Walk of Shame

It is 1:15 on a Tuesday morning, and I have just pulled in to my garage.  The man whose apartment I left has probably already fallen back to sleep, after seeing me safely to my car.  I am clear-headed and wide awake, and starving. I stop at the convenient store down the street.  The two clerks barely notice me -- one plugged in to his music player, the other talking pointedly to someone in a country where it is a more hospitable hour. 

Outside, a police officer is getting out of his car.  He greets me --"Good morning!" -- and I smile and wave.  No, officer, I am neither drunk nor in need of assistance.  Merely late/early home after making the choice to sleep comfortably in my own bed, at least for part of the night.  

I am considering unconventionality, and the freedom it affords me.  Freedom to enjoy another person's body and also enjoy my solitude.  To have my cake and eat it, even when I get that cake in the restocking hours at a 24-hour convenient store.  

But still. I yearn for the comfort of falling deeply asleep next to someone whose habit is to make room for me.  I want the absolute security of knowing that no matter what unpleasant, unconscious noises my body emits, someone will be there in the morning, laughing or gently scolding me for my unfortunate jalapeño habit.  

I am not ashamed to be walking out of someone's arms and into my door at this hour, I just wish I could be walking into someone's arms.  Imperfect, sometimes chafing, but mine to walk into, nonetheless.  Patience looks like a deserted street at 1:15 on a Tuesday morning.

Things That Kill Other Things

When I was content and hypnotized into feeling secure in life, I had certain assumptions about myself that never got challenged.  One of those was that I am a peace loving person, so much so that the idea of owning a firearm made me physically ill.

Then, someone snapped their fingers, I came out of my trance and into chaos.  There are no more assumptions, and I am seriously contemplating owning a pistol of some kind.  I don't want it for self-defense, I want because it is so fucking fun to go to the gun range and shoot.  

I went to the gun range for the first time in my life last week.  A friend took me there and let me shoot his revolver with his bullets.  As soon as we pulled into the parking lot, I started shaking -- not visibly, just internally vibrating.  Guns.  With real bullets.  I imagined all the possible ways someone could be maimed or killed, even in a controlled environment like a gun range.  I could barely hold my pen still to sign the liability waiver.  As we walked to the range, ear and eye protection in place, I found it hard to control my hands.  We walked to our slot.  A couple of slots over, someone was shooting a rifle that made my abdomen quiver every time it went off.  

My friend took out his revolver, showed me how to load, hold, aim and shoot it.  He set up the target for me, took some shots to show me how to do it, then stood back while I tried.  His instructions sounded like underwater messages through my ear protection.  The first time I loaded and shot the revolver, I did not hit the target once.  Not even close enough to make the paper move in the breeze of a passing bullet.  I opened the gun to reload it, hands shaking, clumsy, thinking that if I dropped one round it would explode and leave bits of my face all over the range.  This time, I loosened my knees, breathed deeply before I raised the pistol and used its weight to steady my hands.  I started hitting that target around the edges, once or twice coming close to the center.  On my final try, I got 8 out of 10 shots in the target.  

When we left, my body was finally still, but my hands still felt like they were vibrating from within.  At home, I could still smell gunpowder on my fingers.  Eventually, the adrenaline crashed and I sat down staring out the window while my body reset.  

The next day, I immediately wanted to go back again.  I am a person who enjoys shooting guns.  Handling things whose sole purpose is to kill other things.  Even so, the idea that something in my hands could damage any living body still makes me physically ill.  This is a strange nuance of both my reconstructed life, and of the whole gun debate.  Peaceful people sometimes enjoy hobbies with the potential for violence.  I support every restriction, check and control measure proposed for gun ownership.  I like the smell of gunpowder on my fingers.  

I see this whole day as another discovery on my path of balance.  Each thing I have discovered and held goes on the scales, and they gently sway towards stability.  Some things will stay anchored there, some will be replaced, but I will always find the even place.  Today, a pistol goes on one side, peace and compassion go on the other, pulling it all into alignment.

Back There

"You don't have anything you can throw yourself into," my friend said to me.  About twenty minutes later in our conversation, I heard it.  Heard it and knew without a doubt that it was true.  

What do I throw myself into?  Being a life-loving, optimistic person, it certainly isn't going to be a river or a pit or anything like that.  What did I throw myself into before?  The Ex.  I threw myself into the Ex with absolute abandon and something I called joy. It was my mission in life to be part of that relationship.  So, maybe that is the thing.  I throw myself into a relationship.  I keep working and constructing a backup life, but my real job becomes finding a relationship to throw myself into.  

