Relieved to find you gone
I relish the space you’ve left
I wander around, plumping out indents your body left behind
Quiet echoes through the house
Bouncing off the boulders of residual angerhurt, weighting the air
And defensive arguments play at high volume on a loop in my head
Maybe someday I will breathe deeply again
And I will hear what my own heart has to say
When hate clogs the flow
Love is hard to find
It’s elusive for good reason
Don’t forget that it’s blind
Reach for bottles and bags
Try to wipe it all out
But that’s the big cosmic joke
You can’t get the love out.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: bottle
For my father: Keys Alexander Curry. May you rest in peace and know that love does indeed conquer all.
Give me a man who isn’t fussy about his hair more than I am
Who loves baseball (but will only watch it on TV with the sound turned down)
Compliments my ass
And artfully dodges engagement when I press whether or not something looks good on me
Loves my cat as much as I do
Appreciates anything I cook for him
Takes care of his health without me having to ask
Loves the way I process things out loud
And how often I change my mind
Can listen and be empathetic when I complain
Doesn’t judge when I get depressed
Is turned on by a mere glimpse of me naked
Will hold me when I cry
And let me go when I need space
I just described you, my love
So glad I had the good sense to marry you.
What happened that night
Punctured my soul
Essential me-parts leaked out
In slow seeps, bit by bit,
Leaving a life force shell
A burst balloon hanging from a tree
It’s taken years to repair and refill
But I’ve tested the patches
And I’m flying high now
No strings attached
Just enjoying the view
Each time you act out
My ability to love you is tapered
They say love is infinite
But my capacity to care is not
What is the volume of a heart
Can the love contained within be measured
In liters or meters
Does it even carry weight
Or is it like air
You calculate the mass
What would normal pressure be
Would the mass increase when in love
And decrease when heartbreak sets in
What is the volume of a heart
When heavy with grief
Does sorrow tip the scales
Or does love forever keep the balance
And its value never depreciate
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: volume
When I was around age 20, my life exploded. My entire world literally blew out from its center.
Looking back, I suppose it was destined to detonate at some point or another.
I oscillate between feeling sadness that it did not happen sooner and gratitude that it did not take longer to happen.
Spiritually-evolved and wise people would say that it happened “right on time. ”
I say “Bite me.”
(OK, I got that out of my system. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself. Maybe we all do. We all have our crosses to bear in this life, right?)
No, seriously, I guess it did have to happen sooner or later.
At that point, I had been away from home for several years…the deep truths that had been bubbling molten hot at my core had had time to gain strength unencumbered by parental presence.
I was also living a breakneck speed: I was a full-time acting student, working a part time job and stage managing productions for the acting company associated with my acting school. I was busy 24/7 and running on fumes.
And then, one day in a bookstore, I was drawn like a magnet to a particular book. (This is the book that was to teach me that I do not chose books but rather they choose me.) It was Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child.
I bought it and read it as quickly as I could, and shortly thereafter, the volcano of my psyche erupted.
This book seemed to be explaining things about my experience growing up that I had long since hid from myself. It was as if in reading each chapter, carefully placed barriers were loosed around the nucleus of my being.
In the days following reading it, I felt like the ground I was walking on was constantly shifting and moving underneath my feet. It was unsettling.
Pressure within me began to build, until one day, one Sunday shift in the restaurant where I worked, my internal world just exploded.
Shards of self flew from my core, and in an instant, a horrific revelation from within flew up through my body from my gut into my consciousness in a searing flash and the fairy tale fantasy that I had been living inside my own mind of a perfect family and a perfect childhood turned to ashes.
And, just like that, I was forever changed.
From that day to this one, it has been a whirlwind, rollercoaster ride filled with astonishing kindness, loss, addiction, danger, self-abuse, despair, hope, comedy, tragedy, loneliness, desperation, shock, torment, friendship, mentorship, recovery, love, joy, bliss, confusion, celebration, emptiness, wholeness, perversion, goodness, synchronicity, luck, terror, horror, wonder, adventure, growth, overwhelming gratitude and grace, forgiveness, miraculousness, passion, sexuality, understanding, caring, shifting, healing, working, giving, taking, receiving, being lost and being found, again and again and again.
