I woke feeling rested and positive. I sit quietly, now, at the rain-soaked trailhead waiting for daybreak, and enough light to safely walk the rainy trail before work. It’s quiet here, as if the whole world sleeps. Like so many things we may think we perceive, it is an illusion.
I use the night settings on my camera to see the “meadow” between me and the river out of view beyond the trees on the far side. It’s no meadow, now, (it’s been mowed and plowed) and I wonder if it’s been “so long” since I was last here? I really don’t think so. Change is. Sometimes it’s an overnight thing. Sometimes it comes at me much more slowly.
A field before dawn. A quiet moment.
I remind myself of errands I need to run today. While I remember them, I write them down. I need to pull a painting out of storage for shipment; it recently sold. I need to get my suitcase for my upcoming trip to the coast for a few days of painting. I’m exhausted, again, physically and emotionally, and I definitely need this downtime. A chance to sleep whenever I sleep, until I wake, with no agenda or commitments on my time besides my own attention on my self-care and my pastels. The sea air will do me good. I’m eager to spend time focused on art and self reflection, meditation, writing, and rest. Damn, do I ever need the rest. Wednesday evening seems simultaneously very soon and very far away. Four more work shifts. Six more days.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I’m enjoying the rainy morning. It reminds me I need to get out into the garden and clean it up for winter. I couldn’t keep up with juggling work, household tasks, and caregiving, and the garden got left behind. It’s untidy and wild. This weekend? Maybe. I pause and add a note to my list of shit that needs to get done. It’s a long list. I’m struggling to stay caught up. The Anxious Adventurer is some help, and i am grateful, but there’s so much more to do than he even knows to think of. lol
… I’m so tired. I worry sometimes that the stress of it may be shortening my life…
I pause my thoughts to add more to my list. Tasks that need to be done before I head to the coast for a couple days of not doing.
The rain begins to fall steadily. Maybe no walk this morning? The sun isn’t even up yet. No way to tell. I listen to the rain fall, content to sit quietly, waiting. This moment of quiet is enough, just as it is. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Plenty of time for meditation before the work day. The rain falls. I wait. I breathe. I rest. Soon it will be time to begin again.
Noisy restless night. I’m awake, for the moment. I listen. I hear the reassuring sound of my Traveling Partner, sleeping. I had been struggling to find deep sleep in a restless household. Now? I’m awake with a ferocious headache, a pinpoint of pain on the side of my head above my left ear. In between… sleep… and nightmares.
… I woke in a panic, responding to the soft frightened sounding voice of my partner calling out to me, “Honey…?”. I sat upright suddenly, shaking. The house was quiet and dark. Just an “exploding head” dream. Fuck, I hate those. The fear persists awhile. Before that, I was dreaming that I was in a large granite sarcophagus, polished smooth, very dark. The lid was askew enough for air to easily reach me, and I could get a comfortable strong grip on the smooth cold stone, but I couldn’t move it. No light, just a sense of the narrowness of the stone box. Huge. I was standing upright easily. I tried to gauge other dimensions and walked the length of it, which somehow extended onward…onward… onward… into the darkness…or was I walking in place? I felt trapped and breathless. Heart pounding. I hear footsteps, not my own, and freeze. “Don’t move,” I think. “Control your breathing and for god’s sake don’t move.” I hold myself so, so still in the darkness. That was when I heard my partner call to me, “Honey..?”, and woke, shaking, frightened, heart pounding. Is he okay?!
He’s okay. Sleeping. The house is quiet around me. Just fucking nightmares, and a headache, and pain. I sigh quietly and breathe. My pounding heart begins to slow to something normal and comfortable. I get up to pee. Take an antacid. Lay back down. But I’m not sleeping. Not now. It’ll be awhile before sleep “feels safe” again. The night is half gone. Split by nightmares. I try meditation. Reading. Finally just write a few words; I know the recollection will dim as dawn approaches.
… This will pass with the night…
Tomorrow, I can begin again.
Foggy morning, waiting for the sun.
I eventually slept, some. I woke abruptly, frightened and triggered, by furious yelling in the hallway. My Traveling Partner had a bad night himself, going off one problematic prescription and beginning another, the experiences overlap. He is angry, tired, and unhappy about the hall bathroom light being on, keeping him from sleeping. 04:18. I get up, dress, make coffee for my beloved partner, and leave quickly, before I can (too easily) also be provoked to becoming angry. My heart is still pounding as I leave the house. I’m shaking. I remind myself to slow down, to breathe, to do my best. Getting killed on the highway in the fog driving stressfully wouldn’t be a helpful turn of events at all.
