Faith, Forgiveness, and Flower Girls

For the last ten days I've been trying to fill a hole.

For awhile, I thought this hole was related to my boyfriend being gone (and off the grid). In many ways, it is. Or it was. There is a really big, really empty space in the bed next to me. My house is obscenely large for one person. The number of cucumbers, cantaloupes, and peaches are more than one person should reasonably eat.

The first day was the hardest, until the second day. Then the third day was a little easier, and it has been up and down since then. I would say that day six was the hardest, except that I'm writing this through tears. It feels like we've broken up. My body echoes the rattling in my mind and they set up an unfortunate echo across the canyon of the emptiness.

My instinct was to fill this time completely with dates with friends, work, and other projects that would keep my mind occupied, but instead I did a lot of sitting and staring into space. Some people call it meditation, but I think that elevates the experience beyond what it was for me - holding space for myself. Breathing. Not checking in on my phone or reading a book, not making lists or prioritizing. Just sitting with the experience of who I am in this moment and exploring the hole.

On day two I saw an old friend for a massage, and like all good therapists, she asked me what I needed. And I answered the same way I do whenever I see a healer - whatever you think I need. Most of the time they ask a few probing questions, but she asked me to draw an angel card. It said forgiveness, which made me cry again. Am I supposed to forgive myself? My boyfriend? My parents? I needed a NOUN card to tell me to forgive the cat, or my car, or my uncle.

But forgiveness isn't about them, it's about you. The noun is inconsequential. It is about letting go of the things that don't serve you, things that dig the hole deeper rather than shining a light in to help you navigate.

On day four I received a card from a former student. Many months ago I had written out individual intentions for a yoga class - 20 different options which were selected by participants without seeing them. They were my intentions for myself for the year. I instructed them to use the word for the intention of their practice, and if it suited them, to hang onto it for a bit. But then to pass it on to someone who they thought could benefit from it.

The best part of giving is in passing on the lesson, the intention, the blessing. To acknowledge, you need this more than I do.

The card I received contained many messages that what I'm doing really worked, really resonated with this woman. It also contained the tiny slip of paper that she had kept for the previous nine months with the word FAITH on it. She gave it back to me, because she said she thought I could use it.

I cried again, for the hundredth time in a few days, for the millionth time this year. Everything works out the way it is supposed to, even on days when I'm not in charge. Even when "the way it is supposed to" feels like a sinkhole.

This crying thing is new to me. I didn't cry before. I held it in, under control, and just simmered. Sometimes it would boil over in a sickness or a mysterious and disturbing change in my vision, but nothing like the streams of tears running down my face for the past year and a half. I have let it get the better of me on a few occasions - and tonight is no exception.

I cry about a lot of things: loneliness, jealousy, lost dreams, lost relationships. I try to hide from the symbolism of certain circumstances, like the untimely death of my flower girl by her own hand... knowing full well that her death has nothing at all to do with me and simultaneously feeling a bit responsible. The death of a child. Another person who slipped through the cracks.

When people tell me that everything happens for a reason, I think on these kinds of unfortunate circumstances - the shadows beyond the place lit by forgiveness and faith. This is the hole. It is not an absence of a person or presence, it is not as simple as mere loneliness, the hole is the place where our best efforts cannot reach us.

As a doula, I watch women (families, really) drop into this hole as they navigate the treacherous waters between this world and the next and draw upon every last reserve to bring their babies across that tenuous border. The same thing happens when I watch a friend walk to the edge of this lifetime. I'm compelled to jump in with them - after them - into the blackness. But then it would be the two of us at the bottom of a well, in the dark, and at some point we'd face the unhappy decision of who should eat whom to survive a few minutes longer. You see, I've never given birth, and I haven't died in this lifetime. I have no idea how to help if I end up down there, with you.

Most people approach the person in the hole with some of the many implements from the board game Clue. Remember? The rope, the candlestick, the wrench. These are the life-saving, let-me-fix-you tools. And then there's the dagger, the pistol, and the poison for putting you out of your misery. But all of these things are weapons. All are an assault on the person down there. Saying "have faith" or "everything happens for a reason?" just additional tools in the arsenal.

