Raging Bull

I was angry today. The day started out fine. There was nothing I could point to that made me particularly angry except to say that everything made me angry, inexplicably angry. I think what's happening is that the shock has worn off and now I'm pissed at J and worse yet I'm pissed at myself. Hell, I'm just f*ing pissed. The more I talk to friends and try to explain what happened, the more I feel like an idiot for giving him so many chances, for investing so much hope in something hopeless.

How do I move past this? I know the answer is that I need to forgive but how do I do that? Where do I begin? How do I know when I'm done? I'm afraid. If I forgive then I might forget and if I forget I might make the same mistake again. My life is marked by absence and loss. There is no victimhood in that just longing and trepidation.

I read a poem by Li Young Lee and somehow I managed to go from angry to sad. And I can't articulate why but it captures the confusion and loss that I feel.

Discrepencies, Happy and Sad

We've moved into a bigger house
Now our voices wander among the rooms
calling, where are you?

And what we can't forget
of other houses confuses us
as we answer back and forth, over here!

It's a little like returning to the village
where you were born, the sad dewilderment
of discrepencies between
what you remember and what's there.

No, it's more like a memory of heaven.
Voices coming closer, voices moving away,

and what we thought we knew
about life on earth confounding us.

And then that question
from which all questions begin.

--Li Young Lee from Book of My Nights

Moving Experince

You don't know if I'm the one and I don't know what I was thinking when I let that conversation slip the first time--the 3rd or 4th time in all. I drove around all weekend feverishly looking for a place of my own. In three days I'll be moving. I'm practicing moving on already.

The new place I've found is in a central location with quick access to 2 freeways and to downtown. It may as well be another country. I have no sense for the surroundings. How long will it take me to feel at home?

Where I will run my 4 mile run, my 8 mile run, my speedwork and my long run? I don't know where I'll do my shopping. Will I like my neighbors? Will I be safe?

What will my finances be like with the difference in rent? How hard will it be to come home to an empty place? Will my cat like it? Does he have any idea what is going on? Will he miss this house?

I will miss this house. I'll miss this neighborhood where I feel safe. I'll miss running the streets I know by heart now. I'll miss the routine of my days here. I miss you already.

Who will I call with news of my day? Who will understand my marathon training, my moods, my childhood and how it has shaped me?

Will I change? Will it be for the better? I don't want to become bitter. Will I ask for help when I need it? Will I find love? Will it find me?

I want to grow. I want this to be an opportunity. I will be brave. I am strong.

Everyone says it will be better with time but I dream of stopping the clock, of staying here in the known, of burying my head in the comfort of every day.

Take back what you said. Tell me I'm the only one for you.

I am terrified. I have no map for this journey. Please let me find a soft place to land.

Dreams Dashed

I just want to say that today I found out I suffer from a low IQ. Oh yeah, when your on again off again boyfriend of 8 years tells you he doesn't get that special feeling from being around you and that he never really has, it probably means you were too retarded to take the hints he's been giving for the past 8 years. And here I thought I was so smart. Turns out I'm just a smartass. Next!

Me & Mike

 

I'm the one with the glasses. The one who looks startled. This might be the only grade school picture of me where I'm actually looking at the camera. In all other group photos of me in grade school, the other kids are looking at the camera smiling and I am looking somewhere else intensely. I had a big imagination and I hated having my picture taken. Nothing has changed there.

When I look at this photo I feel a void. There should be some scent I smell as I look at the classroom in the photo, some recollection of teacher's names, a sense of place, something. But there is no memory, only a feeling of loss, a feeling of sadness and sadness for what I am not sure.

This was posted on facebook by a friend long forgotten until recently. I had to ask her, "Who is the boy sitting next to me"? I had to ask because it seemed important but I didn't know why. She answered, "Michael Sugru" and just reading the name started something--a memory that was not of the moment the picture was taken or even of the place and time. But the name demanded to be read out loud. The name had cadence the way a lover's name does. Michael Sugru, hero and kindred spirit. His father was a single parent. My mother was too. We were the only single parent kids. We were both shy. We both loved animals and we both had vaguely reddish hair although I rarely admit that outloud.

Even after hearing the beloved name of a childhood friend, the photo has no memory of that day, that classroom, those teachers. I only remember us, Michael & me and I want more than anything to travel back in time. I want to tell the two of us that we are okay, that we are going to be better than okay. I want to tell Michael to never leave me, to always stay in touch that I will always understand the strangeness of his childhood, his hippie father, the crush of fundamentalism on a child's soul. I want to tell that stranger who looks nothing like me but is me-will always be me-the shocking truth that I am as good or better than anyone else. I want a way to make her believe it before abusive relationships, before the divorce, before therapy. But maybe that doesn't work anyway. Maybe we had to be who we were when we were how we were so that we could be who we are now. None of us know do we?

mMybe thinking we had to go through the pain in order to be who we are is a way of justifying the cruelty of the world because our human frailty demands that we make sense of things? All I know is that it is what it is and I don't remember anything about the day that photo was taken but I remember love. And I feel love for Me & Michael. More than that, I feel a reverent tenderness and I feel a deep desire for it to heal us.