This is the sort of morning I would happily spend some time emailing my recently departed Dear Friend…
The sunrise from the trail this morning.
I would certainly share a picture of the sunrise, probably commenting on its beauty. Recent years found my Dear Friend to have very limited ability to get around without help, and she wouldn’t see such a sight without pictures shared by friends. She often asked for details and anecdotes about my unassuming local travels. (I miss her, greatly.)
Tomorrow being my birthday, and having already received (and opened) gifts from my Traveling Partner, I would share those details with her, too. The context, the sentiment, why each gift delights me so, and the “back story”, if there is one, would all be shared and talked over together. She’d tell me why celebrating this birthday matters more than I think it does, and remind me that I am precious to her. She’d embarrass me a bit with praise, and point out how easily we can lose our abilities through disuse. She would encourage me to do more and go further. She would cheer me on and share my joy. If I were feeling beat down or defeated, she would laugh at my dark angry humor and give me her own wise perspective.
…She would slyly say nothing about some handmade delight she had sent my way, that would surprise me the day of my birthday with something more to open…
…Fuck I do miss you, my very Dear Friend…
Of the roses I planted this Spring with my Dear Friend in mind, one has bloomed. I grinned to see the colorful flower. I took a picture to share with her, forgetting for just an instant… I shared it, instead, with another friend who was similarly close (closer, for years longer) with my Dear Friend, hoping it might bring her a smile, too.
“Rainbow Happy Trails” blooming in a corner of my garden.
I walked the trail this morning, watching the sun rise and the morning take shape. I breathed in the scents of Spring flowers and meadow grass as I walked along between river and marsh. I’m not really “sad” this morning, and the moment of poignant recollection passes without tears. I honor my Dear Friend through these memories and I am okay with missing her; she meant a lot to me, and our friendship got me through some hard times when I sometimes felt I had no one else to turn to. We could count on each other’s good will and affection, and we were there for each other through joy and hardship. That’s a beautiful thing.
…61, tomorrow… it is a bit weird not sharing it with her…
I walk on down the trail. I’ve got it to myself for now. I walk with my wandering thoughts. The work day will begin soon enough. When it does, I’ll begin again. Soon enough. Soon enough. No reason to rush. In the meantime, I walk with my thoughts and my memories, stopping at my halfway point to meditate, reflect, and write a few words about a very Dear Friend of mine. Time well-spent.
I finish up my writing and sit quietly awhile. Photographers coming down the trail purposefully remind me that this is a work day. I check the time, happy to see I’ve got time to spare. Lovely morning.
My walk this morning was early, quiet, solitary, and thoughtful. Pleasant. Nice way to begin a new day.
When I started down the trail, a glance at the sky in one direction revealed dense dark storm clouds, homogenous and gray. Looking the opposite direction the sky was bright with promised sunshine later, and shades of peach and gold. Between these, fingers of clouds stretched across from one perspective to the other, feathering away to nothing into the clear skies from the stormier view. I walked along thinking about perspective.
This morning I am missing my Dear Friend who died earlier this Spring. There is so much I would share and talk over with her. There’s a particular feeling of rather acute loneliness that turns up within me each time I remember, again, that there’s no point in writing an email to share some particular moment with her, to get her perspective, or to share my own. She was always first to see new paintings (after my Traveling Partner, who is right here), and first to read new writing. Now… funny; I haven’t painted anything at all since she’s been gone. I take fewer pictures and rarely share them. I walk on with my thoughts, feeling the solitude from a different perspective.
…I have an appointment with my therapist later this month, but it’s nothing like talking and sharing with a Dear Friend…
I’m 61 this year. In about 7 days actually… I feel strange that there are so few around anymore who will care about that at all, or even know about it, if I don’t mention it. 61 doesn’t “feel old”, from this lived perspective, but I’ve lost (or lost touch with) many friends and family members who might once have been celebrating my birthday. It’s a strange feeling. I walk on.
I find myself feeling a bit blue as I walk. I wonder whether it may be some lingering effect from tinkering with my medication in order to do the requested diagnostic test. Seems possible, but I don’t really know. I keep walking.