(I suppose that is simply a life being lived.)
I would not change one moment because if I did I would not be right where I am today.
Don’t get me wrong. Right where I am today is not puppy dogs and moonbeams.
In some ways, I feel like I am only now rising, like a phoenix, out of the ashes of that apocalyptic day.
And as uncomfortable, often terrifying and unsettling as that feels, to be in totally unfamiliar territory in my own surroundings once again, I know that I am indeed in the process of rising, like a phoenix, out of those ashes, and that knowing, in and of itself, is pretty amazing.
I don’t know where I will land, or even if I will. But I know that this is my journey, meant just for me, and I am rising to the occasion.
Prompted by The Daily Post Word Prompt: detonate
His signature drink: a love-infused cocktail, equal parts animal magnestism and emotional intelligence. That’s one hangover I’d happily suffer again.
Go gently in the night, my love
I’ve been granted a reprieve
But my heart is not yet free
I love as much as I can
But there are nubbins squirreled away
Awaiting the Spring that has yet to come
The pink of my heart lays under hard-packed drifts
Be patient, my love
One day the big thaw will come
And my heart will bloom once more
I have been thinking a lot lately about trusting life.
I have come to realize that I have been living, but not trusting, life.
What does that mean?
It means that when I was six, things occurred that were so traumatic that decisions were made on an unconscious level that 1) the world was not a safe place, 2) I could trust no one and nothing, and 3) life was not meant for me.
Fast forward through decades of living from the decisions of a wounded child who felt that what had happened was on some level her fault and who also thought that she carried responsibility for the whole world as she knew it.
What does that look like?
It is exhausting to live but not trust life. I am exhausted. I have been dragging my soul through all of these years, cheerleading myself every day to show up despite feeling on deep unconscious levels that life was not meant for me.
It has been a strange dichotomy: wanting to live so badly, to work so hard to have a happy and meaningful life, yet to have an equal and opposite drive in my telling me that life is just not for me. That I was not meant to be happy. To live “in spite of” not feeling as if I deserved a good life or even was a worthy or necessary part of the world.
I have loved life. Needed life. Wanted life. Fought life. Almost killed my own life. But I have not trusted life.
And not trusting life, it has been hard to trust myself. I mean, if you do not trust the very force that sustains you, what can you really trust anyway?
I did, indeed, survive. Miraculous, indeed, because when you live from unconscious wound-influenced decisions from a child’s psyche, you tend to make some very, very poor and unhealthy choices.
I look back at all of the choices I made from those 6 year old’s decisions today, and I am truly in awe. I used to be embarrassed, ashamed even, at how poorly I have managed for some times in my life. But today, I am astounded at my resilience and my ability to bring myself through it all. I survived, and I live to write this.
But I have not yet truly thrived.
I have healed so much. But here I am, having cleared away so much wounding, seeing these decisions that were made about life and my place in it, and I am exhausted.
And it is time. Time to finally trust life.
I have blamed Life for what happened to me when I was six. Life and God. But mainly Life. And I understand why. The pain and shock of what happened was just overwhelming to me at 6. I just could not trust after that.
One of my favorite lines from a play is from Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz. “Most people don’t have to make a step-by-step decision to stay alive, most people just basically want to live. I am not one of those people.”
I have always deeply identified with that. It has taken me work each day to push through the energies around those early decisions to find the strength, courage and hope to face another day.
But I want to address that. Really see if I can forgive Life — it was not Life that did anything to me. Life is not to blame.
Life has held me through. Life has loved me no matter what. Life has always just been there, offering me breath, love and trees.
I don’t know how I will heal this or how long it will take but I am ready and willing to try.
I can start by making a list of what I think that might look like. If I were someone who trusted life, how would I act? How would I talk? How would I make decisions? How would I love?
Will my smile be different? My laugh? Maybe my very breathing will change.
I am eager to live in these questions, this exploration.
To take my six year old lovingly and gently by the hand and take over the reigns. Give her a soft place in my heart to go play in and reassure her that I got this now. Yes, my child, it is time.
Here we go.
Beyond the Skinny Branches 