The Opacity of Love

I really should be doing homework.

Really.

But I am not.

I’m just going to sit and type and see what comes up and let it out and let myself take a moment to just process and just keep being sad.

“You’re really sad,” my friend said to me tonight about my break up.

Fifteen days now, but who’s counting?

I am sad.

It seems surreal that it is over and done and there’s been no contact, although there’s been thoughts, let me tell you.

I haven’t though and I won’t.

I keep telling myself if and when I’m supposed to see him is not up to me, it’s up to God.

I had a thought today.

What if I never see him again?

Ever.

I just about lost it.

There was a small murder of crows in the sky over the valley today as I looked out from high in Glen Park at work eating my salad at lunch, and I felt as though there were throwing my heart around out there.

I have taken down all the pictures and deleted all the texts in my phone as well as the phone history.

Man.

We talked a lot.

His number, his name, his face, all through my things.

All through my heart.

In my soul.

In my body.

I went to a workshop over the weekend, just another thing to keep me endlessly busy so that I get through this patch.

I don’t know how long it’s going to last, but I’m socked in with the busy to help it pass.

Though I still cry at night when I got to bed.

The slip of golden moon through my back window the other night had me utterly in tears.

I suppose at sometime the tears will stop and I will move forward with some modicum of grace and hopefully with serenity and ease.

I’m not sloppy.

I’m not always losing it.

Only once really badly in the car.

I am not even sure what night that was, maybe Saturday night?

I don’t know.

It was bad and I should have pulled over, but I pulled it together enough to get home.

I felt like if I stopped I’d just be on the side of the road sobbing for hours.

An exaggeration I suppose, but it hurts.

It really does.

Physically too.

My reflux is back with a vengeance.

I remember when my ex told me he thought he might be the reason for my reflux and I waved it off.

Now.

Well, let’s just say that it’s not only plausible I totally believe it.

I suppressed a lot of things to be in the relationship.

I figured he was worth it.

True love was worth it.

In some ways I think it still was and I have no regrets.

But you know, my body was screaming at me that it wasn’t working and I just pushed it aside for a long time.

I’m hoping once the grieving passes the reflux will too and I’ll go back to my normal self.

I also know that reflux is caused by stress.

My food as been really good and I have been under stress.

I’ve been heartbroken, seeing clients, holding space for others, nannying, and doing my PhD coursework.

I’m stressed.

So.

Blogging tonight.

Because that helps

Even if it hurts, whenever I write about it, it hurts, but I figure the more I write the more hurt gets out and the easier it will be to bear until one day I won’t notice it anymore and there is no more to bear.

I’m doing the best I can.

“You have so much love to give,” my friend assured me and that I was sensitive.

I am.

Things hit me hard.

Music moves me.

Love.

Magic.

Living.

I am alive.

I keep reminding myself of that.

I don’t want to hurt myself or use or act out.

I’m not calling up old lovers letting them know I’m on the market.

That just sounds awful right now.

I cannot imagine being with anyone else right now.

But I am not going to stop loving and I’m going to put my sensitive, vulnerable, tender heart back out there.

If anything I have learned that I am lovable and worthy of love in the deepest truest sense of the world.

To have experienced what I did, the passion, the love, the validation and how he saw me, I have that experience to grow from and to cultivate more love with.

I keep writing I forgive myself.

I forgive him.

I love myself.

I love him, I let him go, it wasn’t working, I had to get out, and it still hurts and the fire is extreme and I want to cut off all my hair.

I even talked to my hairdresser about it.

“You can come in and try on short-haired wigs and think about it,” she said, sweet as pie.

I might.

I might not.

I focus on something else.

(I have a lot of hair and it’s nice so if I’m going to cut it off I’m going to make sure it’s the right thing to do)

I think about the tattoo I want.

There’s two that have been haunting my thoughts.

One a tiger dragon graffiti that I took a picture of one night when he and I were walking around China Town headed to a late night dinner.

The other from a card I gave him.

I bought it on my birthday at a little bookshop close to Zuni where I met friends for dinner.

It was a picture of a little girl tugging on the moon and trying to pull it towards her with a rope.

That was us.

Me, the little girl, crying for the moon I could never have.

I could never really have you baby and I have to forgive myself for hoping that one day that wouldn’t be true.

But it never was.

I’m still just a little girl wishing for something she cannot have.

A fairytale.

A fantasy

My sweet fantasy man.

I miss you so much.

