A mist cloaked the green in a shroud of grey
I could no more discern the sky
No longer was I able to laugh or play
All my heart could do was contract, and cry
Then the mist lifted and my shrunk soul awoke
The whole of my heart took wing
I found myself in a new world, bespoke
Wholly alive, alight, at once I began to sing
I wonder if there has ever been a successful fraud. I guess we’d never know, because if it is known, it was found out.
I mean, I know some scammers get away with identity theft – the internet has made it all too possible to succeed at that kind of fraud.
But the bigger, individual, public frauds. The kind that fools a nation.
It amazes me that people always think that somehow they will be the one person in history to get away with whatever it is. Despite the plethora of evidence to the contrary – people continually being caught – they decide to do it anyway.
It’s like there’s some blank spot in these people. They are not going to be found out.
Perhaps it is pure hubris.
All I know is that I have too healthy a dose of the reality of consequences to go that route. Or maybe I just don’t feel that lucky.
That’s not to say I am not a fraud.
I am fraudulent in presenting myself as if I know what I am doing on a daily basis. I appear to be a fairly sane, fairly successful, fairly confident person.
Not at all how I feel on the inside most of the time.
So in the spirit of coming clean, to not go down that path that always leads to the revelation of the lie, I hereby admit that I feel like I have no idea what am doing much of the time, feel pretty crazy often and am terrified on a daily basis and usually insecure.
There, now you know.
She was always fashionably late, and was certainly not going to change stripes this late in the game.
They could all just await her presence. After all, wasn’t this supposed to be her big day?
She poured another sherry, and returned to the debate of veil or no veil. It felt as if her entire future happiness was dependent on this decision.
Her mother felt the veil was gaudy. The seamstress who had created it was understandably biased in its favor.The dresser had an opinion but no one asked it of her.
She gazed at her reflection, and contemplated herself from her own superior taste. The veil felt right, but some adjustment to the angle was needed.
She set her face back into its public expression and unlocked the boudoir door, ready at last to enter into her future.
I’ve been living life backwards
Searching from the outside-in
Looking to others for the answers
Waiting to be told I can begin
But today I called a meeting
A quorum of my many selves
We voted in a new president
And the Me who won, rebels
We deny that They are right
We oppose what we’ve been told
We’ll listen for the guidance within
And our own truth, we will uphold
Four months ago, I wrote a whole blog about my experiences finding my inner athlete and how important that has been for me, for my healing. I meant every word.
I called it Athlete, Interrupted because my story really was of how the innate joy of being in my own body had been interrupted in my childhood.
I discovered running while I was on a quest that had begun in 2011 to “rediscover my inner athlete.” From July 2014 until around February of this year, running, training and races were a huge part of my life. If you’d have asked me a year ago if I would ever consider stopping running, I’d have said, “No way!”
I can’t believe it, but something has been shifting in me, and I’ve found it confusing.
It began with the last half marathon I trained for. I trained for 10 weeks, and loved it. On the morning of the race, it felt like any other. I had no idea what was coming.
It was a gorgeous but chilly January day in Central Park. I found my corral, and the race began. This particular race was two laps around the park.
Towards the end of the first lap around, right at the half way point in the race (6.5 mi,) I suddenly realized that I didn’t;t want to run any further. That I truly didn’t care if I finished and had no desire to do so.
Now, over the course of the years since 2012, in training for two marathons, and countless half’s, I’ve had the desire to stop while running. That comes up a lot. You push through, and you are usually the better for it. Sometimes, you really might need to stop, especially if you have the tendency to overtrain (as I have had.)
This was not one of those situations.
I felt so compelled that I ran off the path and let myself stop. I immediately felt overcome with emotion. Something in me was finally being given my own attention, and was so grateful.
But I felt guilty too. And sad. What was happening to me? How could my desire and commitment change so radically?
But was it truly radical? If I’m honest, looking back, I had been pushing myself to keep on running as intently as I had been for at least a year.
I had gotten so caught up in the running culture. It had given me so much joy, and such a respect for my body and its abilities. Awe for my own will and what I can accomplish if I decide to.
How could i be considering letting that go? To what? Run just to run? No more longer distances? No concern for pace?
Who was I to go from 5 days and 30 miles a week to 3-4 and 10- 18 miles? Wasn’t I going to go to hell in a hand basket? How could I change now? What if I reverted to before?
Yet, my spirit wanted other things. I was wanting to bring more creativity in my life. Not revolve my life around my training and running anymore. I felt a drive to write, to create more and revolve my life around that.
I wanted to simplify. I found myself craving other kinds of movement: Gyrotonic, Pilates. I had let those things fall away the last year.
My body was revolting! Calling me to wake up.
I fought the messages it was sending me. I didn’t trust them. What if it was laziness?
But I wanted to move, so it couldn’t be laziness. I even still wanted to run. Just not like I had been since 2012.
