They guy I was planning a future with, after my last future blew up, is yelling insults at me.  The thing I was working on, working towards for the last couple of years is garbage.  Break-up doesn't quite cover it.

But to be fair, rarely do the names of things truly fit the size and scope of the situation.  Realistically, words can't be expected to capture the nuance and the gravity of massive life events.

I try to comfort myself by reminding myself that disentangling from my ex-husband seemed impossible, and now he's not a part of my life in any real way.  I know this process will be so painful and complicated, and I know I will survive.  But it is so much more complicated and painful now.  Because of my amazing child.  If anything, I hoped I could save him from some of the trauma I endured as a child, and now I know he will have a much more complicated, painful life.  I am so ashamed, frustrated, and worried.
I just don't know what to do next.

My Sweet Boy

There is a lot going on these days. 

You could argue that at any point in time, I am sure, but it certainly feels like we're living in exceptional times.  Like things are becoming a little bit extra unhinged.  Like the world might end tomorrow because of climate change, or the rise of terrorism, or white supremacy will rebrand itself yet again as a drive through burger place so good people shrug and eat it up, like we already do with Amazon.

And now I'm a mom to a sweet, tender little boy, so when I think about all the fucked up things in the world, I think about how he'll slowly enter that world more and more, and have to negotiate and navigate more and more of it.  It is terrifying to think that slowly he will become a full fledged human who will have to negotiate some of the shit I've had to navigate.  It terrifies the shit out of me.

I have known many sweet, tender men.  I still do, but it is hard growing up a sweet, tender young man in our world.  It's changing, slowly, but we still expect our boys to be a certain way, to certain things.  We still have a society that punishes little boys who speak softly, or care deeply, or stand out int he wrong way.  And I worry about my little boy being on of those guys.  Just like I worry about him *not* being one of those guys.

Today, at breakfast, my little guys started shouting about a bug on the table, pointing excitedly and smiling at his discovery.  He loves bugs.  I tried to tell him it wasn't a bug, just a black crumb, but he was unswayed.  He looked at me seriously and said, "bug nigh nigh!"  It is not a crumb, mom, it is a bug, but it is just sleeping.  He made cooing sounds and sang to the 'bug' before making snoring sounds.  he kept his finger next to the bug the whole time, affectionately.  It was so sweet it broke my heart.

How am I supposed to trust the world with a boy that sweet?  My baby boy, who gives strangers hugs  and sings made-up songs to sleeping pretend-bugs.  I have seen what the world can do to sweet, tender hearts.  and there is nothing in the world that scares me more than my little boy growing more and more into that world, more and more out of my protection.

There is nothing on earth scarier than being a parent.