By the time I am back to the car, I feel rather as if I’ve experienced an entire day’s worth of emotion and shifts in perspective, simply walking along with my solitary thoughts. I’m okay, and I am okay with having emotions (and thoughts about those), but it still feels strange and somewhat empty this lack of my Dear Friend to share some of this with. It’s not as if she were my only friend, nor even the only friend I regularly email… but it’s her perspective I am missing so painfully. I’m very aware of that, this morning.
…Every time I think I might like to paint, or feel inspired, or feel that inner tug to return to the studio, my heart seems to answer “why bother?”. This is an unexpected outcome of my grief over this particular loss…
I relied on this Dear Friend’s perspective as counterpoint or reinforcement of my own for some 25 years. I guess I am not surprised that I miss that. I know I am not surprised that I miss her.
Tears fall as I sit with my unexpected moment of grief. My grief expands as my tears fall. I cry over the loss of my Mother, although we never forged a close adult relationship, and were rarely closer than “pleasantly civil”. I grieve that lack of intimacy and connection. My tears fall for my Granny, too; she did much to raise me and prepare me to find my own way as an adult and she was more mother to me than my Mother was. I’m not criticizing; we expect too much of women, and motherhood isn’t a good fit for all of us.
…I guess I am just feeling kind of alone with the years this morning, as I approach 61. Strange that it hits so hard on this quiet morning, 7 days from my birthday. Stranger still to feel this way when I am truly not “alone” in life. I have a loving partnership, and a handful of good friends (though some are distant), and the fond regard and esteem of many others…
Feelings are not facts. The map is not the world. The forecast is not the weather. I sit with my emotions and breathe. This will pass. I will begin again. I’m okay for most values of okay.
I give myself a moment for gratitude and reflection. I take time to consider more immediate worries than my lingering grief over lost dear ones. My Traveling Partner’s health is top of mind, often, lately and I find myself wondering if the weight of my worry over that may have provoked my thoughts to turn elsewhere for something that feels more “manageable”? Interesting perspective…
…My Traveling Partner pings me a greeting. He’s awake. It’s time to head home, and begin again.
I woke feeling vaguely irritated and feeling discontented and annoyed in advance of any annoyances. Rude start to the day. I woke feeling dissatisfied… with… life? That seems pretty fucking silly, all things considered, and I spent the drive to the office turning it over in my head. There’s a song that somehow seems to fit, though I haven’t yet pinned down why that is. It’s not a new song, nor a song I’ve listened to recently… it just “speaks to me” in this peculiar moment of discontent and aggravation.
…There’s nothing “wrong” with the moment or day, so far…
…I’m just feeling annoyed. It would be much easier to deal with this and put it to rest if I understood why.
I sigh and take a breath, and exhale, and relax, letting my shoulders drop, and my jaw unclench. Weird morning.
This life of mine is perhaps not the problem at all… could be I’m just feeling the weight of the world this morning. That’s baggage no one can carry for long. I sigh again, burdened by this all too human struggle. I reach for a song that sings to a different tune, hoping to change my mind. Feelings of discontent can become corrosive, left to build and become attached to something real… That’s not an experience I enjoy. I keep “setting down my baggage” and trying to restart my moment from a new perspective.
…I find myself missing a dear friend I’d have gone to for conversation and perspective in a moment like this, and my eyes fill with tears. …There’s a hole in my heart… We are mortal creatures. I suddenly feel “wrapped in loneliness” on top of feeling discontented. Shit. That’s not what I was going for at all. (Change is.)
G’damn… I guess I really need to get away from “all of it”… except… I’m relentlessly aware that I’ll be dragging the shit griefing me most right along with me wherever I go. Fucking hell. I guess I’m just feeling low this morning. 😦 I wipe the tears off my cheeks and remind myself “this too will pass” – change is.
I sigh again (it’s just that kind of morning, I guess), and hope that my Traveling Partner got the rest he needed, and hope to get myself sorted out before the day ends – I’d definitely rather not drag this shit home with me at the end of the day.
