Don't be a dick

There are times I have a hard time making sense of the world.  I’m not talking about your average, daily waiting at Starbucks, in line, for 30 minutes when the bitch in front of you STILL hasn’t decided what the hell she wants, when grabbing her by the hair and explaining how ALL 50 people behind her NEED coffee seems totally and completely rational .  No, I’m talking more along the lines of why in the hell does bad shit happen.

Granted, Aunt Flow showed up, so I’m my normally, monthly, hormonally, teary-eyed mess.  Its one of those times that “Lilo and Stich” would probably make me cry harder than “Schindler’s List” and that shit lasted days…all ‘cause of that little girl in red.

Anyway, ‘tis the Season, and I’m stressed out, maxed out, tired, and already almost in tears every moment of the day…over sentimental shit, happy shit, sad shit, and the missing-people-that-aren’t-here-anymore shit.

Yesterday, for some reason that verges on crazy and involves estrogen, I was remembering my first Christmas without the Sha.  The first Christmas after my divorce that I faced a Christmas without my baby, when Brian and I lived in that teeny house in Monteview. I got up, turned on the tree lights, and proceeded to bawl my eyes out for hours.  Christmas is about kids, and by God, her not being there just ruined the whole thing.  It was my first “Christmas.Fucking.Sucks.” moment.

My mom-in-love showed up to head to Arco with us, and we spent the day with Buddy and Tammy and my Grandma Jeneane.  I have a picture of us together that day, and I am laughing…which is a good reminder that my day got brighter.  But, it reminded again that Gram J isn’t here; made me wonder how she dealt for years with Christmases alone as her husband loaded up and left to spend the day with his kids and ex-wife; and I remembered her eyes that last Christmas she was here, when she kept nodding off, as she was watching soccer in Spanish, and begging me not to leave.  So, I cried again like I tend to do at the drop of a hat this time of year.

I often go back to that day, thinking of that Christmas I had to spend without Sheridan, and it pales in comparison to the one day, she got up early, a week before Santa came, and I had to tell her her dad was gone…forever.  

I remember it so vividly.  I remember trying to put up the tree.  Trying to wrap presents.  And in the midst of all of it, I realize that the tree, the snow, the presents…none of that shit really matters.

I was hit with this huge ball of selfish guilt.  How you can love someone, then hate them in the marrow of your bones, find forgiveness somewhere, learn to be friends again, and eventually learn, in the scheme of it all, YOU really don’t matter.  Babies matter.  Innocence matters.  Safety matters. LOVE matters.

As an adult, you learn to deal with hurts and heartaches.  You gradually learn that the world can be a fucked up a place.  Bad things happen to good people.  Sometimes, the best and most good, most honest, the things we love the best are jerked away from us.  As we grow we learn this. 

I learned it at 22, again at 31, and most profoundly at 32 and 35.

I didn’t have to learn it at 9 like Sheridan.  I missed a Christmas with her, but she’ll never get another with her dad.  I still have Buddy and Tammy, both.  I have yet to lose a parent, and maybe THAT fear is what brings me to tears every year when I take Sheridan to lay the wreath.  She’s always hated it.  

Yesterday, she asked to go.

So, I woke up this morning, thinking of all the things I had to get done, and I sent my children to school.  I told Schmoo I would pick her up at car line.  We were planning on hanging stockings.  This weekend meant family get-togethers and baking. 

I got my nails done, and when I got in the car, to go shopping after, Brian sent a text telling me to check out the news.  Twenty babies gunned down in school.

Babies who probably wrote letters to Santa and have presents under the tree. 

I drove to the school, 20 minutes early to be first in line.  When I saw my baby run out of the building and laugh and wave at me, I totally, and completely lost it.  I’m still in tears.

I don’t understand it, and I don’t think anyone else does either.  I’ve listened to asshole pundits screaming it’s because we kicked God out of schools and a few dickhead atheists crying it’s all because religion is evil.

Let me be clear, I’ve been on both sides of this fence.

I believe in love. 