The hardest thing, and truly, the only thing worth doing, is to be there. To say "I'm here" or let your soul sit by. If it's a hole you've been in yourself, maybe you jump back in and navigate through the darkness, but jumping in is perilous. You could break your leg or land on top of the person you're trying to save. So you have to choose wisely and decide whether the martyrdom would be worth it - whether the person would benefit from what you have to offer. But you can reach in with your heart or your hand and simply be.

When you're in the hole, there's something to be said for having your hand held in the dark.

I missed this chance with my flower girl, just like I missed it with my cousin, with Jon, with so many who have been swallowed whole by the darkness in life. It makes me cry and question my faith. It's what makes nights like this hard.

There is space in my life for faith, for forgiveness, and for a space beyond those greatest of intentions. The hole can eat you up, or it can become a portal to whatever comes next.

Just keep going.

The List

Quick. Make a list of everything you've ever wanted. Everything you would do if money were no object. Would you be sitting here, staring at this computer?

I would.

Maybe that's my problem.

Three people have asked me this very question this week: what do you want to do? Not as in, shall we get tacos or sushi, but on a grander scale, like a vacation to Bali or a pony or a piercing. Certainly some of those sound more appealing than others, but nothing seems to bubble up from within.

Well, except the one thing.

The One Thing has been there for longer than I can recall, and I'm now kind of over it. Because now It is scarier than it was before. It's on the other side of the surgery, which, if you're unfamiliar, is where they cut out parts of you. On purpose. And then you pay them for it.

This has happened to me twice before. My parents made the decision to have my tonsils removed when I was seven, a procedure I remember vaguely, mostly in the context of suppositories because I couldn't stop throwing up, and Crocodile Dundee, because it was 1980 something. In my later years I've wondered if my body isn't sailing by in ship-shape because of whatever the tonsils were supposed to be doing. Like what if my special purpose, or the compass for my special purpose, was in my tonsils? And this is why I'm so despaired at finding what I want, because I haven't a clue?

Later I had my wisdom teeth removed, which also seemed the informed choice based on various cultural norms and the American inability to clean one's teeth properly. It was painful, but worse than the pain was the inebriation from the medication they used to put me under. The Fog has lasted into my thirties, perhaps because there are still icky bits of medication in my blood, or more likely, because my wisdom was removed.

And now I face Polly, my affable polyp who has been not-so-innocently standing by whilst my marriage and mental health rode off hand in hand, into the sunset.

Back to the want.

So long as I can recall, or at least the parts of me that remain recall, I have wanted to be a mother. To bear children and then raise them up like my personal little science experiments. I would like the opportunity to mess up some offspring, see if the computer models are correct, see what the blossoms of this tree look like. I'm not sure what kind of tree I am, and some part of me (maybe even Polly) believes that I can't know until there are little fruits rolling around my roots.

Maybe then I'll know what I'm made of.

The want was so loud that I've drowned it out with sorrows and busy-ness, which isn't news to anyone. And all the while, Polly. Dear Polly, was saying I DON'T THINK SO. Your shit is yours to figure out girlfriend, no friend, nor potion, nor cosmic force, nor boyfriend can help you. And neither can your fruits.

They say that the entirety of the tree is in the seed. The memory of the mother is in the daughter.

What's in a polyp?

Yet

This is a heady word, this "yet."

You can throw it around like, "Yet, the chair was red." And it means essentially nothing, or you can say that you haven't done something... yet.

There's a lot I haven't done yet.

For instance, instead of writing my memoir right now I'm vacillating between eating hippy chips, Facebook, and this blankish page (and the other blankish page that has bits on it). I'm having a hard time settling into the writing groove. I haven't really gotten my "book" off the ground.

Yet.

I have this thing on my calendar. This surgery. This trap door that might open the Way of my Cervix and drop me into the illusive land of motherhood, or cancer, or I could probably just straight-up die.

And I'm not sure I'm ready for any of these things.

Yet.

I told my mother yesterday, which is how I know for real and for certain that she does not in fact read my blog, as she was surprised to hear that I might consider an elective-ish surgery to possibly reinstate my fertility without first landing a husband. This was her first concern, my marital status, not my health or the state of my health insurance and finances, nor even the state of my advanced directives.