I’m looking forward to my camping trip. Life is feeling way too busy and complicated lately, and I’m exhausted on this whole other level. Wrung out from day-to-day routine effort and the emotional burden of being a human being in a world of chaos, violence, and petty ugliness – I need a break. What do I even do when I’m camping to get that “break”? I sit quietly a lot, listening to the breezes and watching small creatures living their lives. I sit watching the leaves flutter and the changing light filtered through the trees as the sun moves across the sky. I let my mind sort of “empty out” and “catch up” on all the shit I didn’t have time to consider more fully. I walk. I wander. I take pictures of things that catch my eye, and perspectives I might like to see again, some time later. I write, mostly poetry and bits of self-reflection. I read. I meditate. It’s not fancy, and it’s not complicated by “activities” in any planned way. I’m not trying to “occupy my time” – quite the opposite, actually, I’m trying to “rest my mind” and calm my heart. I don’t know a lot of ways of doing that, or any ways more effective than just… getting away, and giving myself time.
…Soon…
Isn’t it odd that we human creatures can find so much silly bullshit to feel vexed by or annoyed over, even in the context of a generally good life? It strikes me as quite strange and rather stupid that this is the case, and I find myself wondering what purpose such a thing may have served when we were more primitive creatures seeking to make our way in the world? I make a note to ask my therapist for his thoughts on these vague feelings of discontent, and how I can potentially make use of them more constructively – with fewer tears, less sorrow, and a whole lot less aggravating stupid emotional bullshit to wade through. I roll my eyes, even as I recognize that I’m being a little hard on myself; human is human. Sometimes it’s messy, and we don’t exactly teach “dealing with emotions” to children skillfully, such that they grow up with the tools to do the job well. I’m still learning… and somehow, I persist in thinking I should be past that by now… then remember, again, that the journey is the destination, and that the point seems to be the learning, itself.
I woke too early. My sleep was restless and interrupted. I finally stopped bothering to go back to sleep at 04:00 a.m. – it was just too close to when I’d typically get up anyway, so I got up, dressed, and headed into the office. Based on my mood alone, it’s a good day to go farther… just drive and drive, into the sunrise, and see where the road might take me… It’s a Monday, so that’s not really an option. Work. I remind myself that I’ve got a couple days solo coming up, camping, soon. I hold on to that idea as if with a clenched fist.
Making plans for solo time.
G’damn relationships are fucking hard sometimes. People are complicated and they need so much, and it changes so often! What matters in one moment seems unimportant in another, or in a different frame of mind, or from some other point of view at a different time. Complicate that further with individual trauma and baggage and bullshit, and… yeah… so hard sometimes. People are complicated. Me, too. It’s not reliably easy, this whole “getting along” thing… sometimes not even for lovers or devoted partners. There are verbs involved. Active listening skills to cultivate. Boundaries to set, manage, respect, be aware of. Little courtesies to offer no matter how tired we feel in the moment, or how bad we hurt inside. It gets messy, sometimes – we’re really just fancy fucking primates, with all the same poo-flinging tendencies of our ape and monkey cousins. I guess I should at least appreciate that human primates mostly fling metaphorical poo, verbal poo, and not actual turds, generally speaking.
“Lovers” 10″ x 14″ watercolor on paper 1992
I’m sipping my coffee feeling discontented and moody. I teeter between lingering anger and lingering hurt feelings. I nibble at my breakfast salad with moody disinterest in my health or fitness or frankly any other “hopeful encouraging bullshit” – that’s the kind of mood I’m in. Discouraged. Disappointed. Sad. It’s not a lack of progress; I could be celebrating progress right now, but I just don’t feel like it. I’m mired in my fucking emotional bullshit right now, thanks. I’m still eating this healthy breakfast salad, though. It’s “the right thing to do” in this moment, and I’m not going to give that up just because I’m in a snit over my relationship “difficulties” (relatively speaking, I’ve got it pretty good, and I’m probably being an ass to beef about it in the first place, I’m just in a terrible mood, dealing with lack of sleep and pain, and fucking cranky as hell).
