May 2020

I have felt like I have been treading water for a while now.

I know I am not alone in this.

The work of keeping our heads above water. Pedaling the bicycle and waving our arms in the water just trying to breathe. No rest, not getting anywhere either. Sometimes we succumb and go under. Then kick and fight just to break the surface again.

I had a therapy appointment this morning.

Feels like a merry-go-round.

I didn’t talk about what I wanted to talk about. But we did have a good ride.

She has asked me to stop using the word ‘need’ and replace it with want. We have discussed mindful breathing, accepting what is and varying other things normal people discuss with therapists.

I understand I have a fear of completing projects because I am afraid the final product will no be good enough, so I just don’t start.

We have worked on working through that.

Be afraid, do it anyways.

Easy to see and say, harder to do.

I remembered that I started this blog for myself and myself only. I was living very alone and having rapid fire epiphanies and I needed to keep track of them. And I wanted to live in Georgia. I wanted to make money writing. I have never monetized the blog. A few attempts have been made and I never followed through.

We had some ideas.

I gotta do something. This nothing and treading water is not cutting it.

I remember getting ready to go to Florida last year.

Felt like a beautiful new beginning.

And it was.

No meat, no booze and a lot of writing and relaxing after I had been doing either too much or neither of those things for 2 years, respectively.

I started writing a book in the Jeep on the way to Disney.

Bad writer, I had no pen or paper, so I wrote it in email drafts to my boyfriend. Safest place I could think to put it.

Cut to January, 7 flights later a few chapters flushed out in airport terminals, at an Airbnb I finished it.

I also uprooted my life, moved back to Hamilton. Spent 5 days in that jeep. Traveled everywhere and kept writing everywhere I went.

The day after my birthday I get my first royalty cheque from sales.

It’s peanuts, but they are my peanuts.

Therapist had me talk through the things I have actually accomplished since lockdown started.

It is hard for me to see them. I just see a sad lonely girl in yesterday’s pajamas, dirty hair, 2 weeks worth of laundry, washed but still sitting in the basket. An unmade bed. A rug that doesn’t match anything else in my room because that stuff isn’t here yet.

I see a caterpillar in goo phase in a messy cocoon.

I have sketches for how to better arrange my room. I have sketches in my head and scribbled notes and 12 open tabs for new books. But I can’t write them. Or that is what I am telling myself.

Focus.

Focus.

Remember the things I did do.

I did attack and clean the hell closet, I did edit the big bad book and send that off for publishing. I did organize my room as it sits now and although it is not perfect, it is pretty good.
I had the kittens for a month and I cleaned up after them and I REALLY cleaned up after they left.
Repaired some damage between myself and my son.
Wrote some blog posts.
20 000 words of the new book that has nothing to do with the other books. I might actually put my real name on this new one.
I kept my plants alive and got some of my old plants back and I have done the bare minimum of existing. I drink a lot of water, take my vitamins, eat very well.

The new new book was started in this incredible influx of muses and inspiration. Then it turned into work. And this is when I get frustrated and avoid or ruin things.

I gotta remember that the first 5000 words were easy and beautiful sure, but the other ¾ were all being stubborn and working at it, slowly.

I think that is a metaphor for a lot of things. Including my life and relationship.

I found the perfect song to encapsulate how I am feeling in this moment.

Slip Slidin’ Away. Good ol’ Paul Simon.

Soundtrack to many, many things.

You know the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip slidin’ away.

Preach it Paul.

I do this and it vexes me, but I don’t know how to stop. I sound like a broken record. I know how the universe works better than most. You plant seeds of wishes and wants and goals, water those seeds with your thoughts and actions and then, usually when you least expect it, they bloom.

So why do I keep slip slidin’ away? Some kind of internal sabotage I suppose. That fear of not being good enough. The decision I made that I had to earn any happiness or love given or it wasn’t valid. Wolf would just call it corrupt data, and it is.

The exact reason I am in therapy. Trying to clear that or at least reroute my brain around it.

