Spring happens

Hello after a long pause.  I am still not entirely sure what to say right now, but have some photos of early spring in Inwood and that seems of note.

I have an ambivalent relationship with spring because it leads inexorably to anniversary of April 14, my wedding day followed by April 15, miscarriage day.  While this was five years ago, I still have no children and that's a wrap, and now I am separated from my husband, mostly likely for good.  This is my first year facing these days without him.  Because of the miscarriage, our anniversary was never just an easy day, but I had been looking forward to the time when that would change.  But now, that won't happen.  On the other hand, because we are not together, I don't have to pretend to be happy on April 14, so I guess that's a grace note.

This is the general tone right now, hence the reason I have not written in close to a week.  I don't want to just be a purveyor of sadness or violin background music.  On the other hand, I can't pretend I'm not grieving.

I have spent this past week meditating and making up teaching work left undone because of a month of being sick.  So part of it is simply tiredness.  And let's face it, I'm also depressed.  And no, I don't want to take fucking drugs for that, so please don't suggest it.  I'm not suicidal, I'm just really sad.

At random, I picked a PJ Harvey CD from my collection To Bring You My Love and am listening to it now.  I have not been able to bear listening to this album for years, because it reminded me of a time when I was way more open with myself and with B (our first year together - somehow we seemed to be falling away from each other for all the subsequent years even though we tried the getting married thing - didn't help - not really...I have some suspicions of why this is so but will not recount them here).  I spent the rest of the years trying to pretend this part of me that Harvey's music touches didn't exist.  I didn't do that consciously.  But I did it.  I knew there was a loss.  I probably blamed it on B, on the UK, whatever.  But the fact is: I was the one faking myself out, not anyone else.  No one forced me to stay in an untenable situation.  That was all me.

Dear God, I never want to do that again.  I feel like it's Groundhog Day as I write that.  Said it after my first marriage, too, for slightly different reasons, but not That different.  So, how do I trust myself ever again in relationship world?  Not sure I do.

But this I am doing differently: I am not even looking to be involved with anyone else right now.  Not even looking.  Seriously.  I know this and only this much: I am damaged, I need to heal.  I don't mean damaged by B to be clear.  I just mean damaged by the whole experience much of which was by my own hands, though of course we were both there.  Not to mention all the childhood stuff, etc.

After my first marriage while I didn't go flying out to find someone, I ended up in various romantic-ish intrigues fairly soon - some of which were real, some of which were loosely based on fact (like a hack job bio).  When B and I first separated, I felt like I should go find someone new right away, even though that wasn't 'healthy' mostly because I was sick to death with always trying to be 'healthy' which seemed to have produced nothing but yet another failed marriage, a kind of endless grieving process over a miscarriage, my father's death and a sense of chronic dislocation...etc., etc...Years of therapy and various recovery processes and where was I?  Sobbing in my bed at 2am.  Fab.

Quickly, however, cooler heads (mine) prevailed and I realized: You Are So Not Ready to Be With Anyone.  And so here I am - still alone.  No prospects.  I'm assuming B is with someone by now, but don't know for sure.  But then again, I always assume stuff like that.

This album, the one I have on now, I sent to him after our first 10 fall-in-love-like-in-a-movie days together in NYC, for Valentine's Day.  Up to that moment, we seemed to be on the same page - open and absurdly in love.  Then his response to this CD was somewhat muted and I was - secretly - crushed.  I didn't say anything of course, but I felt what I continued to feel for 10 years: I'm too much for him.  I have to back off.  I'm too intense.  I'm too....fill in the blank... Be careful.

10 years.  Be careful.  I'm too much.

See?

Who would do that for 10 years?  Whose fault is that?  B's?  Nope.  Mine.

Until I can honestly say to myself that I will never sell myself down the river like that again, it's me and my cat and a cup of tea.

I can't tell myself that honestly until I know in my bones that I am worthy of taking up space on this planet.  I would like to tell you after my 5 million years of recovery/therapy etc. that I can do that, but honestly, I'm not sure.  Sometimes I fear I am irrevocably damaged and real love is just a bridge too far for me in this lifetime.  Maybe that's true.  I don't know.

I do know I feel real love for a few close friends.  I have acted in moments out of unconditional love for a handful of people.  Those moments and the relationships that include those moments are the most precious things to me in the world.  Unlike all other transitory happiness, the memory of those times and what has resulted from that never dies.  There's a saying where I hang out a lot: you've got to give it away to keep it.  Yes.

