I’m slowing down. I don’t like it. I think I must be sick or something but maybe I’m just getting older.
Is that possible? Oh fuck, fuck, fuck.
Rocks get older and people go “how interesting.”
Wines get older and folks say “that’s got a great nose.”
Men get older—“…how distingue…”
Women get older—
older
older—
“she’s very active.”
So is yeast.
She talked about confusion. I had an image of a dark cloud shot through with lightening. The cloud; the lightening, the voices both in her head and outside.
She calls it confusion. I call it cacaphony. I call it the many voices of the many roles we are called to fill: child, woman, daughter, sister, wife. Each role comes with a set of expectation, of shoulds. Each role comes with its’ own history both inherited and experienced.
So the noise is both ambient and internal creating, if you let it,just a shitload of pressure. Lightening ensues.
She said “I want someone to take care of me.” She has to learn to take care of herself, to shut off and shut out the noise.
Kate is so young. I spent yesterday with her going to Court, paying the last of her restitution and recording her community service. Her lawyer asked her “How does it feel to be a miracle?”
After all the accolades, the community recognition, the love and admiration of countless strangers, how does she go on. After the Miracle, what?
What has she been saved for? I think just to have a regular life, work, love, laugh. She somehow thinks she has been saved for large things, but I think just being saved to live, to continue is enough.
She has tamped down her sense of being “extraordinary” a bit, but not totally. She still would like to be “Kate the Great.”
That is part of her youngness isn’t it? I’m going to grow up to be a rock star, a doctor, a lawyer, an Indian chief. Kate has always wanted to be exceptional. What if she is just a young woman trying to make it in the world? Would that be enough?
What if she is just a young woman who has survived and will go on to live a good life? Will that be enough?
I hope so.
The way she says “bye bye, Mama” makes me want to cry. I just fill up as I sense her need to check in with me daily, to connect, to chat a little as if to say I am here and you are there, my life is okay. Just a little tap, a little reassurance. I do, I want to cry.
There is something in Kate and perhaps it is the dissonance between her brash funny behavior and who she is inside—rather unsure, tentative, easily hurt. Rather young, I think.
I have come to love her deeply. I also frequently wish she’d shut up for a while and be more self-contained, but self-contained she ain’t. She is the emotional equivalent of one of Tessa’s suitcases. Packed too full. Under stress. Explosion.
Only occasionally now, Kate can be quiet and comfortable. I love those times.
I love you Kate—you’re a miracle.
“Mawadge—that blessed arrangement, that dream within a dream.”
I am so tired of being married. I am tired of myself and I am desperately tired of Rob. I am tired of myself for bringing up every shitty thing Rob has ever done when I am mad at him instead of just saying at the moment “I am mad at you because you lose your temper and yell horrible things at me. Stop”
I did that in the car yesterday, quietly and dispassionately telling him to stop. And he did. And it was over. Except it isn’t over. It’s never over. It’s cumulative. Like a big fucking weather system building up and up and then clearing except mine never clears. The weather clears only momentarily.
Why am I with him? Why do I want to share my life with him? Am I that scared to be alone or do I really love him? Put up or shut up, I say.
I am angry at Rob. Why? I’m fed up with his reactivity, his impulsiveness, his refusal to work at anything beneath him, his laziness, his OCD, his ADHD. He said this morning, “I have to work on not being oblivious” and the next minute he is being oblivious. I made a suggestion that he keep a list of items “to do”. He started. Will he ever pay attention to his list? I don’t know. He is like an extremely young child who insists that he is in control,knows what to do, and refuses to listen to anyone.
And at his worst I think—“Why am I subsidizing your infantile behavior?” ” Why do I want to blow my inheritance on you you ungrateful shit?”
So his behavior causes my behavior to escalate. I want to say all kinds of mean, hurtful things. I don’t, but I want to.
So each of us is in the maelstrom of our own angry resentful, tortured, minds.
I can’t forgive him for what he did, he can’t forgive himself for what he did and gets angry that I “make” him feel guilty.
Really, it’s no one’s fault. Rob is who he is and I, I am who I am. In some ways, we are the best of matches and in other ways, not so much.
I am tired of being angry at him for stuff he won’t change. If I can’t accept him the way he is, then I should quit torturing both of us.
He expects me to stay calm and collected and smooth all our rough patches. I’m not superhuman. I’m not the only adult in the relationship.
What does he offer in return? He’s funny, he’s smart, I like talking about stuff with him, he’s a warm body in my bed, he’s furry. He is very social, I am more reclusive. I love him and I also detest things about him. If he is called to step up, he steps back when it has to do with me. I am forever another iteration of his mother.
Visited my brother John this past few days. He lost his wife September 2015. His big old log house seems somehow shabby and lifeless without Pat.
I dream a lot about her while I am there. She doesn’t seem permanently gone, more like she has stepped out for a while and the while has been stretched far too long. Maybe she’s behind the curtain.
I cannot bear it. I cannot bear her loss for my brother or their kids or myself.
I read this essay this morning about sometimes needing to shatter, to come apart at the seams in order to come to a new place. Death, the loss of someone you love is a shattering. Nothing will be the same.
For Bro and his kids, this loss changes everything. They will move on, just not in the way they had thought. And we, who love them, need to wait too. They will find a new way of being.
Right now they are in a liminal state, they are between acts. Waiting with grace, with patience is hard.
I just reread this and realized that it’s not just waiting with grace and patience. We don’t even know what we’re waiting for. Are we waiting for things to go back to normal. There is no normal anymore. Maybe a “new normal”, whatever that means. We are simply waiting for what we do not know.
Waiting for the pieces to come back together.
So, I was sitting in the bathroom this morning looking at my underpants and I thought of the word drawers. Drawers. Pull your drawers up. Put your socks away in the drawer. Drawer is one weird word. Just saying it slowly can trip you out. Drawer. Put your big butt away in your drawers. Why are underpants called drawers, and why are they plural. You wouldn’t put your drawer on?
Then, as such things go, at least in my mind, I started thinking about the verb draw. Draw down, draw in, to draw (as in a picture, that is to draw an image out of a blank canvas. To pull out. To cause to emerge. Draw is the word used to describe the amount of water needed to float your boat. Draw to as in attract, draw out as in elicit. Draw when you take money out of the account.
Draw a conclusion. In all of these definitions or meanings it is the action of pulling something from something else. Drawn to…
Draw is old English, old Norse, just old I guess. What a wonderful word this is. What an ancient and necessary word this is. I can’t imagine not having this word in our vocabulary. Seems like its one of those words that predates others, like a cave painting to a Vermeer.
How did our ancestors communicate all these meanings before the word was developed? I believe “the word” predates God, for how did we even conceptualize the idea of god before we had language to name our feeling of awe or fear or transcendence.
Now I know it seems silly to go from underpants to transcendence, but there it is.
In the beginning was the word.
So here’s a little Vermeer. He was an excellent drawer.
Hello. Yes, this is Dog 