The problem is, in this moment, I don’t have a clear picture of what my destination is.

And then there’s this…

He said Dolores, I live in fear, my love for you is so overpowering I am afraid I will disappear.

I did disappear for a bit.

I got caught up in a future that is no longer viable and oh lord did I mourn.

And my love for him is really fucking overpowering.

We just went through what can gently be put as a rough patch. 70 some odd days apart. It was bound to happen. I tried to back off both for myself, to get some clarity and for him so he wasn’t sucked up in the constant tornado that is my thoughts.

I was afraid.

I still am.

But I remembered it’s okay to be afraid.

My therapist has horses. She used the metaphor of getting back on the horse after you get thrown and I chuckled. Remembering my second horseback ride, post car wreck on that huge Percheron cross I had. No saddle, and ya, he dropped me off in a pile of shit. But it didn’t make me scared of him. I was grateful he picked somewhere soft to put me down.
And I remembered the sheer strength of will it took to drive down the same highway my car wreck happened on, to get back and forth the physio I needed to get on that horse or even walk right. It was hard and I did it.

So the lessons I came away with today were, fear will always exist, be afraid and do things anyways.
Life will smash you up and slough you off into piles of shit and you just gotta ride or drive anyways.

Knowing these things and doing these things are different. With all the treading water I have been doing it’s hard to remember how to swim. And honestly…I don’t know which direction to go in. I can’t see the land from where I am.

But I have to pick a direction, pick a horse to ride, do something, anything. Even if it’s wrong or I get thrown.

I have had enough of days where I hit the snooze button and let it ruin my whole day.

So what if I didn’t do a thing yesterday. I can always start again.

2.5 hours until I go downstairs, fix myself some snacky snacks and indulge the middle of our movie marathon in the continuing Avengers saga. I think it is Guardians of the Galaxy night. Winter Soldier was last night, after Thor.

I realized I had cherry picked the movies and only watched what I wanted to watch.

I do that with a lot of things a lot of the time. On my list of shit to quit.

Apparently Venus is descending or something, she does this every 8 years and I had to take a long hard look at 2012 and 2004.

I didn’t like it. 3/10, do not recommend.

Left both marriages for good those years. Marriage is an over statement. 5 and 7 years of engagement and cohabitation. Common law with diamonds and promises.

I will post the link at the bottom instead of trying to explain it but in summation, love stuff is hard right now mmmkay.

I already knew that.

Not because of the blatantly obvious C word that I refuse to talk about right now. But because my heart hurts.

I stumbled on a bit of it yesterday but chalked it up to leap years, which also suck, but apparently every other leap year sucks harder because Venus does some sort of self-cleaning oven thing where she burns old lingering issues out of our chakras. Started at the bottom now we a bit above the bottom; or is this all crown chakra on down.

My head hurts.

Vagina fairs not much better in the pain and frustration department so, I don’t know.

Apparently it is just a retrograde in Gemini specifically. Not as bad as I thought. Venus goes retrograde much less often than Papa Mercury.

~ Venus Retrograde in Gemini ~

And so, in the midst of one of the transformational times in known history, we tentatively follow Venus/Inanna as She slowly starts to descend into the underworld.

As She moves through the 7 gates of the underworld, She strips off the trappings of Her ego, purifying each Chakra of old energies. Like the sacred Serpent She must shed the old skin, writhing as She sloughs of the layers of fear and projection so She may rebirth Her true self, free from the ideologies of others, and the collective.

In the shadowy caverns of the realm of Ereskigal, She must come face to face with the grief, pain and rage she has buried for lifetimes. She must dance with Her dark sister to heal the wounded, heart-broken parts of Herself, so that She may claim Her true sovereignty.

Although usually portrayed as a lighthearted, frivolous sign, Gemini holds deep themes of love and loss. She is eternal dance of shadow and light, reminding us that within each polarity is contained its opposite. During this retrograde journey, we must all learn how to stay rooted in our heart’s truth, whilst remaining compassionate and open the perspectives of others.

