spectrum of survival

some days i do all right. well, even.
other days are different.
and still other days are numb as ice,
nerve endings burned with grief.
i cry out for anesthesia, but in my heart i know:
the days of feeling bring the most healing.

damn, that rhymed. it wasn't meant to.
truly, i am a poet. but not because i rhyme.

i am a poet because i was born with things etched onto the walls of my heart. i read them for awhile, feel them for longer, and then share them with the outside world on receipts, corners of napkins, torn-off pieces of paper, and the occasional more nicely-contained moleskine. and when i write, slowly i begin the process of hammering out those phrases from my heart. their burn and echo is always with me, but i don't carry them inside anymore. there is release. there is recovery. there is a blank space for the next thing to be engraved.

some days i do all right.
other days are different.

today i am somewhere between "not okay" and "all right" but i don't think i have time to think about it. and maybe that's a good thing. i feel the dogs at my heels today, snapping, growling, waiting for me to miss a step. i will not. those beasts don't deserve a juicy bite of my ankles.

from martha stewart via this is glamorous

and so i say to myself, "peace," and my self says back, "but where?" so i throw myself into motion, social activities, projects, plans for travel. i think i know that peace is not found in frenzy, but i'm afraid to quiet down and let the grief continue to do its work. i've been wrung through this process for months now and i'm tired. i believe my exhaustion is only exacerbated by the fact that i had no warning i was going to have to mourn something, and virtually no mutual processing when that is precisely what i needed. i have great friends who love and support me, but in some ways i have done this completely by myself. i feel that burden heavily, and i resent it. this was not love and it is not love. love does not abandon so suddenly and absolutely. love is not unaware, deliberately or otherwise. love doesn't run away. love presses into what is real even when things get shaky . . . EVEN IF that means things still end up coming to a close.

but what do i know? nothing. if anything i thought i knew was true, i would not be where i am now. i would not be holding this raw chunk of stone too heavy for me, and i would not bear these scars. so i must re-learn. i must submit even what i think i've learned, again and again. every day is an ending. every day is a starting-over.

this cycle of rebellion, struggle, submission, release, and finally progress is the slowest, hardest, most frustrating thing i've gone through in my entire life. that's not just hyperbole, either. sometimes i think i'd much rather stop feeling everything and make foolish but immediately gratifying choices. then i come to my senses (or what's left of them) and remember that i want nothing but a true, deep life, pierced with clarity and defined by generosity, kindness, and realness. i think i just made up that word. i'm having a hard time saying what i mean . . . so let me put it this way, with some help:

i did not want to live
what was not life.

[ thoreau ]