after the storm | Evening Light

I’m sitting in the car, parked at the trailhead of a favorite trail. I’ve got a cup of coffee, and I am sitting in the predawn twilight listening to the rain and feeling the wind rock the car. I’m hoping for a break in the rain as day breaks, it’s sort of the point of being here so early on a Saturday morning, but I don’t honestly care one way or the other. I’m mostly out here at this hour hoping my absence gives my Traveling Partner a chance to sleep in after a restless night, without me clattering about the house.

The winds toss the big oaks on the hillside and scatter their leaves. The rush and roar of the wind reminds me of other times and places. Strangely moving, although I don’t really get why. I sit here weeping quietly. The marsh birds seem to be enjoying the currents, eddies, and updrafts of the stormy winds. I’ve got a decent view and content myself with sitting quietly and listening to the rain fall, spattering the car.

It’s Veterans Day. I think about “then”. Complicated memories. I pause my thoughts to wonder if I am always so sad each year when it comes around, but I can’t recall with any certainty, and I’ve shredded all my old journals, and I don’t have many connections that have known me long enough to say. I did bring along extra tissues. If nothing else, I knew I would be feeling blue today. I let the tears come.

A huge flock of Canada geese passes overhead. I think of my Granny, and find myself missing her greatly right now. I miss her strength, perspective, and wise counsel. I miss her laugh. I miss long Sunday morning drives, and walks together down country lanes.

My head aches and the tears keep coming. I let them. Eventually I will either venture out for some time on the trail (if the rain lets up), or I’ll dry my tears and put on “my public face” and do the grocery shopping before I head home. My arthritis continues to feel “worse than ever” this year, but acknowledging that I am struggling with a bout of depression, I have to wonder if it’s just amplified by misery and sorrow? Would I feel better if I just felt better? Seems likely but I don’t know what to do about that.

As the sky lightens without any hint of sunshine, mumurations of migrating flocks rise up from the marsh into the winds. The car continues to rock with the strongest gusts. The grasses and shrubs flutter. Storm flung leaves fall onto the car along with the rain. It’s all very Autumn. I sit enjoying the stormy weather. It’s appropriate to my mood. I’m alone here, and no one will be made uncomfortable by my tears. They fall as steadily as the rain. I take them no more personally than raindrops, since I don’t even know why I am crying.

I sit thinking about how best to have a nice time with my Traveling Partner, without burdening him with my bullshit and baggage, or carelessly mistreating him because I am in a shitty mood. How best to comfort and support him, nurture the relationship, and look after hearth and home without denying myself the same care and consideration…? What to share and what to “save for therapy”? How to be kind when I feel wounded? How to work through the chaos and damage without creating it for my partner? How to refrain from taking things personally that sure feel fucking personal sometimes? I’d very much like to be a better person than I am. I know I am a better person than I once was. Like a child on a long walk, I find myself crying because it just feels too far.

… A harsh inner voice griefs me yet again over self-pity and catastrophizing utterly mundane real-life bullshit that everyone probably goes through at some point. I don’t stop crying, but I do take notice of how incredibly unkind my “self talk” often is. I should probably work on that. I’d feel better if I did, most likely. I know where it comes from, and I understand it to be all tangled up with my challenges with internalized misogyny – a result of so many crushingly cruel, diminishing, or abusive relationships of one sort or another with male human beings (and male-dominated institutions). I don’t know what guided the path I took that brought me here. Perhaps it just seemed easier to nod and smile and try harder to be one of the guys? There were (and are) some real benefits to being that woman. There has been a real price to pay. This shit isn’t unique to my experience.

… I could do better…

The rain keeps falling.

There’s grocery shopping to do. Meals to plan. Thanksgiving is coming and I’d really like to feel thankful when it gets here. The laundry has piled up – which should have been a clue that I was spiraling down. There are outside chores to prepare the house for winter, this weekend. There are paintings as yet unpainted and new recipes to try. There’s a precious relationship to work on and holidays coming. It feels like so much and I am fearful that I am not up to the challenge… I can only do my best.

I guess I’ve got to begin again.

