staying still enough to feel the profound exhaustion

It's simple: I'm exhausted...on a profound level.  In some ways this exhaustion is from the past few years, in some ways it's exhaustion I've been keeping at bay since I was a child.  I kept it at bay because it was not safe enough to be tired.  I don't remember ever sleeping very well, though that doesn't mean I never did.  My memories are of restlessness.  The crazy babysitter I referred to back in January 29 post used to keep me up until 2 or 3am and make me scrambled eggs with ham.

Then there's all the moving we did, from the beginning.  Born in Providence, move 2 weeks later to Milford, moved after that from one house to another.  My father and mother splitting when I am 2, and I am left at my grandparents' place.  A few months or so later when I am 3, my mother arrives with new step-father, and we move to Maine.  In Maine we move 4-5 times, that is unclear, but at least: Peaks Island, Bangor, Pembroke, Gorham.  These moves happen within 3 years.  Then we move back to Peaks Island with another father.  Then to Waterford, Connecticut.  We live there for 3 years, interrupted by my 3-4 month stint with Mrs. Levine (the babysitter) in New London.  Then I am shipped to my grandparents in Cape Cod, to live on sofa to wait for father to summon me to San Francisco.  That doesn't happen. Remain on sofa for 2 more years.  Eventually brought back to Providence, where my mother and father no. 3 live.  2 years later, my mother and father no. 3 divorce, and I get a scholarship to boarding school in Connecticut, so go there each year and come back to another place in Providence with my mother, until the last year, when she gets together with eventual father no. 4 and they move to Washington, D.C.  I go home one vacation from boarding school to a place I'd never been in my life.  The next summer, I live in D.C., then go to university, back in Connecticut.  The next year I move to NYC to work in a theater.  The next year back to university.  The summer is spent in San Francisco. The next year to Italy for art school.  The next year back to university and finally graduate.  Then in the autumn move to San Francisco.  Take a breath.  Get sober.  Come back to Connecticut in summer to teach.  Back to San Francisco, to Palo Alto for PhD program, leave within a month, back to San Francisco.  Move in with roommates for about a year, then a studio, then move back to NYC after that.  Within NYC move to 5 different apartments.

Long pause while staying in one apartment from 1993-2003, but within that time lose one husband, live alone then live with man who will become my second husband.

2003 - move to London accidentally and live in 3 different places until 2011.  Travel to many countries during my time there and get a PhD from a university in Northampton.  Get pregnant, married and lose baby in 2007 then eventually in 2011 separate from second husband and move back to NYC in October.

So you can see why I might be tired and why, aside from that one time in NYC, I have little experience being in one place.  Also, during my whole adult life I have been focused on at least two full-time adventures most of the time.  Needing to make money and make my work, the two rarely happening at the same time.  Some blessed years yes but not many.

So now I am doing my teaching and precious little else.  Going to meetings, doing some yoga at home and meditation.  I am beginning on my writing project and will be teaching some workshops.

Still I keep thinking: you should do this and that and the other thing, but - probably due to meditation and a good friend's counsel, I am not.  I am sitting in the profound discomfort of a jonesing workaholic waiting for her fix.

Because of this, I am now in touch with this exhaustion - which feels both physical and emotional - like my whole entire fucking life is catching up with me.  From age dot onward I was a workaholic kid - always writing, poems, numbers whatever, doing something...was not allowed TV so was reading a lot too.  No complaint there, by the way.

But there was no space to grieve any losses, feel any pain.  I did go on crying jags when I was very little and when my mother was around and we were alone, she did comfort me through those.  But I think after the Mrs. Levine episode, I totally shut down.  There was no more room for any feelings.  I don't think I exactly had a rich inner life beforehand but whatever was there was snuffed out, especially by the time I ended up on my grandparents' sofa.

So guess what?  Getting my feelings back kinda sucks.  Doesn't make it any less necessary, but it sucks, it's painful and frankly I don't like it one little bit (as if I had a say in it - ha!).

My tiny little prayer to the universe is that whatever the fuck this process is all about that it is of benefit to others in some way.  I think it helps my teaching and my service work.  I have college students that come and cry to me now, literally, and I give hugs and help guide them through stuff.  I doubt that would be happening if I was cut off from the neck down.  I can hear them and see them, and that is good.  I can help others going through excruciating pain.  That is good.

Saw a Patti Smith documentary late last night and now remember her lyric "Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand."  She has suffered.  She is a mistress of grieving and working through it to create amazing gorgeous gentle angry music, poems, art.  I don't know what I will create out of this.  Haven't the littlest clue.

I have created a largish body of work but feel something new is coming and I really haven't the vaguest what it will look like.  Maybe it's in this writing project about my grandmothers, maybe something else. Maybe it's something completely new.

This is all I believe right now: I need to let it emerge.  As the wise woman said last Friday I cannot sculpt myself.  My higher power's will for me is to become who I am...even if that is always becoming, multiple, shifting...it's who I am now...and now...and now.  The longer I try to control this, the longer I prolong my suffering.  But I can't force myself to let go of this process anymore than I can force anything else.  The paradox.

Time to allow for the exhaustion.  Time for stillness.

I may begin writing here a lot less.  I already am writing less.  I don't want to just churn out words for no reason.  Tonight though wanted to note this process...

Now, to rest...