Maybe it looks easy…but…
We more or less got the evening back on track yesterday. Shared dinner together. Watched a couple videos. There are still things we need to talk about, and omg I fucking hate that shit. I dread meaningful serious relationship-building conversations about boundaries and expectations and all-manner of fairly important “taking care of each other” details that so easily turn contentious because humans are human, and feelings are easily hurt. We too easily take too much shit too personally. We make small things over into big things, and do our best to “win” or “be right”, when what might be most productive is simply to listen and care and love each other. I’m not pointing a finger – these are generalities that most assuredly apply to me, too. (I prefer to discuss my own bullshit over anyone else’s bullshit; I know its measure very well, and it’s a helpful bit of introspection, whereas finger-pointing and blame-laying only lay the foundation for some future argument. That’s tedious and a huge waste of limited precious mortal lifetime.)
The smallest tokens of lasting affection can feel huge.
I sip my coffee. Breathe. Munch my salad. Watch gray storm clouds roiling against the background of pale morning sky. Think my thoughts and feel my pain. I think about my Traveling Partner sleeping at home and hope that he finally gets the rest he’s been needing, and struggling to get. Everything feels worse and seems harder when we aren’t getting the sleep we need. I sigh quietly to myself. I’m grateful to have the office alone this morning – I’m not fit company for other people, presently. I haven’t been sleeping well, either.
A token of affection. Love on a chain. The only heart-shaped locket I have ever owned.
I give the day’s work an irritated look. It’s all quite routine, and I am struggling to care and to commit. Lingering malaise and ennui and irritation are vexing me, and I’m struggling to let it go. There’s a reason non-attachment is a practice; it takes quite a bit of practicing. I pick the last leaf of arugula off my plate and drag it around in the last drops of vinaigrette with a total lack of regard for forks or good manners before I eat it and set my plate aside. It can be so hard to “make space” for my feelings, to feel them, process them, and proceed to “do what’s right” nonetheless – assuming I have a good idea of what I think “right” may be in this moment in the first place. I breathe, exhale, relax, and try again to just let this shit go, properly, and move on – to allow myself to separate yesterday’s painful moment from necessary future (loving, nurturing, productive) conversations about needs, boundaries, and expectations. I sigh, and remind myself that relationship building is effort and work and commitment and also love. It’s so easy to tear down relationships (and people), and so much more worthwhile to do something to build instead – in spite of how much harder that often feels (is?).
What could be more worthy of study than communication? Even though we are each having our own experience, we are all in this together.
I give myself a minute with my thoughts and my coffee, before I begin again. I know my results will vary – but I also know that love matters most, and that we become what we practice. I definitely need more practice at deep listening, and communicating, and boundary-setting, and setting clear expectations, and being fearlessly open… and I know I can begin again, and keep practicing.
Sharing the love, and sharing the building. Destruction is far less joyful.
It’s hard to care about progress toward goals with tears pouring down. It’s hard to celebrate a joyful moment in the midst of angry criticism (however legitimate or well-intentioned). It’s hard to care about anything, and for the moment, I’m mired in this experience of deep sorrow and dread. I’m “shook”. I’m triggered. I’m grievously stressed out – by the person in my life who cares for me most, and who I hold most dear, myself.
…It’s just a moment…
…Breathe, exhale… begin again…
I tell myself the things I know I need to hear. I work towards perspective – and forgiveness – and I just… still hurt. I’m still crying. It’s still fresh.
I 100% absolutely unequivocally without exception completely and entirely loathe being yelled at. I don’t respond to it well at all. Maybe it doesn’t rise to the level of someone else’s idea of yelling? Perhaps it doesn’t, but I don’t do well with the escalated hostile angry confrontational tone to something that could have been handled with kindness, humor, and love, and treated as a human moment. Was it a big deal? Not for me to decide. Clearly it was a big enough deal for my Traveling Partner to lash out at me in the way that he did.
…It’s just a moment…
He’ll probably move past it far sooner than I will be able to. I hope he does, I don’t honestly want him also hurting over it, and I’d rather see him happy and okay with himself and with life, generally. I want that for both of us. Right now… I’m alone with my tears. At some point, I’ll probably be okay, and more easily able to nurture myself, and offer him kind words and put things right somehow.
