To The One I Divorced: A Better Understanding

Mary,
I've listened to others talk about love in a way that is indicative of their dependence and unhappiness.  And when I think of you and feel this ache I wonder if I am like them. I don't want to have to prove to you that unhappiness is not what drives me to your memory.  

I don't know what to do about my presumptuousness, that you feel.....something.....that after 7 years of a friendship well beyond friendship in whatever form, that you feel more than nothing but a content, nostalgic desire for eternal distance.  I could be so wrong.  Maybe that is exactly what you feel. 

It wouldn't be an issue that I only write you for my own sake, but I would be the fool if you looked upon everything I wrote with that distant pity, and maybe pain that comes from the sadness you feel over not loving those that have loved you terribly.  

A human being's anger with another in these situations is heartbreaking.  It offers nothing to the world and still, it is there.  

It killed me when you left with Richard.  I thought, prophetically, that you should be in Thailand (which is still an experience, despite your reservations, that I wish for you in this lifetime).  And then who knows....And I can almost hear you thinking "this is just the way I am Emma".  And I loved and love you for it.  That pain was good to me.  And on a shallow level it was the beginning of my ability to feel angry with god.  (what led to strong confusing feelings in me that would separate us.  I felt ashamed of that failure to love you enough to overcome my own desires.  And I believed we could overcome it if we learned to communicate.  But I keep realizing that you really really tried to communicate and that I FUCKED up).

I want to have faith that my words are not a disturbance to your happiness.  That your happiness is not that fragile an if it were, only half of me would want to stop talking.  This faith I am writing through often had the power to threaten our relationship.  I still don't know if I ought to write through it.  

You love your first (and maybe last) man...a lot.  I'll never know if you love him more than Kristin or more than you once loved me; if he offered you a great escape from what people call a lesbian world that you secretly an bravely accepted, or if no such world ever existed to you.  

Mary, whom I love, I feel sorrow that I hate the way that you treated me.  And I really do truly understand that my hate may not be a result of any sickness of yours but only my unfulfilled wishes that were different from yours.  And even if they were of a sickness, at least in part, what more is that than a tragedy?  It is a tragedy...But you must know that I cannot leave things at that.

I want to let it all go for my love of you.  Soft, simple words.  Let you read my mind.  And here I am unable to do so.  And I have seen this process in others from a distance and the speakers (the pleaders) look tragic and desperate.  But the truth, which you have revealed to me that you already know and can look softly upon, is that these people are in different places than the "other" and cannot be met where they are.  Maybe, no matter how often you show me, I struggle to believe that I am one of these people and that you are the "other".  Maybe this is a reality that continues to cause you discomfort and fuel your pity and believe it or not, that is not what I want or wish for either of us  (nor do I assume that what you feel is pity).  

You were my life partner an you left in the night with a whimper.  Every conventional perspective on this situation is about safeguarding from pain instead of love.  I don't want to be conventional.  And still the pain and utter confusion are there.  

I have learned so much from you and I love you.  I am sitting here looking around and listening to where I am, stunned, still seeing you do good work in me as I do good work in myself.  I grew into as much of a doer as I am a listener.  I have become what I saw in you, still wholly myself and god do I thank you for it.  It feels like my destiny.  And it feels like my destiny to try to do things well.  Especially with the person that inspires me to embrace the pain of goodness, as much as any terrifying adventure, act of solitude, or moment of beauty ever could.  

If you really don't think that we should ever talk about this then there is nothing I can do.  But I'll ask you for your courage over and over as I have always asked you for it.  I am asking for my own.  I want to do things well, in opposition to the alternative.  I say patiently that I will not allow the alternative to make any sense.  All the ugly pain we have seen (every person) and felt and fueled; I do not want that.  

If you hear nothing in this but me wanting you then shame on you.  Let me love be my love.  And if you see me an yourself in these words then work with me and help me figure out how to make this less ugly.  An if you know that your answer is truly silence, I believe you.  

I love you and always will,

Emma

Family in our world

I'm sitting out on the porch in the 'warm'-ish air, feeling just like I did when I was 6 and playing baseball in a dirt lot in my neighborhood, where I used to go to preschool.  The air here smells like baseball and childhood, citronella candles and sweat.

I've kept my joyous memories of pre-tween childhood locked away in a little treasure chest. As I've grown, and felt out the pain and pleasure of grownup things, I've forced myself upon the world and the world has forced itself right back on me.  I've always wanted to know what this whole life thing is about, no matter what it cost me.  