Except.  Until. There is this glimmer of an opportunity which pulls together things I am passionate about --creativity, wooded land, women (and men) stepping out of their lives to find transcendence.  Just a hint of a sparkle in my eye, and then:

(1) --I won a raffle prize from a local business.  The prize: a consultation with an entrepreneurial law expert.  

(2) --piffing around on the internet, I saw these things:

   "I just wanna go on more adventures. Be around good energy. Connect with people. Learn new things."

    "You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.  --Winston Churchill"

    ". . . a new surge of creativity invariably emerges out of a period of instability, and life unfolds in greater diversity than before whenever it takes a shock wave in its stride.  --Margaret Silf"

(3)--I checked in with the person whose support I most needed, and their response was simply, Yes. 

It feels like the edge of a pit, or a high drop into a river.  But I want to throw myself into it. I think. 

Walking the Land

One of the things that has happened this past year is that I (finally) feel a kind of urgency towards knowing and understanding where I came from.  By divorce, I have somehow been initiated into true adulthood in my family, and I feel more comfortable asking questions about the gaps in family stories.  Also by divorce, I have learned where my real, down-to-the-center-of-the-earth roots are.  I always thought they were with the Ex, but they are within, and everything that is within somehow germinated in Kentucky.

This weekend, I "walked the land" with my Dad.  It had been years since I took a walk around the perimeter of the farm where my grandparents lived.  After our walk, I stayed behind for a while, sitting under a tree in the yard.  I thought about all the years I had come down to the farm, all the iterations of my self as I grew and the places on that land I touched.  The field at the top of the hill where my childhood friend and I tried (unsuccessfully) to catch one of the horses.  The pond where I tried shooting a pistol for the first time.  The relatively flat yard where we had picnics and bonfires and dangerous games of Jarts.  And all the Christmases in the house.  Year after year, for as long as my grandmother could do it.  

As I sat under the tree, time traveling, I felt this long, unbroken thread of loneliness passing through so many of the events.  Every time we got together, there seemed to be some heartbreak brewing.  A separation, a family quarrel, someone moving away. But every time it was someone different who had the burden of loneliness with them.  They carried it sometimes quietly and gently, sometimes with hard, sharp elbows and a face of iron, sometimes drenched in it.  It was almost like the loneliness was our precious family heirloom shared among everyone so we each had a chance to connect with it.  This past year, it felt like my turn to carry it.

I do not know who is next to take this heirloom, but already I feel it is lifting from me.  I sat under a tree in the yard, waving away the same kinds of bugs that bit and stung me when I walked barefoot in that yard as a child.  I saw our legacy, this loneliness we share among ourselves, but I also saw the traces it left behind -- the bottomless love, compassion and creativity which are also our family heirlooms.  This is where I come from, and I mean to go back here -- literally and figuratively -- as much as I can.

Everything is a Metaphor

While working on developing glute muscle control for hip shimmies, M says, "The release is as important as the contraction.  Maybe even more important."

This is another lesson of my current life.  I am trying not to call it my "new life," but it is still too new to be just my life.  Anyway, release is the lesson -- knowing that letting go means letting go all the way.  If you don't let go all the way, you can't grab on to the next thing, and eventually the shimmy falls apart.  We practice letting go faster and faster, trying not to trigger a horrible cramp.  Back to basics as the foundation for all things.  Hold. Release. Don't move, or even try to move yet.  Don't worry about layering or the size of the movement.  Just hold.  And release. 

 Eventually we can move up to switching moves, traveling.  We practice letting go gracefully and completely as we move forward into the next thing.  Focus.  Keeping it simple. I think of this as it is finally spring, and I finally feel creative again.  This moment is lovely, and I mean to enjoy it.  I see a vision of myself far down the road, back to all of this on my way to a different kind of life.  More and more I feel that this is true and will happen.

But not yet.  Not yet.  Now is good.  Hold, savor, release.  The release is the most important part.

The Down Side of Simplifying

I have been thinking about the essential irony of loneliness.  Loneliness -- true soul-encasing black hole loneliness -- can't be felt alone.  It requires other people, either immediately present or so recently left that chair seats are still warm.  

I've removed some distractions from my life lately, so I am noticing more clearly how I am doing.  For the most part, how I am doing is amazing.  I feel stronger in my work and in my still-emerging self.  I can identify the things that make me happy, and I do them.  I am finally starting to master walking shimmies on the down.  