I can handle a good skin shed to be perfectly honest. This one I am wearing now is starting to itch and not fit quite right. The problem with snakes right before they shed, they go blind.

And that is how I am feeling. Like I can’t see right, everything is blurry.

I decided I wanted to know the future, so I started digging up the past and I didn’t particularly like what I found. I don’t want to end anything, except this plague and this fucking retrograde. Both are doing a number on my head and my heart.

40 days every 18 months and it had to happen now huh? Awesome timing there my darling goddess of love. Just what we needed.

Basically, this too shall pass. I thought it was a Saturn return kinda deal where it goes on for years.
I feel like I have one of those coming up. Been nice knowing all of you. Cronos is a hard teacher. Think Beatrix and the white-haired master that taught her the one-inch punch from Kill Bill.

I keep looking for answers and maybe there aren’t any.

Just kinda had a cathartic moment there wherein I just decided to give up.

Universe, just take the fucking wheel.

All this trying to plan in a pandemic, exhuming of the past trying to read the bones of what was, torturing myself with funeral for futures that never happened outside of my head.

Fuck it. I am done.

8 years ago my life was nothing like it was now, 8 years before that, ya, kinda similar but I wasn’t learning or evolving back then. Just coasting and existing.

Whatever lies ahead will be better than before, it has to be, I am better than I was.

(the aforementioned article)

https://www.facebook.com/soulbirds444/photos/a.647218411976814/3334995619865733/?type=3&theater

Traditionally speaking today is the day things get better.

4 days ago really.

After the long winters of my discontent, into the spring of lions, lambs and winds of tumultuous change.

All the seeds I’ve planted start to break through the dirt.

I have literal seeds to plant. Morning glories, columbine, lupine and sunflowers. But today I have a dinner date with Mandabear and tomorrow the men are coming to rip the backyard up. I need groceries and I want to keep tanning. Plus my uterus is in a full revolt. I couldn’t bend over or work a shovel if I wanted to. Going downstairs for coffee is hard enough.

Small miracles, instead of crippling panic attacks, I am just in crippling pain. It’s been a shitty week in my world, and I thank whatever gods were listening or intervened on my behalf that the pain I am experiencing is physical and I was able to remain somewhat sane.

Thank you gods. Impeccable timing.

Sometimes sane for me equals feeling numb. And I am. Not my nether regions, they are hovering around a 7 on the pain scale and breached at an 8.5 last night. I laid in bed, doing my best to stretch and ride it out with tears running down my cheeks. But I didn’t cry.

It was my grandmother’s birthday yesterday. She died when I was 15, she was 65. Way too young for both of us. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was the glue that held that family together. It didn’t break all at once, but it broke. For me especially. The next fall I think I left home for the first time.

I cannot help but wonder how different my life would be if she hadn’t passed away before I could learn from her. She had this toughness to her love that might have kept me from flying apart and being an irresponsible asshole. Or maybe not. Who knows. She knew things and I’m still basically Jon Snow.

I could use her advice now. New moon in Gemini, time for sowing seeds of change and gifts of wisdom from our ancestors. Bring on the tough love Nana. Tell me what to do.

She still talks to me in dreams and in moments of heightened danger. Like the time I preheated the oven in my new, crooked apartment and I didn’t know the last person had left a sponge soaked in oven cleaner under the element. I smelled smoke, opened the oven door and liquid fire started rolling out towards me because the floor slanted on an angle, all the floors did. Not my best apartment. I heard her voice clear as day “you’ve got a box of baking soda in the fridge, use it.” And I did and me and my bestie ordered pizza and ate out on the stoop while my apartment aired out.

Why do I feel like that was a leap year? I split with a fiancé, my cat died, I had a miscarriage, lost my job and life just kinda sucked real bad. It was, it was 2004. Fucking leap years man.

I am struggling to remember what the Dalai Lama says, everything is as it should be.

Ya, ya. I get it but I don’t care for it.