And I am sitting here now, thinking about where I have been and feeling where I came from at the same time and my heaviness is gone.  I am, somehow, where I want to be.  And that is so exciting that I can only sit here and feel it.  I can't move my feet.  I only want this one, timeless, moment.  

I don't know where my family is.  

Nostalgia is an opened wound that I can't resist licking.  My mom and dad, and brother are scattered  living whatever life they have half chosen.  Those ppl are not the ones I used to know. None of us are the same.  But when I think of my family I remember being 6 and playing baseball in the dirt lot in my neighborhood.  I remember my dad's warm voice and my mom reading to me before I fell asleep.  I remember my brother's unintentional goodness.  And I remember feeling safe and whole. 

Somehow, right now, I don't feel any different.  

I don't have a family anymore.  Not even the one's I've made for myself; the boys from college, the girls from Thai Land, Brazil or the summer after highschool.  Not my almost husband in Africa or my x-everything Loren....And there are so many more....  If I let myself, I love them all; these precious pieces of broken glass strewn across the globe.  And if I could change anything about the nature of this world I might give myself a chance to live a whole lifetime with each of them.  But I could not know any better than I do right now that a moment in time with any of them was enough.  It has to be.  It's all I get.  

The minute I read your email about starting to look for land I felt sick about it. A desire to keep every door of possibility open has led me to fear, for most of my life, that a person cannot take a step in any direction without trapping themselves completely.  I have learned that when I take any lion-hearted step, the doorways fall away and leave open sky.  Still there is something so powerfully frighting to me about jumping into another land search that I could piss my pants, shit myself, die at 26 from an acute myocardial infarction.  I don't know exactly why.  I find a different explanation sitting in my chest every time I think about it.  But tonight I see it doesn't matter.  I want to take this step, whenever and however it unfolds.  And although they may not last a lifetime, I'm open to new families.  

I love you

Chop Wood and Carry Water

Working hard, living a little like they did a long time ago (or not so long ago) and feeling afraid and peaceful at the same time.  I value this pen and the ashes on my hand.  I value how long it took to make dinner and build the fire.  I value the darkness by the woodshed and the luring quiet that wraps me up in this winter air.  I value my time at Dan and Kelly's.  I like sweeping and scrubbing and laundry.  Being alone out here I could be existing in any time, in any place.  And I notice that I could die (only because I'm alive) and that makes me sad, the way children are sad when they want their mothers.  And I see that little child in the people I love and I fear for them terribly.  And at the same time I don't feel I fear anything.  I fear, but fear is not my world.  I fear death, or my fear of it.  I fear how much I enjoy being alone; I could drift away into nothingness in exchange for peace.  But I think of the grieving faces of mom and dad and Nathan and that sends a pain running up my spine.  I value my pain.  I've become acutely aware of myself over the past few days, driven by several things but mostly anger and then sadness.  And a fear that I am not moving deeply enough into myself.  So I've spent some time alone, moving slowly and abstaining from coffee and wine and any food that's impure and I'm uncovering and aching and more anger.  And I realize that when I'm filled with an inability to forgive, I cannot forgive myself, which is a surprise to me.  I'm reminded that sadness and fear are the starting point of something magical.  The chicken that's laying won't let me at her eggs and I feel too sorry for her to take them.  All the chickens panic when I come for the eggs.  How cruel I feel.  When I'm alone here at night I find something to do so that I can listen to my boot heals scrape against the floor.  I put more wood in the fire and I catch myself smiling, which makes me smile wider.  The coals in the logs are dancing like light on a river bottom, but my favorite parts the sound.  It's a crisp string of pops and crackles, so different from my boots on the floor.  I open and close my journal and turn the pages to see what they sound like.  Then I smell them.  They remind me of story time at the library in elementary school.  When I go to get more wood it is so quiet outside.  I want to keep walking, but I can't make myself without a purpose.  This all use to be a fantasy;  now it's my life.  I feel I could never grow tired of it.  