I don’t think anyone needs a higher power to have a moral ethic; in fact, if hell is the only reason you do what is right, you lack character.  On the other hand, I know what it’s like to go to my knees and have nothing left but faith in believing things will get better.

And it ALL reminded me of what is wrong with us as a country today.  

I BELIEVE in LOVE.

We have become a people that look too much at our differences instead of looking at our common experiences.  We have become a people that define ourselves not as who we are, but who we are not. Too many of us are ready to pounce on the differences instead of embracing an open and honest dialogue about what we all want out of life.

Babies died today.  The innocence of childhood and a belief in the goodness of humanity was lost today, to young people who had all the optimism in the world before them.

I BELIEVE in LOVE.

I believe everyone that crosses my path has a lesson to teach me.  To open my mind to a new way of thinking, as uncomfortable and asinine as I might have previously believed it to be, is what I owe the world. I owe it to innocence, and hope, and love….and to all that is good in this world, that stands in the face of evil, sick people, to open my mind to other ways of thinking is a duty we all have.

I BELIEVE in LOVE.

Love says not to fear.  Love teaches us compassion.  Love tells us different isn’t bad; it just is.

Tammy used to call me the rainbow child.  I don’t believe any human is instrinsically evil.  Call me naïve, but I refuse to believe it.

I BELIEVE in LOVE.  I believe we all want the best for humanity, we just disagree on the means to get there…and that is why we need an open space to discuss these things together…not polarization and labeling difference as evil.

I come from a long line of outspoken women, and Tammy had this saying when we were growing up that some may find harsh.  She would tell us, a lot, “Don’t be a dick.”

It’s probably some pop-culture thing from the 90’s…remember the shirts?  But, it has stuck with me.  You mouth off...”Don’t be a dick.”  You don’t give up your chair for an elder, and she’ll grab you by those tiny hairs on your neck and whisper in your ear, “Don’t be a dick.” 

Dicks don’t gun down classrooms full of children.  Sick people do.  Dicks attack others for seeking solace and understanding in a crazy world, in a way some view as different.

So, I guess the whole point of this rambling mess is this…believe in love.  Love doesn’t hurt others.  Love discusses things openly and honestly and truthfully.  

Its Christmas.  Saturnalia.  Hannukah. I could give a shit.

Cherish what you have.  Practice love.  Don’t be a dick. Best.Advice.EVER.

in my bones

Elephants have cemeteries.  Its true.  They visit the bones of lost members of their herd, and rub the bones with their trunks.  They say an elephant never forgets.

I wanted to forget.  I wanted to put all the sadness away; bury it far down like a hidden secret.  I quit writing about it.  I put it away, but it was like sitting it on the mantle of the fireplace to stare at you every day, screaming “Look at me!  Touch me!  FEEL ME!” And, I’d look at it every day, then tell it to fuck off.  But, I left it there to stare me down every morning and on the way home from work and when a picture would be found in a box, and mostly every time I heard the word “sunshine.”  Certain songs and it would laugh at me.

I promised myself I would change my life.  I’d be happy.  I’d cherish every moment, and I’d lose the things that drag me down.  All that baggage, I’d find a way to lose it, get rid of it, bury it in the desert. I’d find peace and love and move on.

Its been five years, and I never realized how angry I am until last night.  There was this uncontrollable urge to rip everything off the walls and out of the cupboards and watch it all shatter into pieces on the ground, ‘cause my heart still feels likes its doing just that. I wanted to tear my hair and scream at the top of my lungs…the temptation of giving in to the urge was overwhelming.

Destruction.  Complete and utter destruction.  Chaos.  I wanted it out of my chest and into the real.  I wanted to SEE it crashing all around me, so that I didn’t have to feel it.  So I could see it and know it was real and THERE...HERE. I wanted it in slow motion…to see the pieces of everything shatter in a time lapsed sequence, so I could say, “THERE!  THAT is what its like when everything…just… breaks…”  That moment in the photograph when all the pieces are flying into the air, right before they start descending back to the earth, stopped, the edges blurred…white porcelain, fragile, and flying, but frozen in time, and I wanted it broken, so shattered there would be no chance of ever putting the pieces back together.  Teeny, tiny shards that poke you in the night and wake you up wondering …

I’d like to say I’m so mad I could scream, but, I’ve been screaming this whole time.  Screaming, screaming, screaming in the confines of a space where only I can hear.