I am starting to worry about money. Book sales have been abysmal the last 2 weeks. The next 3 books are all delayed for a myriad of reasons, one being its hard to write about sex when you are having none. Every fucking thing on the fucking planet is fucking delayed and I get about 4 minutes every morning or 55 minutes of a Game of Thrones episode every night where I can blissfully forget what is happening. The rest of the time it is perched on the edge of my awareness waiting to pounce on any hopeful or nice thought I might be able to summon.

I feel like the first half of the leap years are doomed to be ultra-mega super fucky and they pan out at the end. 2004 I ended up in a brief relationship with Jesus. Y’all remember Jesus?

He was my first Libra.

Had a huge crush on him when I was 23/24. My roommates and my bestie really hated the guy I was dating so they set up this elaborate plot to get us together, and it worked.

But I wanted to be in a relationship, and Jesus had just gotten out of a bad one and I had invested sooooo much fucking time and effort in this other dude. Who subsequently got really jealous of Jesus and decided, after a fucking year to finally take me seriously. There was a basketball game with like 5 of my exes and it got pretty fighty.

Classic case of neglecting a toy in the sandbox forever, then getting mad when another boy decided to play with it. But I was young and dumb and I fell for it.

And my mistake was expecting one man pay for the sins of the other. I had time and patience for one, and my well was empty. My bad.

I can now objectively look back on that year of my life, and realize how many things had to line up and fall apart to put me on the path I ended up on. Not good or bad, just the way it should be I suppose. I could have kept dating Jesus casually until he was ready for something more. But here we are 22 years later and I am digging in the proverbial dirt trying to figure out what to do in the here and now.

3 years later, I had split with the ‘other’ guy, Jesus was tucked into a newish relationship that would ultimately lead to his marriage with a girl everyone called my cardboard cut-out, and I became his mistress.

I’m currently trying to remember how that worked.

I remember deliberately getting dressed up super cute and going to a bar I heard he went to, I found him. We decided on a coffee date later in the week.

I remember walking home late one night with my friends, before it started. It was probably 4am, night life in the Gay village where I lived was just winding down, or up depending on how you looked at it. I was emphatically trying to tell my girl that we were ‘just going for coffee’ and this gorgeous bear of a man covered in sparkles and wearing fairy wings (and not much else) looked at me on said with the sweetest deep voice, “Oh honey, coffee always leads to cock.”

My very gay fairy god bear was not wrong.

Jesus did try to be faithful for a minute, I just made it really hard.

I remember seeing them walking down the street towards me and playing frogger in Saturday traffic across 4 lanes and streetcar tracks to get across Bathurst to the other side. I remember seeing them heading towards the restaurant I was in and immediately getting my food to go and slipping out the side door. I remember him deliberately showing up on the nights he knew I worked, very very late and offering to drive me home, but we never went straight home, we would eat and talk and watch the couple fuck through their condo window across the street on Fridays. And I remember my very gay roommate sprinting up the stairs to tell me “there’s a man at the door for you and he is just oozing sex.” Jesus ascended.

I remember one specific ride from point A to point B in his old Ford Taurus, sticker of Ganesha on the dashboard, Jane’s Addiction on the stereo. It was raining. We were talking about ‘us’ and ‘them’. I couldn’t tell you why I asked but I did…

“Are you in love with her or something?”

He hesitated, but eventually said yes. We hit a red light and I got out of the car, I swear to god it was raining, a lot of dramatic moments in my life had me storming off in a storm. He came after me, put me back in the car and drove me home. I can say with all honesty, I got out of the car with zero expectations of an outcome. In that moment I didn’t care if I ever saw him again. That numbness kicked in and stayed.

It would be a lovely end to the story if that was the actual end of it. But it wasn’t.

He picked me up from work the next week, 23^rd verse, same as the first. I just stopped asking questions.

Whatever hope I had got washed away with that rain.

I ended up in another relationship shortly thereafter. It was really bad. The worst. I tried to leave a few times and Jesus was among the lovers of mine that tried to pry me out. Then he told me he proposed to her, still smelling like soap from my shower, the morning after I got raped and the only night I had ever called him and asked him to come over. I was completely out of my relationship and he fully committed to his.