No, mama.

Don't you get it? Polly the Polyp is not about my marriage, although she sure seemed to have a lot to say about it. She's some sort of manifestation of something - like my fear of motherhood and the requisite failures and rebirths that happen around that, or possibly what happened to the chewing gum I repeatedly swallowed as a child despite my extreme effort to chew and chew and chew. Maybe Polly is here to inspire me to Write My Damned Book before I possibly die on the equinox - what if Polly is really an entire universe and she's just waiting for the big BANG?

I'm not ready to die, yet.

I have a lot of things to do, like birth a book, and a baby, and make a few thousand more epic mistakes worth writing about. I'm here to write about the important things like losing and letting go, like expectations and disappointments. Like how to avoid being a dill-hole and how to manage adult diagnoses of HFM disease. These things are important.

Oprah did not get married, and look at her. Sure, she endured a hellish childhood but now she owns Maui and Africa and puts her picture all over everything, like, "OH, YEAH, LIFE? YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET."

(she didn't have babies either, I know).

Mama's got some expectations. And I haven't lived up to them.

Yet.

Excuse me, while I lose my mind

WARNING: THIS IS A RANT

This morning several of my friends posted this gem of an article about how much it absolutely and completely sucks to have a child. How it is worse than both divorce AND the death of a romantic partner.

Well, people, let's talk about science.

First, the Washington Post is likely a reputable source for news. And someone sort of, kind of, did some research here.

However.

I fundamentally disagree.

And I say this on some authority, as I work with new parents on a daily basis and have for several years now.

The yogis try (and try again) to teach us that nothing outside of us will make us happy. As in, if you are sad, a new baby will not make you happy. A divorce will not make you happy. And only in limited circumstances will the death of your partner make you happy. In those cases you'll have to move to one of the handful of countries that does not extradite to the US, and I'm pretty sure the happiness index of those countries is particularly poor (particularly for women).

A puppy will not make you happy. A new car, new job, the right soap, the right boobs, these things will not make you happy.

HOWEVER.

The opportunity to give love does increase happiness over time, particularly when that love is reciprocated. I do not need a study or the WP to show me that, and neither do you. How do I know? People have children, and continue to have children. They adopt children. They plow through years of fertility BS to have children. They adopt puppies and iguanas and teacup pigs. People love this shit.

People love overcoming stress. That's why we fell in love with Forrest Gump and why triumphing over insane distance sports makes us feel all warm and squishy (for a time). Having a baby is stressful, because you don't get to decide when it eats and sleeps or what it's personality or temperament are. But unless you are one heck of a dill-hole, you will overcome. Even with little to no education and training. This is biology. This is science! Everyone everywhere has children, and it's not because the conservative a-holes have blinded us to the usefulness and availability of contraceptives. It is our biological imperative and it is infinitely better than divorce and death and possibly moving to Pakistan.

And I get it. Having children is hard. They need lots of things, and the ROI is sometimes nonexistent.  I'm not for one instant saying that it is easy or that you don't need a whole heaping helping of help and various moderately-controlled substances to smooth the ride. I've stepped in on many occasions when someone called and said they needed a break because they were going to throw their baby at a wall.

And I've seen those same parents get help, triumph, have more children, and figure it out.

You can, too. Your children won't be the lawyer/doctor/architects that you hoped they would be. They might get cut from the soccer team, or they might be gay or Republican. They might hop and skip from faith tradition to faith tradition or college to college. They will likely break things and need therapy for any number of things you did or didn't do or tried to do correctly.

But.

They will very likely endure and go on to have children of their own. And even if they don't love you every day or every week or every year, they will love you more and make you happier than homicide and divorce.

To say anything else is bending data to blow wind in your sails.

And smoke up your ass.

So enjoy your children. And bitch about the hard things. Notice when your expectations hit the bottom of the sea and realize that the problem isn't that your kiddo didn't master the flute, but that you thought she should. Your expectation that parenthood would be the "best thing ever" is bound to fail. The problem isn't in the first child, it's a practice in releasing expectations.

The score card goes like this:

1. Do you have a child?
2. Are they alive?
3. Are they healthy?
4. Are you healthy?

THEN YOU WIN.