Untitled by Linsday Register

"I look my dear friend in the eyes and see the dark sheet of
depression hovering over her. "I don't want to say I'm depressed and
belittle the suffering of others," she says. I wish I could find the
words to tell her that acknowledging sadness in yourself does not
belittle others' suffering, in fact i validates it. We are all humans
who suffer, we were created with emotions and we need to express them.
Experiencing and expressing pain joins you with people in a true, deep
way that cannot be faked. Acknowledging the humanity in yourself
allows the acknowledgement of humanity in others. It is an acceptance
of what is real in this world. But what words can help? I want to say
something that will instantly dissolve the sheet into sunshine and
flowers and kittens, everything light in the world. But I know this is
not what she needs, she needs me to climb under the sheet with her and
stay there until she can take it off herself. We can make a fort out
of it, use flashlights and tell scary stories, play with dolls, watch
movies, sleep and cry.  We need to create a world under it until it
becomes unobtrusive, until it slowly becomes see through so our eyes
adjust to the sun before we even know it. The expression in her face
is familiar to me, it looks like my own. Why is it so hard for people
to see that we're all the same? You're struggles are my struggles are
our struggles. And the way to combat them is together. Not in a
forceful way, or rushed, or flippant; but softly and full of whispers
and touches, and true, raw, vulnerable honesty. The way to create this
is to make it true, myself. I, and no one else, can change my
experiences and interactions, I must manifest what I want to see. IPublished on
will try with my friend, I'll crawl into her fort and bring a pillow,
a sleeping bag and a stuffed unicorn, just in case. I'll curl up with
her, learn who she is and who I am and who we all are. This is all I
can do and everything that needs to be done, the rest will become."

A Word On Nostalgia, and Love As Usual

 Nathan,

I feel that pieces of me are spread out all over the world.  

And I feel nostalgic.

Nostalgia is an identity crisis.  I think about everyone I love and know that they are beautiful.  I think about how quickly the details of their lives are changing and I want to be a part of those changes.  I want to be a part of everyone I love before they get too far away from me.

And I feel that these people are not really changing.  I will know them when I greet them. I feel the pain of knowing that there are now too many too greet, and they are too far away from each other.  We will not live in a big house, all together.  I cannot spend the rest of my life with all of them.  But I like to imagine spending the rest of my life with each of them, when I am feeling nostalgic.   

   

Nostalgia is the funniest thing.  Thinking about how odd it is, how lovely and how insane makes me feel excited and upset.  That is part of the process for me...Nostalgia's finish line is the start of acceptance.   

I want to revel in beauty without any fear of missing it.  That is an incredible thing to ask of myslef.  I feel that this incredible thing is within my reach.

I live a charmed life and I am in love with it.  I have found that, for me, there is no substitute for hard work.  There is no substitute for love.  If I put them together I have made room to be free. 

I feel joy knowing that I will keep doing exactly what I need to be doing.  I feel joy with my life, the way it is.  I feel joy knowing the direction I am moving in. 

I saw a picture of you on facebook.  I almost do, but cannot fully recognize the look on your face.  I wondered how you are without having any idea; imagining you first drowning, and then finding that place where misery and joy are married.  That place is an ocean of learning (the same as something more stable).  You are probably, like you so often are, sledding up and down a spectrum of consciousness every day if not hour.  I do not imagine that you are happy.  But if you are don't let my own ignorance keep you from it in any way.  It isn't meant to.  I have seen you happy once, for months and months.....when we both happened to be very happy at the same time.  Joy is so different from sorrow; each should know the other well (if it is true joy or true sorrow) but still they seem incapable of being with one another, just being, together.  Or maybe, happiness and sadness come and go, and peace is steady underneath those changing tides.  If someone has found peace there is much less sorrow in them...sorrow seems to be mostly self created.  But that lesson is not meant for the saddest moments of people's lives.  That kind of sorrow serves a very special purposes.  It is impossible to judge what is and is not helpful to another.  I have learned to respect the space of sorrow even if I am not there.  I have learned to respect the space of joy even if I am not there.  I have learned not to worry so much if this difference keeps people apart.          

Pablo Neruda said  "Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido."  A beautiful description of love. And also not love.  You said I should not take the words in your letter too seriously.  I know:  Love is not personal:  I know love, so I do not know "relationship problems".  I do not know the wheres or whens or hows of love because there are none.  I do not know the boundaries of love because there are none.  I am not proud of you because you are nameless. 

I also know that knowing love can be effortless at times and can take effort at others.  I am not afraid of effort.  When love requires effort a person has stopped moving with the "flow" of things.  But that has nothing to do with circumstance.  Circumstance exists outside of us and our connection with "flow" is inside, only inside.  Haha, we have had this discussion before...it always appears peridoxicle on the surface...Just last night I told my neighbor "It does not matter what we do, but there is a reason that monks sit in silence among beautiful landscapes.".  So many times this has been a topic of discussion and it is very difficult to talk about indeed, especially if the person speaking does not entirely understand how these things fit together harmoniously.  As you said "things are what they are,".  There is no right way to proceed when we have lost touch with flow.  It always helps to turn inward.  It always helps to give circumstance as little credit as possible.  But on our own journey we will do what do.  And our choices cannot be the wrong ones.  I believe in the transformative power of love.  I believe that a loyalty to love helps guide us back to our "flow" and so I am not afraid of effort.          