That was my stopping point, there was a line drawn in the sand and I couldn’t cross it.
I never called him again. 5 years later a mutual friend said that Jesus had gotten a divorce and had been looking for me.

So I guess, I didn’t really handle it so much as I just accepted what was given until I couldn’t anymore, and it eventually worked itself out. And now he lives in Germany, we still talk, he has apologized a thousand times over, but there isn’t anything to be sorry about.

Like I said, we ended up dating eventually, and he pulled the come here go away patented Libra maneuver and I wasn’t interested in playing round 2 or 8 or whatever the count was at that point.
So I left and he chased me, and I just didn’t get back in the car.

She gets mad and she starts to cry
Takes a swing but she can’t hit
She don’t mean to harm
She just don’t know what else to do about it

Jane Says, Jane’s Addiction

I was talking to my therapist yesterday about need and want and how I am incapable of doing either.

I will routinely deny myself things if my need or want involves another person.

I can barely ask for what I need, much less what I want.

There is some disconnect inside of me wherein if it involves the effort of someone else, I simply can’t ask for the things that make me happy.

We could chalk it up to not fitting in with my family when I was little. I could have happily spent hours wandering the beach and picking up rocks. I always wanted to meander on family trips and just watch the sunrise, or go swimming in whatever water we were near, and I was always told no. I remember standing on the beach in Florida at 7 years old and all I wanted to do was put my feet in the ocean.
I had never been anywhere near the ocean before. I have a vague recollection of my grandpa saying it was fine ‘just let her’, but the answer was still No.

The fam always had a schedule, somewhere to be, or I might get my clothes dirty or or or. Just no.

I didn’t get to go in the ocean until I was 25 years old and it remains one of my favorite things to do. I keep a bathing suit and towel in the trunk of my car at all times now.

We talked about how I can ask for an eyedropper of a favor if I have filled a giant bucket of good karma up with a close friend. But even that is Herculean and I always have to have a back up plan of how I can do it myself and I will probably just do it that way.

Intellectually I know there is a vast difference between a reasonable request and an ultimatum. I do. And asking for something is not manipulation, but I have this weird synapse misfire and I get true satisfaction watching what people do when left to their own devices, without the influence of me saying anything. Or maybe I am just prettying up my paralyzing fear of being rejected.

Ya, that is probably a big part of it.

I also know that people are not mind readers. And that if I don’t ask, the answer is always no.

I still won’t ask 90% of the time.

I also have the ability to understand why literally everyone does literally everything they do. I know rejection isn’t always about something personal pertaining to me, it might (and probably is) more to do with what they are currently going through or went through in the past.

Therapist and I moved past childhood reasoning for my inability to ask for anything and talked about the first 2 Mike’s after I was single. You know them as Young Un the First and the Hulk.

I was learning how to be more myself.
I see it as my second childhood technically, and oh look, second verse the same as the first.

You can look at the water, but you can’t go in.

Young Un was young, obviously. And we were in, for all intents and purposes, what constituted as a relationship. But I wanted more, I wanted a label. I asked; and was denied. It was over after that.
About 2 whole minutes after I asked for the thing I wanted.

I have turned that over in my head enough that it is a shiny pebble called, ‘be happy with what is.’

That’s the lesson right?

But, I wasn’t happy with what was, or I wouldn’t have said anything, now would I have? I remember him pulling out of the driveway after he said ‘no’ and the sinking feeling in my gut. I knew I broke it and I couldn’t take it back.

In retrospect it was okay for me to ask in a safe, experimental learning kinda way, because he was not capable of giving that to me and it was bound to end anyways. I have written the handbook on dating younglings, everyone knows this.

We can also chalk that up to a tainted experiment. He was 24 I think at the time. I was the adultier adult.