Mountains and Mole-Hills: DO NOT GET EXCITED

Today I went to see my awesome-sauce new doctor about my "fertility issues" and got to meet Polly, my enormous endometrial polyp.

Isn't she pretty?

(In case sonographic interpretations aren't in your repertoire, the large black space is my uterus filled with 10 cc of saline. It should be a pear-shape, but the right half is clearly filled with an enormous polyp, Miss Polly, who is pointing to the 11 o'clock spot).

When my uterus doesn't have water in it, Miss Polly blocks my cervix like a native IUD. Which means I couldn't get pregnant if I tried.

HOW COOL.

Aren't you excited? ELATED to have an answer? Relieved to know what has been causing your discomfort/sadness/unexplained infertility/cornucopia of uncomfortable symptoms you don't want to post about on the internets?

Yes.

And.

AND.

Surgery. Hope. Despair. What's a girl to do? Leave it and never dance with that asshole puppet Hope again, or spend a lot of money, endure quasi-elective surgery, and let the dance begin again.

Let it be a molehill?

Face the mountain?

I came home with a sonogram picture to put on my fridge or my meditation altar, the way most mamas are sent home with pictures of embryological squid or whatever they get to see on their first confirmation of pregnancy ultrasound. My first instinct was to share it on FB, but I felt like you needed the story behind it - or at least a small slice of it. I've sat with it today, first in the car, then at home, then while furiously googling and learning that endometrial polyps are most common in obese women over 40 with a history of high blood pressure.

That sounds like me.

It looks like a yin/yang.

Or a "sorry, we're closed."

I'm closed.

I wish someone had done this for me two years ago - three years ago. Before I invested $7,000 in fertility research/acupuncture/voodoo/craniosacral/therapy/psychics/herbs/assorted diets. Before I gave up drinking and fun.

Before I gave up on my marriage.

But here we are, me and Polly, deadlocked in a staring contest.

Surrender

It is unusual for me to be inspired by a quote. Too often I think yoga teachers and writers alike dance on the tails of some other peacock rather than spreading their own feathers and seeing what they've got. Regardless, today is one of those days for me.

It's been a dry week, and my weathered skin is peeling from my hands and feet in the wake of my unfortunate experience with hand, foot, and mouth disease. The itchy bumps were bad, the guilt of having passed the yuck to others was worse, and now the universal metaphor of growth as I shed one skin and step out in something a bit pinker, a bit more raw. It always comes at the right time.

Even when we're not ready for it.

I'm at that fuzzy crossroads, like the place between seasons. It's faint and blurry, and you can tell traffic has come from one way and ended up another, but the feet that made those trails weren't coordinated, just like the feelings that come in this kind of crossroads aren't sorted and linear. They don't take turns, and they don't fall in line. This wave of sadness feels a lot like the flavor of last week, but the sun has shifted slightly and a lot more skin has shed.

The wind has stolen last week's footprints and whatever breadcrumbs lay there before are seven miles south or in the belly of the raven.

And I am, too. At least parts of me. Taking a good, hard look at myself and the choices I've made in the last year - the last five - the last ten, and I don't automatically think wow, I think ugh. As in, ugh, I followed that guy down that rabbit hole, dragged that one kicking and screaming from an early grave (that he fell into anyway), cinched that one into a tight mold.

What will happen to you, my darling, in the wake of my ineffectual love? 

Instead of fixing myself, which is the only thing I can do, I have fixed the crap right out of everyone I meet (sleep with). And by fix I mean control, which is like fixing when there isn't a problem. Even when there is a problem, it isn't my problem until I decide that it is and go all Lorax on whatever The Thing is.

Except I forgot about me. I've forgotten about me all along. I cannot remember a time - not one minute - not one early memory - where I wasn't concerned about how what I did was going to affect someone else.

I've been joking lately about the title of my forthcoming book, which is mostly just sticky notes. Basically the point is that nothing that I've done has been about me. And in some ways that is good, I think. In yoga we speak of selfless service - of the union between the small "s" self and the big "S" Self, and that's great when we're talking of sharing bananas. But when it comes to who is on first, whose goals and aspirations lead the charge, who realizes whose destiny it gets sticky.