I’ve told myself others have lost more, felt more, deserve to grieve more.  That my loss is lesser.  But, I’m confused, because my loss hurts.  Dear God, it hurts  to the marrow of my bones.  It hurts in the kinks of my guts.  I make my toes smile, but even they hurt sometimes.

I just cannot, for the life of me forget that day.  It won’t go away.

I never wanted to be mad.  I always wanted to feel blessed. I was so lucky to have a friend like that, and I just CANNOT wrap my head around WHY, and it pisses me off.  To no end.  I don’t get it, and I have come to the realization I never will.

I give myself one day a year to cry…and God and everyone in this house knows I sob.  I just can’t believe I never let myself be mad.

I’m smart.  An intelligent, educated person.  I KNOW the stages of grief.  Shit, there’s been enough of it through the years, but I can’t believe I wouldn’t let me be mad.

So, now I guess I just ask for some leeway to be fucking pissed off.  I decided I need two days this year, ‘cause yeah, right now, I’m angry.  I’m irritated.  

I just want one more day, to open the in-box, or answer the phone, or call her, and share a cup of coffee and bitch to the only person that ever got in to see the workings. We talked EVERY damn day.  The only person that ever understood, because our lives were so similar.  I want one more conversation with my soul sister.  To tell her how much I love her, how much I miss her and the wine and getting lost.  Tell her I miss how much we laughed…how for so long, she was the rock I parked my ship on.  

I want her to know there was ONE person that knew everything, that never judged me, that was JUST like me.  I just want one more conversation, and two days to rage…then I will go back to the bones, the barest of bones, and I will be ok.  For now, I need to be mad.

I will be mad, and then like the lotus, that gets buried in the scum, then blooms at the surface, I will find the sunshine.               

   

Happy toes

Its really not a good thing when I get bored.  I don’t mean your average, “GAWD, there is NOTHING to do.”  I get cabin fever, as in climb the walls, get me the f*k out!  I get caught up in my head, with an incessant tape, playing over and over and over, and it tells me how lame my life is.  There gets to be this mirky hurricane stirring in my brain, but I can’t get out of it.  My brain doesn’t open up all four lanes of the freeway and tell ya to get out.  It doesn’t offer a bus to Houston.  It locks you in the Superdome to swim in the misery.  And when it gets to the point of eruption, I do really stupid shit, like think I can spend two weeks in China alone (I never would’ve made it out of the airport) or decide to snow shoe to the medicine wheel when its 40 below in a blizzard.

    

I like to get totally lost, and mostly, I do it because I know if I get lost inside my head, its gonna be bad.  And, there are times I find myself going so far in, the only thing to do is to go out and get lost, because I know how hard it is to climb out when you get that far in. Get lost in a moment, or a feeling I haven’t had for a while, or a place I’ve never been.  I want OUT, out of the house, out of the walls, out of my head.  If I can get lost, I know I’ll find what it is I need. 

I get this urge, like an itch you can’t reach, to breathe.  To wander aimlessly and watch things happen without thinking.  To not wonder, “Why?”

I’m a big why-er.   And, why can be dangerous…especially if I’m the one answering the question. I prefer a place without the why, where I can smile…with my whole being.  I want even my toes to be happy.

 I’ve been bottled up for a couple of years. I’ve heard of writer’s block, but it never hit me until about a year and a half ago.  I’m not much of a talker, but words have always poured out onto the page.  Then… it stopped.  Nothing but a blinking cursor and a feeling that I just needed to get it out, but I wasn’t sure WHAT.  

I got scared, and it stopped my words.  Because, I discovered, when you write it down, when you give it a voice, people are forced to listen.  I’m still not sure how that works, but they can turn their back on you when you speak, and ignore you, but they never do that when you write it down.  They don’t turn you off.  They can’t make you disappear….