I don't know if I will ever write something that I feel is what I could do if only....If only what?  Not sure...Had enough time, wisdom, real ability with words...was better, more observant, richer so I had that sensibility...more something.  Too much of that, not enough of this...etc.

But for all that, spring happens....not only in nature.  In me.

I love this PJ Harvey album tonight.  I am Not afraid of this part of myself tonight, the part with passion, love, need and that can cry it out loud.  I am reclaiming her.  Thank God/dess.

It's tentative like the buds on the trees in photos below.  But she will grow back, re-emerge.  She's not dead.  Because I have the opportunity to start over again - even if it feels a bit old at 48, here I am.  Again.  New again.  Spring again.

Yeah, there's grief.  Yeah it fucking sucks.  And yeah there's spring.  Spring tears my fucking heart out.  I want to cry all the time, but I will walk around in the woods.  I will breath in the new plants.  I will love the shit out of it even if it rips my guts out.

I don't want to ever feel like too much of anything ever again.

The beauty of NYC remains: it is impossible to feel too much of anything for this place.  That includes my friends here and everything I've been doing so far - teaching, friendships, readings, writing...etc.  If anything, I feel I have to get bigger, learn to take up space again.  I spent too many years trying to get smaller.  As my cousin Darcy's mother said to her once about trying to make yourself 'fit' in a relationship: "You can never be small enough."  She was right.

So I will leave you with some very early spring photos on this Daylight Savings Time night in the US.  The one good thing Bush did as president was move this day earlier in the year.  More sun.  Good thing.

Here's to never being too much....and to PJ Harvey.  An excellent British export.

no matter what...spring happens

relentless buds...

grass returns pushing away dead leaves

profligate yellow defying the brown (a lesson...?)

Ugo chillin'

ducks chillin'

Here comes the rain again...

Yeah I know it's a line from the Eurythmics, which dates me as ancient ...

I came home, put on some music, Vivaldi - that innocuous - lay down on the rug and started crying.  I hate music right now.  Whenever I put it on, I cry, because it puts me in touch with the dreaded emotions. The second anniversary of my father's death is coming up on Saturday...quickly followed by the day B and I got together for the first time and of course now he's gone.  So, it just sucks.

At first I thought the emotional weight was more about the separation, but that's not true at all - it's more about my father.  Or both, or like who cares...it sucks.

I don't know what to do on Saturday.  I asked a friend to spend the day with me, we'll see if that's possible.  I hate asking things like that of people, but I did it - by email.  OK, not the best way but the best I could do.  I'm not on my way up to Kripalu like I'd hoped, because right now I fear it's too expensive plus I am sick to death of traveling.

Weirdly enough last night while I stared at the idiot Iowa Caucus, a whole corner of my neighborhood burned down, literally 2 blocks away - which included my local pet food store, laundromat, bank, hardware store and yoga studio.  All of it - gone in a huge blaze.  It's sad to see so many small business (aside from the bank) wiped out.  Plus on a purely selfish level disorienting - where should I bring my laundry now, buy my cat food, do yoga and find a place to get money and deposit it...of course it being NYC these questions can be answered relatively easily and will only involve walking a few more blocks here or there, but still it's just so odd.

Going to my writer's meeting tonight, the train stopped because there was 'a person on the tracks' - I don't know if that's the equivalent of the London tube 'person under a train' announcement (which was announced with disturbing regularity I should add), but right after seeing the burnt out skeleton of a corner of a city block, it wasn't the thing you want to hear.

On the bright side, I'm reading Mary Karr's Lit, which just gets better by the page.  I am both energized, inspired and somewhat envious reading it.  Envious of her ability to talk about her chaotic life so beautifully and sharply, thanks to her poet's ear, lack of self-pity and giant soulful  heart and also relevant to the dead father thing - the fact she had a meaningful relationship with her biological father - instead of having to sort through a variety pack with the original variety missing, except as a vapour trail.  Her father was a stone alcoholic so I'm not talking about hearts and flowers, but it was a real relationship and with my father that never happened.  I chased after him as a child without much luck.  He made some attempts to connect with me - sort of - when I was an adult, which I batted away, angry at that point.  Then just when we were trying to connect, he had a stroke and couldn't talk, then when he could he was aphasic and I later found was getting high throughout the whole supposed recovery process, so like that couldn't help matters.  Pot heads.  I am sorry if you are reading this and like pot, I fucking hate what it does to people over the long term.  It makes people recede, gradually, so slowly it's like trying to watch the earth turn, but just as inexorably, it does turn and the person is gone, gone, gone....Like my father, like so many people.