So very much.

The moon will wax.

It will wane.

And one day.

Perhaps.

I won’t think of you when I see it.

Perhaps.

 

 

What A Day

A good day.

But quite the day.

A full day.

For sure.

Into work, lots of loving on the charges, family friend visit, lots of kids running around, and then quiet, a reprieve, unexpected in the middle of the day.

Snuggles and nap time with the baby and then the family and their friends went out to lunch and I had nearly an hour to myself.

It was so nice.

I haven’t had that since school has gotten out.

I ate a slow, relaxed lunch.

I looked at the skyline from the back porch, I made a few phone calls and connected with a girlfriend I haven’t seen since January, we made tentative plans to get together when the family I nanny for is on vacation.

So nice to reconnect.

I was to do the camp pick up for the middle child and I enjoyed the hell out of riding the MUNI, not having any charges, and then taking a nice quiet walk to BiRite, picking up snacks for my charge and a few things for the house.

Pick up at school was great.

My charge and I ate cherries and apricots and talked about sunshine and being nice, “I’m going to tell mom that I was kinda nice to you today,” she said and squeezed my hand tight.

I love her so much.

She is always the best.

Even when she is a handful of fierce fiery little girl.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

She has a voice and I really love how her parents let her have that voice.

I was shushed often.

There was a lot of don’t speak unless spoken to in my home.

I didn’t really know that children could engage and interact and have conversations with their parents.

It was sort of, get out-of-the-way and be quiet or go outside and leave me alone.

I’m ok with that.

I developed a big case of the curiosity at a very young age and a desire to explore, seek, find, and experience whatever I could.

I had, and still do have a great big imagination.

I don’t really escape into fantasy anymore, life is real and reality is so much more interesting, but for a while, when I was young, fantasy was my hard-core go to.

And I was, and am, dare I say it, creative.

I concocted lots of games, did relay races with kids in the neighborhood, made up my own version of Kick the Can, Ghost in the Graveyard, Ding Dong Ditch, and a plethora of other things.

The summer I watched the Iron Man triathlon on television and became absolutely mesmerized in the event.

I staged a mini Iron Man, I called, aptly, Iron Kids.

There was a run around the apartment complex, followed by a bicycle race.

I couldn’t do the swimming in the ocean part, seeing as how we were in Wisconsin and the nearest pool was miles away, but I am sure I improvised something.

It might have been running in and out of all the wading pools in the courtyard.

I found my voice in motion and then again in books and escaping to the library.

I was always reading.

Always.

I would hide under my blankets at night with a flashlight and read.

I got yelled at a lot to do that.

Now.

I wonder, would a parent yell at a kid for reading past bedtime?

Perhaps using their phone and texting or being active on social media, but reading?

I think, probably not.

Ooh.

I got a new book in the mail.

Such a gift.

To get a book.

That is not for school.

I look forward to reading it.

I don’t have much time now, but it is something that I can flip through and I will be able to enjoy it when I am off from the family in July.

I am still trying to suss out if I’m going to travel.

One of my clients who I see on Thursdays will be gone for vacation and his times overlap mine and the availability I have to travel.

Maybe there’s a long weekend in my near future.

I am open to all possibilities.

And I’m super psyched.

Tomorrow is Friday!

I have a client consult after work.

I will have a long day still.

I’m hoping I’ll be able to sneak in a little time with my fellows, if I get out of work fast enough, and then I’ll have a client at 7:30 p.m.

It’s a consult, so there’s the possibility it may only go a half hour.

So if I don’t get out of work in time I’ll see about doing the deal after seeing the consult.

Then the weekend.

Which is full, since I still have to go to my Group Supervision.

But.

I’ll have some pockets of time.

I’ll do yoga in the morning both Saturday and Sunday.

I desperately need a mani/pedi/eyebrow waxing session.

And I do need to do grocery shopping, cooking, and errands.

Plus meeting with a lady Sunday afternoon.

And still.

There will be time.

There will be time to stop and breathe and love.

And maybe.

Yes.

Read a little for pleasure.

Such a sexy thing.

Oh life.

It is so.

So.

So.

Good.

You Smell Like A

Field of flowers.

Blush.

Thank you.

That is always the hope.

I have such a nose for needing to smell the good things, the lovely things, the dry grass, the smell of the oak trees, the bark dry, the lichen tight on the tree its own kind of scent, the curl of leaves, the soft sage and smoke smell of one of my class mates.