Cut to 3 months later. That wound licked and fairly healed. Same barber friend of mine sets me up with the second Mike. Big and beautiful. Sweet and strong. Age appropriate and a Libra, I like those, I know how to Libra. He was nowhere near over the ending of his last relationship.
But that’s okay right? I can wait. I wasn’t in a rush at the time. 2 Libras in my 20’s shared the secrets of their people and you just don’t rush Libras.

So…

I waited.

And I waited.

Started around Labor Day, made it to Thanksgiving. He half ghosted just before Remembrance Day. And I still waited till St. Paddy’s day. There was that thing with the owl almost flying into my car on my drive home, and I decided to just tell him how I felt. And he left without eating the steak and Guinness pie I had agonized over all day.

Once again, I went to the land of say it say it say it; and was unceremoniously rejected.

So I just stopped asking.

Not like it helped.

Zero ultimatums and…

Giant picked the traveling waitress over me. Wolfling picked his cross-fit instructor. Cruz picked booze, although we did date for a minute in there and technically it was I who left him, but I had to. Lumberjack picked the tiny, bitchy photographer that he had been cheating on for 4 years. Thai Fighter picked baby mama, which is totally fine, although I heard through the grapevine she is bitchy too.
(Maybe men really do love bitches and I should read that book again.)

Then the Last One ghosted in the worst way I have ever been ghosted and had a new girlfriend within a month of leaving me. And the Boy, well that was a whole weird thing, but the gist of that was he was getting back with his ex as I was putting the last of my stuff in the car to drive east. After him, Mister wandered off after saying he wanted to keep me, and I was the magical good witch and blah blah blah and finally Final Boss. I waited for him too.

I literally know all of the why behind why none of that worked out.
“Why they left” in triplicate, stamped, notarized, signed and sealed. Because, I have spoken to most of them since and they reiterated what I had already figured out on my own.

I pretend to be all Zen master Buddha on the mountaintop of enlightenment, be content with what is. Everything is as it should be, and ya, it fucking is. Sadness is living in the past, anxiety is living in the future, true contentment is living in the moment.

But in case you hadn’t noticed, this moment fucking sucks.

I chose now to exhume all of my past and my ghosts and dig up the graveyard of my childhood and rearrange my psyche. What else I gotta do?

I had to call up a song from way back when. My marriage theme song.
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, by Postal Service.

I am finally seeing, why I was the one worth leaving.

Catchy huh? It has definitely been a pattern in my life. The revolving door of Thunderdome that was the farm, two women entered, then she left then I left then he kicked her out, then me and I am getting dizzy even typing this…and eventually I finally left, but not after being left a million times. Even high school sweetheart dated literally everyone but me all through my teenage years. Waited for him too.

My ideas on life and love have evolved substantially over the last 33 years since high school, even more in the last 8 or 9 years since the marriage ended.
Even more more more in the last 6 years that have passed since the tale of 2 Mikes.

I have found my relationships are substantially more satisfying with zero expectations and I’d probably choke on an ultimatum if the words ever tried to pass my lips. Love is the one thing you can’t take by force, and why would you want to. That’s not love, that is ownership and not the fun kind. I don’t feel like that is the answer either.

Alone doesn’t scare me, and that makes me powerful beyond measure and I have a pretty nifty set of life skills from doing all of this shit on my own.

I have been left, a lot, like a lot a lot, and I lived. Here I am rambling on to you fine folks about it.

Maybe I have done enough learning for now and should just start living.

I am sure with a bit more therapy I will be better at asking for things and accepting the answers given without taking it personally.

Besides, I am grown and technically I can always go in the water if I want to.

There is a school of thought wherein, we ask the universe for what we want, and the universe starts putting things in motion. The want is a seed that gets planted in the dirt. We are looking at the dirt completely unaware of what is happening beneath, just waiting around staring at dirt. Every time we wish for the same thing or make choices that are in alignment with that want, we water the dirt. But at some point, people get frustrated and say fuck it, and the sprout never has a chance to break through and grow into the light.

There is a happy medium in between asking for nothing, spitting out venomous ultimatums, waiting too long and saying fuck it too soon.

If anyone can find the fulcrum, it’s me.