My body had to literally break down in order to get my attention. That is another blog when I have more distance. Suffice it to say that this was The Summer of Being Slowed Down. My body made it so that I had to listen.
I am still unraveling why I found it so hard to listen and trust my body. Why I held on so hard to running’s place in my life.
There’s always a part of me unconsciously looking for a formula. If I find something that creates happiness in my life, I want to keep doing A+ B to equal that C. As if as long as I just keep doing A+B, I’ll get C.
I think it has to do with my relationship to change. I mean, I know cerebrally we are supposed to change and grow. Still, some part of me gets scared that in letting go of something good, I will lose the good I have gained.
I guess that reveals a scarcity mentality. Some part of me fears losing what little good she has managed to get, so she thinks she can never change, or else she risks returning to the misery of before.
I am trying to work with the fears of that part of me. Help myself trust that change is good. That I am still being athletic, but in a different way.
And new – different – is good. It brings new – different – experiences. And that brings new information.
And through the new information gained in the experience, I become different. More.
I will help myself meet the change with trust and excitement instead of resistance and fear.
It means I am a living thing, that change-induced growth. Not a computer that can be programmed and set to repeat.
After all, I am always a work in progress. And that’s the way it is supposed to be.
I was born a square peg
But I didn’t know enough to value it
Tried to force myself into that circle:
that round hole I was so sure I wanted to fit
Now I am neither round nor square
My corners are worn and I’ve scrapes on my sides
Neither shape feels like home
Guess I’ll have to make my own mark
“Squale” anyone?
Coincidence? I think not. Happenstance? No.
It was divine guidance. Fate. Destiny. Meant to be.
I would never have been in Central Park otherwise that day. Hadn’t been there for years.
Avoided it, actually, as I did any person, place or thing that connected me to you, or the us that we had been.
But for some reason (it felt so random at the time,) I decided to get on the train and head uptown.
It was a sunny Labor Day. New York City felt generous without most of her locals taking up space.
I had no plans. I was trying to stay active so as not to slip into loneliness.
I came out of the subway at Columbus Circle. No plan. No route in mind. I wandered, following my nose, enjoying just being in the world.
I suddenly realized I was in “our” spot, on the Great Lawn. A fluttery fear made its presence known in my belly.
Without conscious intention, my eyes scanned the horizon, and just as I realized what I was doing, I saw you lying there.
Even face down, I’d know your body anywhere. Long, lanky, tanned. Shirt off, ripped, worn jeans low on your hips.
My heart somersaulted. A rush of heartache and bruised love and attraction rushed through my body.
In a moment of agonizing indecision, I considered turning away, walking past, walking on.
But my feet and heart had other ideas, and they took me to where I was standing over you.
Did you feel my presence, or was it just that I was blocking the sun?
You turned your head and said hello.
Just like that.
It had been three years of no contact. Three years since I came home to an apartment emptied of your things. A total shock.
Three years since I learned you’d been seeing other people for at least the last year of our relationship.
Three years of putting the pieces of my heart and my life back together, mending the gaping holes you left.
And today, of all days, “randomly,” our paths cross.
I say I’m well, and I mean it. I ask how you are, and then I wish you well, and I mean that too.
The truth is, I’ve never been better. The truth is, you don’t look so well.
I see the pack of cigarettes and the empty tallboys in the grass. I see a guy who is nursing last night’s drunk with midday hair of the dog.
You look like you’re in exactly the same place you were before the shit hit the fan. The place where we both drank too much. The lost place. The place where our love did not survive.
I see this, and I wish you well, from my heart, and I walk away.
I smile to myself, a bit astonished at my strength. The capacity of my heart to forgive. My resilience. My spirit. At the Universe knowing the perfect moment, the exact moment I am ready for it, providing me with this chance to see that I have healed. This chance to let it all go.
I move forward, into the sunlight, into the lush green of the park, into the present beauty of my life.
I cannot focus, the dark is too thick
Just hear loud, indecipherable sounds
I’m lost and can’t find my way
Overbearing, foreign smells fill my nostrils
Earth, feces, sweat and fear
My own heartbeat and jagged breath
I feel the air in front of my body
Searching for a soft place to hide
I stumble, hurled through darkness
Falling a mile, aging a year, before I land
Sharp pain, hard crags of cool stone, my head explodes
I want to just lay down
Something warm oozes from my mouth
A bed of stony rock seems a fitting cradle
To pass me through to the other side
“I find the whole idea of relevance irrelevant,” she said with a firm toss of her jet black bob before draining the contents of her martini.
And with that, all further conversation on the matter was ended.
Why does great beauty make me weep?
The fully fanned-out plumage of a peacock
The rose bud with its petalled ring of fire
The blazing hues of a glorious sunset
A symphonic swell of Tchaikovsky or Bach
I am humbled by their magnificence
Some part of me feels small in comparison
Knows I can never measure up
I forget my own glory
There’s a blind spot in my heart
Or perhaps the tears are another part crying out
To remind me where I come from
Beyond the Skinny Branches 