Life is actually like that, most of the time, isn’t it? “Without warning”, I mean.

I woke during the night to the sound of a partner’s voice in the dark…something about thunder and lightning and unplugging things. It made sense to me, wrapped in the surreal world of sleep and dreams, and although I wasn’t sure in-the-moment quite where/when I was… all seemed well with the world. I remembered my father unplugging things during thunderstorms. I did feel a vague moment of envy as sleep sucked me back into the land of dreams… thunderstorms are not common here, and I rather like their wild fury and drama. The nearby rumbling of thunder, real thunder, was the last thing on my mind as I returned to sleep.

morning sky

I woke to sodden gray skies, heavy folds of clouds as the dawn broke seeming to promise more rain soon. My coffee sucks this morning. The beans are from a bag that didn’t get dated, and did get… old. Beans from July seem ‘vintage’ by September, and really not very good. lol. The resulting coffee (I assure you it does not qualify as ‘espresso’) is strong, a bit bitter, and although considerably better than fondly remembered cups of military coffee in another time and place… it still sucks. lol. It’s not a big deal, I’m pretty adaptable as beings go.

I contemplate, for the moment, that handy quality about myself, adaptability. I didn’t always recognize it in myself. I didn’t always understand what a tremendous strength it is. I struggle with being spontaneous – I’m more of a planner – but when things break down, go awry, drift off plan, or simply turn out differently, I generally do pretty well in spite of my desire to plan – because I adapt easily. The down side of adaptability is that I sometimes forget to mention to others that something is broken or not working as it ought to… because I am simply working around that! An example of what I mean would be a laptop I had for work years ago; the keyboard was not sufficiently robust for me, and keys would pop off regularly and the IT guys would glue them back on, or whatever it took to fix them. It was a regular thing. Eventually, the ‘o’ key popped off in a more permanent way… it was some time before I did anything much about it, because I had quickly learned to type using language with fewer ‘o’s (yes, yes I did. lol) as well as slightly changing my keyboarding style so that an ‘o’ resulted in a very specific key strike that hit a very specific spot on the missing key’s location. It slowed down my typing a bit, but was more nuisance than impediment.

This post is pretty irrelevant. Frankly, this morning I am simply enjoying some quiet. Watching day break through the window with this unsatisfying cup of coffee, and ‘getting my head right’ for the work week. Usually after a long weekend, I’m a wreck, frantically wanting to get back to work and stressing weird details that don’t actually matter – like ‘that one thing I said the other day’ to someone relevant to something, that by the start of a new week has developed into a tiny demon all its own, named ‘you’ll probably get fired for that one!’ It’s an illusion, I know, since it generally turns out to be something no one else remembered at all. This morning is different. I am content after a weekend well-spent. We wrapped it up yesterday quite pleasantly, watching movies together, laughing, and enjoying the easy familiarity of chilling with family at home.

A pleasant long weekend – without warning. It doesn’t really ‘look quite right’ to see ‘without warning’ at the end of a comment about something nice, does it? Still, pleasant days are just as likely to come up unheralded, without a calendar entry, no RSVP necessary – aren’t they? Far more likely, as I consider my own experience, to have some bit of warning ahead of something really bad – like ‘duck!’ or ‘take cover!’ or ‘we’ll talk about this later’. Awesome stuff, and nice days, usually just happen in my experience. That got me thinking about how often I may get in my own way of having a great day – by giving myself an unnecessary warning about imminent danger – that isn’t really there. Small stuff like those quiet internal reminders about someone who is grumpy in the morning… does it cause me to see them as being grumpy in the morning when they aren’t being grumpy, too, because I have warned myself? Something to contemplate on the walk to work – expectations, early warning systems, and setting myself up for failure by preparing for the worst, and failing to be open to the best.

It’s a lovely Tuesday morning after a stormy Monday night. Heavy gray clouds that threaten rain, also promise a cooler day, don’t they? 😀 Today I will go forth into the world without expectations, and without warning. ;-D

Another Day, Another Beginning

Without Warning

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Another Day, Another Beginning

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Without Warning

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