(This wasn’t “a big deal”, and there’s nothing to see here, no violence, no trauma, just expressions of temper and frustration and angry words, and emotions, and it’s unpleasant and I’m unhappy, but these experiences are also part of the human experience – we’re not perfect creatures capable of full-time rationalism uncomplicated by our feelings, ever. We are creatures of emotion and reason – and emotion always arrives to the party first.)
detail of “Emotion and Reason”, acrylic on canvas with glow and ceramic details. 2011.
I breathe, exhale, and feel the throbbing of my headache, reliably worsened by the stressful moment. I didn’t sleep well last night, and although we were making light of that earlier in the day, it’s no laughing matter right now. The lack of rest has consequences for my emotional regulation. So… I’m alone with myself; the only person I know fully capable of accepting me as I am right now, and dealing with it without making it worse. (Which is a sign of real growth, and I take a moment to appreciate it that I can “be here for myself” in a way I simply couldn’t have 10 years ago.)
Fucking hell. What a shit show. People fucking suck… every one of us. So fucking human. Sometimes that really just sucks all the balls. My nerves are raw, and my emotions are in chaos. It’s a shitty place to be.
…I sit awhile “listening” to my tinnitus. It’s louder, too. It hisses and chimes and rings and buzzes in my ears while my head throbs and my heart pounds. Tears well up. My nose runs. I try not to make shit just that little bit worse by anticipating a shitty day tomorrow as a result of this shitty moment right here… tomorrow will be a new day. A new beginning. A reliable chance to reset and make choices in favor of a different experience. I’ll go to work. The routine will feel comfortable – and comforting. I remind myself this too will pass…
I take a moment for gratitude. It’s been such a lovely weekend. Rainy, mostly, but blue skies now; the sun came out at midday, and there’s a pleasant Spring breeze blowing. I got the things done I most needed to, and that I’d committed to doing. There’s still some laundry to fold, but I haven’t had to push a bunch of stuff off to another day. All of that matters, even if this moment seems to diminish it.
…I feel sad, though. As is so often the case, I was in such a lovely mood when shit went sideways. I suppose that’s likely to be the perspective any time shit does go sideways, eh? It’s probably going to feel as if “everything” has suddenly turned from golden joy and delight to … shit. I wonder how accurate that ever actually is? Was it just an ordinary moment that now seems vastly better than it was, because the moment that followed was just that bad? I think about that for a moment, and consider the nature of “perspective” and how subjective that can actually be.
The tears well up all over again, and I find myself feeling profound self-doubt about whether there’s even any value in hitting “publish” on this – whenever I finally stop writing. A missive of pain… seems… somehow tedious, or selfish, or pointless, or… just somehow lacking. I feel anhedonia lurking in the shadows, waiting for a moment of unsuspecting vulnerability to let that shit creep over me like clingwrap, smothering me in ennui and sadness and that horrible sense of grim futility I know so well… Not at all what I want for myself. That shit is a terrible way to treat oneself. I sigh quietly, resigned to the struggle – and the headache – and wondering how the evening ahead will unfold. For the moment, I don’t feel welcome in my home, nor even in my life. Just… sad and out of place. Like… a familiar stranger.
…There’s still laundry to fold. A partner to forgive. A moment to move on from. Water to get started drinking (you know, because of all the fucking crying). Like it or not, the way out is through, and I’d better get started… I’ve got to begin again somehow. This time, it’ll need some real work – and I know my results may vary. I’ll just start with stepping through it as a process, and trust that the process will… work.
…I miss the wise women of my lifetime… my Granny. My mother. Most particularly my recently departed dear friend. I feel so… lonely, right now. Thanks for listening, if you bothered to get this far. I appreciate it. I’m sure I’ll be fine, I’m just hurting at this moment, right here… and it’ll pass. Moments are quite fleeting. You’re welcome to share your thoughts – perhaps your perspective will help. No expectations, just saying; I do read the comments.
G’damn this headache, though…
…Something, something… “begin again”… it sounds empty just at the moment, but I know the truth of it… so I’ll just get started on that… What else would I do?
Evening Light 