Forgive and give space to those who cannot love you.  Be generous in this way and you will know what love really is.  And if there was a chance that the other may find love in you, it would be then.  It is a strange twist of fate that everything we desire can only be realized when we genuinely find no wanting in ourselves.  I suppose this means that we will never have what we desire....and somehow, this makes true joy possible.  I feel that you could be saying this to me.  I am saying it to you.    

Have you noticed that a story of pain grows in time with any relationship?  This consequence of being human demands presence from each of us.  Isn't it funny how that can feel tiring...how moving forward into beauty can feel like a choice that we do not wish to make?  Whenever that is the case I say we should smile and laugh, because the world is not so serious.

Jess

The Face of Forgiveness

I came across this letter several months ago.  I have read it again and again.  This letter is the new measure by which I hope to forgive. 

"I don't want to walk around filled with resentment and negativity.  I don't want to think about and feel the ugly things.  I want to remember and cultivate the beautiful things.  My life has been so full of beauty and beautiful people.  Finally my self-pity gives rise to true hummility and I can drop my defenses and with them my fears, and I can know then that I am worthy of the precious and abundant love with which my life has been so blessedly filled. 

Thus filled with compassion for myself I am capable of knowing love for others.  I want to be open to you like a river to the rain; to swell as our forms merge, to flow in unity, and to be yet two distinct and essentail parts of an endless cycle.  Once the rain drops have mixed with the body of water, they can never exactly be evaporated back out.  I love you as part of myself and I love you also as your own person.

I want to forgive you for any suffering I have experienced in our union and you make it easy with your strong, sure expression of love.  I want to stop hurting myself and to stop hurting you.  I want to invite healing and to embrace positivity through hummility, compassion and strength.  In this moment I feel capable of it because I cn see how preparing oneself to say goodbye to everything is exactly the same as embracing life. 

I don't know what you feel you need to go through with me to restore our friendship.  I have felt heavy with the burden of figuring this out, but it is not my burden.  Only you can knwo what you need.  I want you to know that I am open to it.  If theree are things that have passed between us that you need to go back and examine together, I will go back there with you.  As I write these words I feel myself closing in fear, but I will challenge myself to be stronger this time, and more honest for the sake of love...there is nothing else. 

If we must say goodbye, I want to know it and feel it, and fo it with grace and intention."

Anonymous

To The Dreamer In The Desert

At some point age demands a realistic passing of dreams and idealism.  And wether or not we have managed to follow our dreams or whether we find ourselves in unexpected circumstances, the outcome seems to be the same;  What we seek is not the solution it promised to be.  Illusions scatter.   And we are wounded.  For most of us what made the world special and what made us special was a lie replaced now by whatever we can make of this new reality.  But some of us realize that the only illusion we suffered was to see one thing as special instead of all things.  You can never be wrong to believe that in your work you are taking part in the greatest, most beautiful thing.  Surley you are, whether you know it or not.  And I see that you have begun to transform what hardened you with fear and dissapiontment into something more honest, so that it lifts you up even in saddness, if not especially.  To choose alone and not lonley, to be not positive or negative but pure of heart, honest enough to silence even our 'selves'...is the most real, responsible and adult we can ever hope to be.       

Dreams are made to age, not to die.  Where young dreams dwell in hope and wait for happiness to arrive, aged dreams become what cannot be explained to young dreamers, existing firmly now and no longer in thought but in quiet, secret action.    And no one would know an old dreamer from the younger until they see the man who never stops smiling, and know THEMSELVES that it is not because he hopes through all his misfortune, but because he is aware through the deepest most genuine reflection that there is no misfortune.  He knows a secret thing and to everyone else, it looks like magic :)   The true happiness of the aged dreamer is impossible to dream of, because no eyes that believe in dreams can see it.  To test our dreams and to feel we have found everything in them, or nothing at all is a task you are making worth while for yourself.  This serious girl takes your super awesomeness very seriously and she loves you.

Soledad es la casa de dios.

p.s. keep up with the poetry