The side effect, though, is that I also notice the truth of when I am not amazing.  And here is where I am thinking more about loneliness.  I am feeling it -- not more often, but unmuffled.  It is clear, unclouded by random hookups or too many POF messages.  I notice it most in the seconds after I part from a friend, having enjoyed a good conversation, a fun show, a meal together.  I know in these moments, with the clarity of June sunshine, that I am now alone.  That weight sits on me, purring.

With this realization, I see that I have made another loop around this spiral track which is my Life After.  I am back at the start point, sort of.  On the same horizontal plane, but maybe shifted a little bit vertically.  Even as I chafe under the weight, I realize how much freer I am now.  I am no longer compelled to create distractions in order to manage feeling lonely.  I have the well of things which make me happy, and I can tap into those things.  Running, dancing, time outside, writing.  Back on the spiral track, lapping myself and leveling up.  

When I was a teenager, I had such bad menstrual cramps that I would pass out if I didn't take ibuprofen before and during my cycle.  As I got older, they gradually eased, but I still took ibuprofen, at least for a day or two.  A few months ago, I decided to try a cycle without it.  It was uncomfortable, intrusive, but not unbearable.  I got through one month, and another, and another.  It's not so much that the pain diminished, but more that I was better able to cope and function.  I think this will also happen with loneliness.  It won't ever go completely away -- I am a loving human, after all -- but I will continue to be better able to cope and function. 

I Don't Want Your Sympathy, Except When I Do.

Recently, my final living grandparent died.  She was 93 years old, and having lived a long, difficult, but loving and good life, she died in her home, just how she wanted.  She had a heart attack walking into her kitchen and was gone before her body hit the floor.

When I heard that she died, I was just returning from a weekend away with Most Recent Man, and I was consumed with accepting just the right level of comfort without revealing too much emotion.  (Most Recent Man is now Most Previous Man, but more on that another day.)  Later that evening it hit me -- I should tell the Ex.

My grandmother loved the Ex.  Loved.  Him.  The Ex shared the same first name as her father, and she would often comment on their similar, gentle, quiet natures.  I swear she thought The Ex was her beloved father reborn.  For his part, the Ex treated her with gentility, kindness, and the patience that only a non-blood relative can bestow on someone as they age and grow more pessimistic.

I hadn't communicated with the Ex for months.  Our business was done, and I had reached the decision that I didn't want to be his friend, so there was no need.  The night I got the news, I sat cross-legged on my sofa, perfectly still, for a very long time trying to untangle my true motivation for the urge to contact him.  At the end of it all, when all the strands were combed and gleaming, I decided it would cause me more anxiety to keep it from him than it would to tell him.  I sent him the shortest possible text message, including my father's address in case he or his parents wanted to send a sympathy card.  Almost immediately he sent the shortest possible text message back, kindly expressing his sympathy and thanking me for telling him.  Done.  I thought.

Last night, after several days with too little sleep and too many people demanding my attention, I got home late and opened my mailbox.  Inside were two cards with the Ex's last name in the return address.  Sympathy cards, one from him and one from his parents.  The kindest of small gestures, but in that moment of feeling bombed out and beyond rebuilding, I only had anger for a reaction.  I stretched my hand towards the garbage, intending to throw them in without looking. I stopped just before dropping them in, and clutched them against my abdomen as I went up to my apartment.  They reopened the wound by showing some kind of caring.  I would use their unsought messages to stop my own bleeding.

Once inside my door, I opened the card from his parents first.  I couldn't read the whole thing through my still-angry eyes.  I only caught the last sentence -- "We miss you very much" -- and, seeing black, I threw the card away.  The card from the Ex was lovely, expensive -- one of those super-fancy, classy, non-religious, arty cards.  He had written a short message, and still seeing black, I could only make out the word "hilarious" before I also threw it into the garbage.

Today I am a little ashamed of myself, but I still took all the trash to the compactor without attempting to read their full messages.  I am deciding whether I need to send a thank you note to them.  I think Emily Post would want me to, or is it that I want to?  That the cleanness of the break is an illusion?  I am still clear that I don't want to be his friend, but, goddammit, even after all this time, I want to be missed.  Shit, let's be honest:  I want to get to reject him a little bit.

Now, after a few clean hours where no one wanted my attention for their aches, or their learning, or their anxiety, I am finding the compassionate home for this childish emotion of mine.  Poor little neglected-feeling child, I thought I had soothed you enough, but clearly you needed another minute.  Now the child in me is calmer, and I feel I can acknowledge the grace of the gesture.  I have the thank you notes all written in my head:

Thank you for your remembrances.  Your kind thoughts are appreciated.


Fini.