Yesterday I had some really big feelings and I self-soothed.

Today I had some really big feelings and I asked a partner for help.

And the funny thing is, both were growth.

My pixie person posted this yesterday.

Same baby, saaaaaaaaame.

I have modes. We all do.

I also recently spent 72 hours in a glass case of emotion.

I got feeling shitty and I couldn’t shake it.

It’s cyclical for me. I am not one thing all of the time. There are times where I wish I was. But if I got stuck in child mode, that would be messy for everyone around me.

I have this block, when I am feeling shitty, lost, confused. I feel like I have to figure out why before I can approach anyone else with it.

Somehow, I have decided I am not allowed to just need what I need for no discernible reason.

Try telling my inner child this.

Problem is, I do tell her that, so then we sit in tears with horrible thought loops in our heads and we make mountains out of molehills. Because, in addition to not having her emotions under control, my inner child has a very vivid imagination. Which is amazing at certain times and places. But not when it comes time to try and figure out what is actually wrong. The pile of blankets at the end of the bed becomes a monster and the fear drowns everything out.

There is no logic in this place.

4-year old’s don’t trouble shoot, if you asked a little kid what a logic tree was I am sure they would draw some sinister, twisted thing with rulers and books and calculators where the leaves of a tree should be. Children can’t even register their own physical pain levels and look to the reactions of the adults around to ascertain how bad it is when they fall.

Sometimes I am the same. I can’t register my own pain levels. And my default is set to the end of the world. So, I spiral until I can stop. Which makes me spiral harder.

I have a few close girlfriends I can reach out to, but my main stumbling block is, sometimes I don’t actually know what is wrong. And honestly, it could be nothing. I could have slept badly, it could be the 3^rd day of rain or the 60^th day of quarantine. Sometimes its isn’t one thing but a trickling of many and untangling that isn’t always easy. And of course, it is exacerbated by the fact that I think I need to know what is wrong and a list of possible solutions before I can approach anyone about it.

But, when I am in it. I cannot figure it out. Not fast enough to satisfy me anyways.

It does not help that I have been in relationships and friendships wherein I was not legally allowed to cry. Like at all. Immediate shaming and shunning. I am realizing now, just now, that this was a big bag of not okay.

I get it. Tears are vexing and I have been known to ugly cry.

I have never been able to stomach crying babies in public places, or children repeating mom mom mom mom mom over and over again. It vexes me beyond reason and measure. I become very agitated and it is hard for me to calm down about it or even hear anything else but the child.
Not because I am annoyed with them, I am annoyed by the parents. I want to pick the child up and figure out what is wrong, and really that is not a socially acceptable thing for me to do.
I have been approached by sad toddlers in public, when they just needed an adult.  I play peekaboo across airport gates with little kids. I have sat on the floor of the cereal aisle with a kid who was having a breakdown and his mother juggled 2 other kids and looked at me with tears of gratitude in her eyes. They all had one thing in common. They just needed attention.

Until my actual child was verbal and able to articulate what was bothering him, it was my singular purpose on this earth to figure out what was wrong if he was crying and fix it. And even after. He was an incredibly well-behaved child, but even the best kids have meltdowns sometimes. Hungry, tired, the tag in their shirt itches, or they just need to be acknowledged…it doesn’t matter. And when it came time, we talked about self soothing and sitting in your feelings.

I was able to teach him something I cannot do.

That’s the kicker. I can anticipate everyone else’s needs. I offer help and love unconditionally to the people around me. But I cannot do it for myself.

I am the safe place where other people come to figure shit out. I am the hug for no reason. I am the tissues in my purse in case you need to cry.

Sometimes I need a hug for no reason. And I have no idea how to ask.

I know where this comes from and it doesn’t bear repeating. I exhumed and examined it on my own.

The exact same place my equal and opposite reaction to being needed by others comes from.

I can hold space for the ones I love like Atlas holds the world on his back.

By the grace of god or some other miracle, I have found myself surrounded by friends who don’t hold me to a standard of needing to be fine all the time.