Now, I wait for the sun. I sit quietly with my thoughts and my tinnitus, heart heavy with questions. Breathing. Letting shit go that’s not really anything personal to do with me. Reminding myself that my own fragile state is as much to do with my difficult night as it is to do with my unpleasant “wake up call”. Reminding myself to stay on the path, and to be my best self even under these circumstances (maybe especially under such circumstances). I’m not a perfect person. It’s not a perfect effort. My results vary.
… But doing my best to be the woman (person) I most want to be isn’t about anyone else, at all; I do this for me. My failures, however humbling, are part of the journey. I know to reflect on the experience, learn from it, and begin again. Life is brief – too brief.
I sit quietly, thinking about my Traveling Partner, this complicated man who I love so deeply and enduringly. He’s very human, too. Tough time for him. I remember having to come to terms with having become disabled, myself. G’damn that was…hard. I think about recent pleasant moments together and loving words shared; it makes it tough to get mired in stress, hurt feelings, or anger. It’s a practice I value greatly. It’s pretty hard to be angry when I am practicing gratitude.
Gratitude, even in this moment, after a difficult night, is pretty easy. My Traveling Partner is “a bit of a handful” lately, and caregiving is fucking hard (and relentless) – but I love this man for reasons (and through shared experiences) that go so much deeper than shitty bad tempered moments under trying (and temporary) circumstances. Hard is hard. Okay. Love still matters. So I turn to thoughts of our enduring love to comfort me right now. Heavy questions can wait for lighter moments when I am more likely to face them clear-headed. That just seems wise – although, wisdom isn’t really my area of expertise. I’m am simply a human primate doing my best to learn from my mistakes, practice useful (helpful) practices, and begin again when I struggle.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I focus on self-care for now, and sit here in the fog (actual, not metaphorical), waiting for the sun. This too will pass. There’s a new day ahead. I watch the morning commuter traffic rolling by on the highway and silently wish my partner well. I hope he gets some rest and I’m glad he’s not having to drag himself to work feeling wrung out from sleeplessness and changes to his meds. That’d be rough. I sit wondering for a moment if he felt the love that went into making his coffee with such care before I left the house?
…Fuck, I love this man so deeply, and very much in spite of the shit we’re going through right now, (which likely won’t seem significant a few years from now)…
Daybreak is slow to arrive on this foggy morning, but it will, and I’m grateful to see another sunrise. It’s time to begin again.
I’m sitting quietly, waiting for the sun. I’m sipping an iced coffee, feeling mostly grateful, and mostly in love. Life (and love) has its ups and downs. Aging has the benefit of bringing a bit of perspective, maybe some wisdom, but…it also kinda sucks, fairly often. This mortal sack of flesh feels like a trap as often as it behaves as a useful tool. Maybe that’s my headache talking?
I’m feeling vaguely nostalgic this morning, yearning for a “simpler” time that frankly doesn’t actually exist for me. Those recollections of bygone simplicity are bullshit – fragments of experiences that were far less simple than memory suggests, and far more complicated. Memory, in my experience, is much less nuanced than the lived experience in the moment.
I think about walking the cobbled streets of old Augsburg in the 1980’s… My memory lies to me about what a time it was. The reality? Mental illness was overtaking me, I lived in terror due to domestic violence, and I was fraught with constant anxiety (both personally and professionally). The shopping in Augsburg was great. The people were friendly. The climate was delightful. The holiday market was splendid and the cafes were amazing. So… what is “really true” about my time there? Was it grand or terrible? It’s hard to say. Sometimes I miss Augsburg.
My mind wanders to Fresno. What a very different time in my life. I worked my ass off in construction – but only half of the year, generally. The money was good while the work lasted, each season, but I was trading my health for those dollars one brutal hour at a time and struggling to make ends meet between jobs. I was wracked with constant anxiety and being stalked by my ex. I was living a life of unsustainable extremes – the delights were too delightful, the lows were dangerously low. My self-care… wasn’t care-ful. I was “using myself up” without really understanding the consequences of my choices. I cultivated some amazing (lasting) friendships. Because of those friends, many of whom are no longer in Fresno, I still sometimes miss Fresno in spite of, well… Fresno. lol
My mind wanders to “the woods” at the end of the street where we lived when I turned the corner on childhood and began the painful journey through adolescence. I ran the paths through those woods so many times. Walked them on quiet days seeking peace and solitude. I sat among the trees in the summer heat, listening to the trickle of the creek that flowed through the woods and the buzzing of insects. …I was sexually assaulted there. Somehow, I still remember those woods with great fondness (and, to be fair, the trees themselves were in no way responsible for me being raped).