Moreover, I discovered people close to you don’t like you admitting your problems…despite the fact we all f*n have ‘em...somehow it means you had a bad childhood or your reality of the situation was off.

What I learned a while ago though, is this: those heart wrenching moments of grief and heartache, those trials I didn’t think I could climb out of, they were a gift.  A new opportunity and a new life.  A chance to be better…to fulfill a potential I felt for a long time I had wasted.  

I was in a serious funk when I booked my trip to China. I had not written a single word with a meaning in a year.  I was telling myself I didn’t know what to say, but as long as I’m being honest, and looking back, I knew.  

I wasn’t going to get lost.  I was running away.  Looking in the rearview, I didn’t want to write it, because then I would have to listen.  It would force me, like writing always has, to make sense of it, come to terms.  Deal.  Cope.  Accept.  I didn’t want to.

I wasn’t happy—with a lot of aspects of my life.  I was tired.  Tired of laundry and cleaning and getting up at  4:00 in the morning.  Tired of hearing the teacher glad I could make it in a condescending tone, despite her unwillingness to schedule a conference after 5:00 or on a Friday.  Tired of the Schmoo crying because she wanted me home like I used to be.  Tired of the battle with my husband who hated his job so much that it gnawed away at every ounce of   happiness and every brief moment.  We were starting to hate each other.

He quit three days before I left, and to say I was pissed is an understatement.  I cried the whole 22 hours to China, and it seemed to seal the deal on the decision I thought I had made.

But, I got there…to China.  A place I had always wanted to go.  I don’t know why I always wanted to go there.  Probably because growing up in a town with two ways out, it was as far away as a kid could get.  So foreign and different, and a long, long ways from everything and everyone that seemed bogged down and sad and fading.  

I told my sister I wanted to get into Tibet.  THAT has been number one on the bucket list, and it remains because of protests.  I’d rather be locked out, than locked in.  So, we went to some Buddhist temples. I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t the hardest time in my life coinciding with something I never thought I’d see.  Life falling apart, but at the same time, a realization that you are exactly where you were meant to be, tried to be.  The realization that I could actually afford to go, because I worked to get somewhere, despite the ever-playing tape in my head saying I would never get “there”…to that place, the literal and metaphorical “there.”

But, we made it, sweating and tired, after walking in the heat and humidity, and me putting everything in my head into a confined space, to think about later, as Scarlet O’Hara always did, to the temple.  I burned some incense, and found myself standing in front of the biggest Buddha I have ever seen, and THIS hit me:  “If by renouncing a limited happiness one would see an abundant happiness, let the spiritually mature person, having regard to the abundant happiness, sacrifice the limited happiness.”

I was standing in a temple, thousands of years old, dedicated to happiness.  I can’t tell you how many times I had read that quote…probably daily.  And it hit me, mindfulness, happiness, compassion.

Sometimes, its hard to have compassion for yourself, we are, after all, our own worst critics.  But, I came to the realization, in one swift moment, that happiness is a choice.  It isn’t a path or a journey.  It just is…always and forever there for you to grab.  It’s a decision, really.

I just turned 37.  I’ve made mistakes; I’ve loved deeply; I’ve grieved intensely; I’ve lost a few times.  I didn’t try as hard as I could have on more than one occassion; I’ve made mistakes.  But, if I can’t control that tape in my head…my thoughts…only then have I failed.  If I can’t reach out and grab the happy, and smile with my toes, well, that’s my own fault.  

As cliché as it sounds, shit happens.  It is what it is, and it boils down to which tape you decide to let play in your head.  I’m just happy to get the experience…of living, of breathing, of loving…of totally screwing up, but loving myself just the same. And it was a long road, but that loving part, that happiness part, it includes me now.

I don’t want to run or get lost.  I want to sit in the now, and be grateful for the now and everything it makes me.  

Acceptance is hard.  Its REALLY hard, because I tell myself what I don’t deserve and sometimes settle for a limited form of happiness.  I want abundant happiness.  I want happy toes.  At the end of the day, it’s the one I decide to accept into my life.