I’ve begun to study Gestalt.

And there is something there.

I get it.

It is very here and now.

In this moment.

And in this moment is God.

God is not in the past and God is not in the future.

God is right here, right now, in this place, in the words tumbling from my fingers onto the keyboard, the sound of music in my head phones, it is the two stars I saw falling from the sky while I was in the hot tub.

A stillness that I was in, a space, looking up and out and there, the flash on the sky.

And the creamy smoke of the Milky Way a pale smudge on the midnight blue depths above me.

I was chatting with one of my cohort and explaining the smell that she gave off.

We had to do an exercise in class in which we broke down sense by sense what we were seeing, tasting, touching, hearing, smelling.

She smelled earthy and mineral, like clean cool water, she also smelled herbaceous and of what I first thought was lavender, but was not, rather it was lingonberries, mulberries, and the smell was not so much of the berries, but of the leaves themselves, and underneath that I could smell clay and lime ash.

It was subtle and soft and powdery.

One of my classmates smelled like honeyed turmeric and ginger and saffron.

One of my classmates was blue.

But not blue in mood, just blue in color.

Not a sad blue either, rather a cerulean blue, a Dutch Boy blue, a Van Dyke Blue.

It was really an interesting experience.

My friend replied that I smelled like a field of flowers.

Success!

I wish to always smell good.

There is something divine and comforting about smells.

Wood smoke.

Hot cotton sheets, or line dried cotton sheets hot with sunshine and summer breeze and grass and clover.

Oh.

God.

The smell of clover can be so rich and intoxicating.

There is small bright, heady patch of clover that is in the Golden Gate Park smells like French music sounds to me in my head, my thoughts have smells and colors and love.

I feel loved.

I am also listening to a Spotify playlist that my friend put together for me and I feel loved and thought of and bright with that kind of joy that is bubbles in sunflower fields.

I have a bit of an imagination.

Thank you God for this experience.

I feel a lot more settled, a lot more connected, and a lot more myself.

Familiarity has not bred contempt, but rather a kind of closeness that can be unbearable until I just collapse and accept it and let it all in.

We are so lonely in this part of town

The sweep of the music, the golden spires of notes, the spheres sing and the stars fall over the fields of dry grass the deer pass through the shadows of the trees from the moonlight cadence and I dance here, in my bed a slow shifting of love and acceptance and ease.

Thank you my friend.

Thank you for loving me.

I love you too.

Very much.

I may not be able to put together the best mixed tape ever, but I can put down some of the words and the feelings and the colors.

The images and sensations that I get to have.

So many.

Memories and love and tenderness and hot days and summer, grass, apple trees, the wind in the lilacs, the heady bowed over blooms of peonies on the edge of the border of lawn between houses.

A revelation.

Instead of a fence to keep you out.

Instead of a wall that you have to climb.

Or one that I have to knock down.

Perhaps all I need is a field of flowers to keep my safe.

Just a little border there between you and me, a sweet, soft, petal, a musical of blossoms blowing over the grass, the apples like paper sails of hope and dreams and the reverence of of sunshine on my soul.

Clots of dandelion seeds.

Wishes on the air.

The organ grinder and the ferris wheel splayed against the spread of heavens and the carnival swings into gear and the smell of hot cotton candy and the soft powder of sawdust and popcorn.

Summer.

Cut grass.

All the memories all the evocations.

The witchery and the bright eye turned to the coin in the sky.

Money that cannot be spent except in reverence to the moment unfolding.

Always.

All the time.

Sunshine.

Burn it the sunshine.

These coins I carry in my pocket, pennies and coppers and two bits of silver that are just slices and slivers of time that I cannot spend but with you.

Bright notes bell on the guitar string.

Somewhere between my heart and my head I settle into a place and soften, let go, and give you all the pain.

Because I don’t have to carry it alone.

I never did.

My mistake.

I lay it now down in that field of flowers.

A crushing outline of my body in the tall grass wrought with wildflowers.

Alive.

To get up and walk away and hold my hand out to you over the carcasses of flowers adorned to my body.

I am here.

You are there.

And in this field.

We are everywhere.

All stars.

All love.

All bound for this moment.

This here.

This now.

Love.

Love.

I have paid my dues.

Take my hand and let’s run breathless toward that bright horizon always pushing toward the moment up the road, to that crest.

There.

Just there.

Just here.

Just Now.

Just.

And always.

And.

Forever.

Love.