Funny how nostalgia tries to “tidy things up”. Life – reality – is more complicated than that. Understanding (and accepting) the complexities of life is useful for healing. I can choose to hold on to, and savor, all the beauty and splendor of this mortal lifetime, and set aside the pain (mostly), and learn to bounce back, to let go, and to learn what lessons I can. I can savor the precious memories. I can experience gratitude for the wonders I’ve seen and the love I have experienced. I can reject the darkness and refuse to let it own me.
Nostalgia is weird and complicated. I sit with the good feelings, occasionally stumbling on some painful recollection that finds its way into the mix – like stubbing my toe on a pleasant walk. It’s weird, unexpected, and momentarily distressing. I breathe through the painful memories when they come; they’re part of my life, and I am the woman I am today because life is so much more complicated than a beautiful memory. There’s more to my story, more to my journey, than beautiful sunrises.
I sigh and sip my coffee. Daybreak comes with a hint of orange low on the horizon. I breathe, exhale, and relax. This? This is a lovely pleasant moment, and I am enjoying it. Quiet time well-spent on self-reflection and a bit of nostalgia. I don’t read too much into it. This too shall pass. Moments are brief. Change is. It feels like time to begin again.
It’s a rainy morning. It was only a hint of a drizzle as I left the house, but here at the trailhead it is a steady rain. Still, I wait for the sun; this is my quiet time and I am alone with my thoughts. I probably need to be. We are mortal creatures and bad news weighs on me a bit. I use the time to process my thoughts, emotions, and the content of my dreams.
Sitting with the questions, and the feelings, waiting for the sun.
Yesterday evening was “stormy” – emotional weather. As strange as it seems (to me), I feel rather more hopeful about the future after the frankly painful discussion with my Traveling Partner, and my lingering concern that it was potentially somewhat one-sided in a way that could prove problematic later. Having the conversation at all feels like progress, and I am grateful that my partner insisted on bringing it up and following through on it.
I slept well and deeply. I woke from strange chaotic dreams of death, dying, and traumatic change – but my dreams lacked any particular amount of emotion and seemed more typical of “corporate training videos” than nightmares. I woke with Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” in my head, and the recollection of my partner saying “it’s mixed really well”, and my own thought that this is also so true of life. It’s “mixed” really well; there’s a lot going on, and somehow events seem to flow one to the next in a progression that generally makes some sense. Strange wake up.
I spent the drive to the trailhead thinking about love and partnership – and mortality. Uncomfortable thoughts about healing and change, growth and failure, and the all too limited time we have to be and become, filled my head as I drove. Finding real true abiding deep love is no easy thing. It takes so much more than happenstance. Sustaining that love if we’re fortunate enough to find it, (particularly if we’re traumatized wounded fancy fucking monkeys askew with chaos and damage), is this whole other journey of hard fucking work, and a commitment to vulnerability and change that a lot of us just can’t bear to contemplate at all. Doing it? Fuck that shit. It’s too hard. Isn’t it? So hard. But I’m here, still, and I want to be here, traveling life’s journey with this singular extraordinary human being who I love so dearly. Bumpy bit of path, this, that’s all. There’s real work involved. No room for complacency. No time for coasting on what once was.
We talked a long while yesterday evening. I cried a lot, while trying not to cry at all. He yelled some, out of frustration with not being heard, while trying not to raise his voice at all. A lot of useful relevant things got said out loud, maybe not for the first time, but taken as a whole it was worthwhile to hear them said. I listened a lot. I listened deeply. There’s no loss of love between us, but there is a lot of work to do. Seems like we both want to do the work, and it sounded like we have a shared idea of what the outcome could look like. Progress. I keep thinking about it.
Grief comes up. He soothes me best he can. Pain comes up, we do our best to commiserate gently and comfort each other. We talk about loss, and mortality, and open up about our fears. It was an intimate and connected conversation, although painful and emotionally difficult. I’ll probably be thinking about it for awhile. I probably won’t share more of/about it than I have. Too personal. Too…real.