I know it's fashionable these days to say marijuana is so great and it's a medical thing and blah blah blah but I say bullshit.  I've seen it slowly destroy so many people, including, obviously, my father.  Alcohol is just as bad, if not arguably worse and certainly messier, but I don't hold with the idea it's healthier or innocuous.  Maybe there are people who can smoke pot the way those of you who can have a social drink do that and if so, hooray for you.  But I've seen too much damage people...believe me, I know what I'm talking about here.

And of course I'm angry about that because the sadness and the loss is just unbearable.  Un-fucking-bearable.  To have not had a father and then watch him die is just horrendous.  I'm not the first and won't be the last and I'm lucky I suppose to have had any relationship with him at all, but there are other things, too, that are even harder to talk about and perhaps won't be spoken of on this blog.  But it's not pretty, I'll leave it there and let you fill in your own blanks.

I've forgiven him, that was the gift I was given by showing up at the hospital.  I wrote about that last year and the story of that has been published in a collection, which when I receive a copy of it, will tell you where you can get it if you're interested.  But after forgiving him, all the suppressed emotions came pouring out, having been frozen as resentment in some nuclear bunker of dissociative lock-down...so when the forgiveness came, next were the tears and the rage and the nausea and the fears of certain kinds of weird things I can't bring myself to talk about yet publicly and damn it was hard...and led probably to the end of my marriage as all this came tumbling out and I went from Julia-light to Julia-full on...not exactly what B had signed up for.  That makes me very sad, too.  To think that 'all of me' is a problem or too much for someone, etc.  Another motivator that got me back to NYC.  The place where no one can be too much of anything.  Thank Christ and All of Her/His Disciples for that.

So, for better or for fucking worse, I am fully accounted for now.  And to some people that's a good thing and to some people it's a scary thing and you know what, I just don't have the time for people who are scared by me anymore.  It's just so boring and kind of sad.  I mean I'm not scary.  I may be strong sometimes, crumple sometimes, be needy sometimes, be self-sufficient other times, have a sense of humor and sometimes deploy sarcasm (shock!) and even - gasp - use big words, but like who cares?  If I was male, none of this would even be the teeny tiniest issue.  I don't know why it's taken me so many years on this planet to truly hip to the level of molecular sexism on the planet, but damn it's dull and frustrating and just kind of Exhausting to deal with - ya know?  I'm not blaming all men for this and I know women, too, who are misogynist, but damn when can we finally shitcan this bullshit?  It is so last millennium...and the one before that...and the one before....

So to end on a positive note about my father in regards to this - the little time we did spend together when I was young, he taught me chess, gave me model battleships and chemistry sets, took me to art and science museums and never, ever told me I couldn't do something because I was a girl.  The only sexism I ever encountered within my family was reverse sexism when my grandmother Jani got angry at me for dropping trigonometry because she thought I should be a physicist, since there weren't enough female physicists.

Arguably, I suppose, no one gave me 'girl' training.  And maybe that was a good thing.  Though I suppose some would argue it wouldn't have hurt to 'embrace my femininity' or whatever...not sure that would have helped much.  But looking back at clothes I wore as a young adult, especially when with my first husband, I kind of wish I hadn't dressed with the moral equivalent of sack cloth.  There are reasons for that, but it's sad to see - no celebration or awareness of my body at all...It's been such a painful journey to embrace my physical self - with steps forward and back and all around the track...

So much loss, so little joy.  I have to believe that is changing now.  I really hope so.  After the rain, generally sun...and fresher air.  No guarantee the rain doesn't return of course, but nor do I have to drown in it.  But accept it, I must.  However, it's nice to be back in a physical climate where the rain does not come all the time...

Grateful for the heat in my apartment now as it's bitterly cold outside, but so toasty inside between that and the lovely coat I bought on super-sale in Maine, I'm good.  Grateful, too, for enough money for food, clothing, rent and the love from good friends and family.  Grateful, too, to be home, where I can't be too much of anything, even if sometimes I miss the real live social safety net of UK, which believe me I do...still, for now, I'm supposed to be here.  God/dess help me.  (And no, I don't mean Rick Santorum)