Who is on first?

In my past lives, I was a servant, a submissive, a glorified doormat. And I've been told based on the time and station of my birth that in this life I am supposed to realize myself. As in get selfish. And although you might mistake my actions with those poor men I've driven mad as selfish, I think that they were in fact residual effects of a life I hadn't finished yet. I see your potential and I will bend and maneuver any aspect of my life to realize. To realize in an active way, not to recognize, but to transform.

"I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love." ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

I tried to force that energy into a baby - to realize another human that I could direct so that I would be free from the disgrace of confronting my own reflection and rumination. Eager I was, as so many are, to pass the buck - to leave my mark as a Legacy rather than an impression of the hard work I have done.

This is the disease of the helicopter parent, the slave-driver who directs a child into a shape that does not suit her. The angry boss who snaps at the intern. This, I'm afraid, is me.

Tonight marks an important moment - a crossroads in the dust. I've made a series of interesting turns getting to this precise point and I feel as hapless and helpless as a dandelion seed on the wind. And perhaps this was the moment I was waiting for - the ability to surrender, to ride the wind and let the big "S" Self steer for awhile.

Faith does not come easily to me. I'm jealous if it does for you, and I'm grateful on your behalf.

For now, I'll stand here in the crossroads and wait for the wind to pull at my hair and sweep at my skirt and set me on my new direction, eyes closed.

And hope that faith sweeps me up.

The Lie

How did I end up here? 

I ask myself this question on good days and bad alike.

How is this my life?

What did I do to deserve this?

Today I'm day three into Hand, Foot and Mouth disease, a virus that normally affects toddlers and rarely infects adults. I've got severe blisters covering my hands, feet, inside of my mouth and more.

Lots more.

One week ago I had just arrived home from a long and fantastic trip across Canada and the US with my boyfriend, sans major hiccups. That's a major feat. We talked in the car, chatted about the sage relationship advice of Dan Savage, the gay man who gives straight couples relationship pointers. We agreed on everything. We saw glaciers and bears, breathtaking sunsets and lots and lots of open fields. We made new friends and re-connected with others.

How is this my life?

(Full disclosure: I didn't relax very much).

Now we're back and I'm disgusting. As in, there is absolutely nothing beautiful about me anymore. My face is pocked, my hands and feet swollen and mottled like toads in a year without rain. I smell like chamomile and tea tree oil, benadryl cream and apple juice. Instead of resting and taking care of myself to heal and hopefully throw this nasty infection, I'm consumed with the terrible thoughts that I'm worthless, unloveable, and undeserving. Each morning when I wake up it is more pain and itch, the likes I've never experienced, gently entangled with the fear that I've passed this along rather than keeping the rot to myself.

What did I do to deserve this?

I'm trying to find the yoga in this. This battle of opposites. This inability to let myself be fragile, weakened, or seen for anything less than the best of what I've got. This ego thing is really cramping my style. Can't I just go back? To the mountain air and the glacial waters? Can I please go back and get a do-over, to enjoy my time rather than stressing about the mountain of email and expectations that waited for me on the other side of the invisible wall of wifi?

Can I please go back to when I wasn't completely consumed with self-consciousness? When I was in a place that was more beautiful than I'll ever hope to be, and I forgot for a second (a split second, just once or twice) that I'm not so different from that place? Now I feel so foreign, back in the Land of Responsibility without my usual sarcasm, humor, and whatever looks I like to think I have?

When I got back, the first people who saw me said how jealous they were of my life - my travel - my independence.

"ME TOO!" I wanted to scream in their faces. I am always pinching myself - how did I get here? - what did I do to deserve this? - How is this my life? I don't pinch myself because I'm so blissful I think I'm dreaming, I pinch myself to say, "HEY, A-HOLE, RELAX AND ENJOY."

I don't know how to do that.

Social media is a lie - at least mine is. Or it isn't the whole story. It's the brief moments above water when the sun shines through. No one posts pictures of being lost at sea, disfigured and disgruntled. And maybe that's because we know it can be worse - or it will be worse - and we should try to appreciate whatever morsel of joy we can capture. As proof to our friends - and ourselves - that we were once beautiful. Once happy.

Or at least we pretended to be.