… Seems like the sun is taking its sweet g’damn time coming up this morning…
I sigh to myself. Good morning for thinking and meditation. Good morning to begin again.
I woke gently after a restful night. I made coffee for my still-sleeping Traveling Partner, and slipped away quietly into the pre-dawn darkness, headed to the trailhead and another walk at sunrise.
Not quite daybreak, still a new day.
My Traveling Partner wakes before dawn, and pings me a question. This is two mornings in a row that abrupt communication without any sort of greeting or preamble have interrupted my only reliable opportunity to take a little quiet time for myself that doesn’t require me to take that time away from some other purpose or person. I’m momentarily irritated that I’m not important enough in the moment to at least rate a greeting or a “good morning” before questions and complaints. I’m feeling moody over the lack of consideration for this precious self-care time and puzzled by the lack of awareness that I need this for me. None of my partner’s questions or concerns seem so urgent that they couldn’t have waited until after my walk. I sit quietly after the conversation ends, wondering whether to bring it up, and how I could do so without making drama. Is it worth the potential discord? I could have chosen to ignore the pings until later… seems rude to do that when I know he’s home recovering from surgery and could need help. I feel a bit trapped between circumstances and manners.
…He sets boundaries so easily. Why is it so hard for me…?
I breathe, exhale, and relax, and work on getting back to me, after our conversation ends. This quiet time, meditating, reflecting, writing, and walking, is very much part of how I care for myself and maintain my emotional wellness, and build resilience. It has become comfortably routine, and almost “non-negotiable”. Yesterday’s lack of a walk ended up being something I felt all day.
Daybreak comes, and an opportunity to begin again.
I sigh to myself as I lace up my boots. No colorful sunrise this morning, I guess. The sky is cloudy, and hues of blue and gray. The air is mild and scented with meadow grasses and wildflowers, a very particular fragrance both spicy and sweetly floral. I enjoy it. It reminds me of Oregon, which doesn’t surprise me; that’s where I am.
… I head down the trail, intending to finish this at the halfway point…
I get to a nice spot to sit for a little while. It’s a quiet morning and I have the trail all to myself – a pleasant luxury, and rare on a Saturday, even so early. My neck aches ferociously, and my headache is an 11 on a 1-10 scale this morning. I am grateful to have an appointment with a skilled practitioner later this morning. I’d like to enjoy the day without being in this much pain. It’s very distracting. It pulls my focus away from these words and this world again and again. Most unpleasant.
I thought I had something of more substance to write about this morning. It had begun to take shape as I drove to this place, but distractions and conversation with my Traveling Partner caused my thoughts to unravel too quickly to capture even a loose idea of what was on my mind at the time. No matter; I began again. I tend to “write where I am”. Whether that perspective is geographical, metaphysical, or emotional isn’t all that important. In any case, it is the moment I find myself in.
I sit awhile with my thoughts, not writing, and without any particular direction or theme. Pain sucks. I have difficulty recalling a time when I was living pain free more days than not… How long ago…? I think I would have to measure in decades. The arthritis in my spine set in sometime in my mid-twenties. It’s been with me awhile – much longer than my headache. I distractedly rub my irritated neck. 9 or 10 years for the neck, I think… Fuck pain. G’damn there’s too much of that in the world. I snarl quietly to myself and yield to the demands of my pain, and take an Rx pain reliever earlier than I usually do. I glare at the cloudy sky thinking it’s likely the weather making the pain worse somehow. I laugh at the thought; it sounds stupidly primitive and superstitious, and not very rational. What do I know about it? I’m just a fucking human primate trying to cope with my pain any way I safely can.
I hear voices up the trail. By the time I get back to the car, it’ll be time to head to the city for my appointment. I think about my Traveling Partner, and remind myself to stop by the pharmacy for his prescriptions on my way home. I feel like I am forgetting something, but I don’t know what. I’d love to spend the day painting, but I don’t see that happening today… I hurt, and I’d just as soon go back to bed. “Fuck pain.” I say out loud to myself. I don’t want to give in to it. There’s so much I’d like to do.
I get to my feet, and stretch, and rest my weight on my cane for a moment, making certain I’ve “got my feet under me” before I head back up the trail. It’s already time to begin again.
Evening Light 