Venom

After my surgery I asked the nurse if I'd ever get married.

(This from the girl who has sworn off that and all other sacraments. And Catholicism.).

They say medication makes you say things you wouldn't otherwise say, that surgery makes you face your mortality in fun and exciting ways, and that jello makes you curious.

(I may have made the last one up).

I can (and will) assert my 5th amendment privilege here, despite it's irrelevance. It's basically none of your business.

Oh, right. Who am I kidding? I have literally no idea why I would have asked that. Or even if I asked that. Maybe he's pulling my chain because he knows how sore I am on the topic of marriage these days. Maybe that's the scopolamine talking.

I'm in the gooey center right now, between friends who are newly (and probably - possibly) happily married and those who are recently or soon to be divorced. It's an awkward place to be - a place I had never considered - based on my marital privilege. I just figured you met someone who could tolerate your midnight tongue-clicking, your occasional bursts of ineptitude, your bizarre fear of slipping on the stairs and not being discovered for days and you tied the knot. Put a ring on it while THE END scrolled down the movie screen of your mind.

There is more to the story.

And this part is uncharted. I don't have a template, because Disney ends before the s#it gets real, because my parents (and their parents) stayed married forever, and because my crystal ball is still in the shop and my magic 8 ball keeps saying "ask again later."

My perfect marriage ended perfectly, but just as I can feel the scopolamine and the versed and the god-knows-what-else still coursing through my veins, I can still feel the venom that lead to separation, divorce. I skipped out on the wedding of the century this weekend because I still need to lie down without warning. Many friends told me to be "gentle with myself" post surgery, because recovery can be sneaky - episodic - on again, off again. And I ignored those warnings several times, with nearly disastrous results.

The same is true, I fear, in recovery from divorce.

Surgery changes you. They cut you open and take out something that you grew - something that was you - that is you. Divorce is similar. It cuts you, leaving you vulnerable to overheating and over-sharing in the worst of possible situations. And if you deny the pain and push forward, put on a show and let everyone believe that you're alright, you do a disservice to yourself and to anyone who looks to you as an example. You neglect the healing - the grace - the gentleness that is required to become comfortable as a new whole.

Nothing will replace what was removed. Nothing will repair what was once there - once part of you - but I think (I hope) that with grace and gentleness (and a few tantrums and unscheduled breaks along the trail), that the new whole will someday feel like home.

Anniversary

It's still right now. Unsettling things are sometimes called disquieting, but the stillness – the quietness – it's a bit much on it's own this morning. Eight years ago it was windy, and last year was unseasonably warm.

Today is my anniversary, and what I've learned is that the longer I live, the more anniversaries I have. The more meaning and history saturates each day:
April 4th – Bad News Day
May 10th – Start Something New Day
November 11th – Coulda Woulda Beena Birthday.

I'm fortunate enough to have had mostly good Christmas mornings. My birthday has been a mixed bag.

 Today is the best.

 And the worst.

 Eight years ago I woke up with my head pointed in one direction while my heart pointed in another. Ditto last year. It's getting to the point where now when I see golden aspen leaves in the hillside or on social media, I start to cringe, to buckle down and anticipate the coming of the darkness.

 I should have gotten married on the spring equinox rather than the fall, because then my anniversary would point me towards longer, warmer days rather than settling me into darker, windier nights. Equality seemed like a good message for a wedding, but that message wasn't the kind of magic that ends in happily ever after.



But there was magic in it.



Ten years ago I was on a train to the top of Pikes Peak and the wind rustled the billions of golden aspen leaves to the same melody that was playing in my heart. I was sure – certain.

Eight years ago I marched down the aisle after my heart had taken a dangerous tumble down the road less traveled. Less sure, but determined, nonetheless.

Last year I walked into the courthouse alone, the thunder of my heels clicking ARE YOU SURE? with each step.

 When my doctor's office called me to schedule my surgery, I thought I'd get a handful of dates.

 But this was the date that they offered.

 I've run the gamut on this date, from absolute certainty to maddening indecision. Knowing this, I've given myself complete permission to back out at any minute, something I perhaps should have done eight years ago.



Something I should do every day.



But days like today are carved inwards like scars, each passing year offering its blade to the etching. Whatever time has healed reopens. This day is more than the equal weight of sun and moon, it has a gravity for me that I can no longer overlook. My ex-husband suggested that I stay in next year with the shutters closed, sealed in against the ineffable fate that will rain down on me, like the Universe has it in for me on this day.



I see it differently.



I think that this date is an invitation for me – like the one day a year the wormhole opens and I have the opportunity to walk through, or peek through, or click through and see the future. Or maybe just see life as it is without the layers of foggy memory and sad memories.



Today I get to walk into a building as one person and walk out with a new identity. I have done this before, thrice, on this very same day, from this very same vantage point to the sun. But this time I know who I am.



And who I'm leaving behind.


Eagle Medicine

Tomorrow is a big, big day for me.

For the past three years, I've dealt with a difficult and debilitating diagnosis. While I get that Unexplained Infertility should be the most minor of complaints - like going to Universal Studios and then learning that Harry Potter Land is closed for renovation - it's still disappointing. There are LOTS of other rides out there, people. Plenty of other adventures.

And yet.

In the past several years I've tried on dozens of different healing modalities. Western Medicine says I'm "totally fine and ovulating like a rabbit," so I've tried fun list of things.

I've tried doing everything right. Then I tried doing everything wrong. 

Through this, several things have bubbled up to the surface, including the idea that problem is not in my head. Whatever your frustration is, I promise you that it exists both in the real world and in your head. Maybe it started one place and migrated to the other. I'm not sure what the case is in my instance, just as I cannot tell you what it is in yours. What I can say is that you do not deserve whatever malady ails you. It isn't fair that Harry Potter was on vacation the one weekend you made it out to visit. You are as in charge of your own destiny as the universe is.... you are dealt cards and then you have to play with them. Or walk away from the table. The control you have in this life, at least, is in making those kinds of decisions. Riding the water ride or heading off to the beach.

(I always choose the beach).

I'm not able to fully support myself through this. I tried, for a long time, and I'm the stubborn girl who used to hold my breath until I passed out (and still didn't get my way). I've accepted the suggestions and tried everything on. I was a VEGAN, PEOPLE. And now I eat therapeutic meat.

I spent so much money on my health that I neglected my happiness.

This was my biggest mistake. 

Rather than trusting my intuition and soaking in healing waters, gifting myself ample beach time and excessive massage, I ate seaweed and turned my life into a science experiment with an obsession not unlike Frankenstein, with equally monstrous results.

My biggest lesson? We make our own medicine. Everyone has an idea, a treatment, a solution. There is snake oil around every corner, and most of it works. Just not for you. For medicine to work, you have to believe in it. Which means that sometimes you have to make it for yourself. A few weeks ago I started binging on healing services, in preparation for The Big One. The anesthesia scares me the most, followed closely by the lack of control and my inability to take anything in with me. No friends, no tokens, no jewelry or images as I've done in times past. I can't even repeat a prayer or a mantra while I'm under. And while I understand that we're all on the same team, the surgeon, the anesthesiologist and I, it's a level of vulnerability I'm really not comfortable with.

A few weeks ago I spent time with a healer who mentioned something about eagle medicine - perspective, long view. It rolled around in my head with the kind of resonance that means something to me, and the next morning in my meditation I saw an image of a woman with an eagle tattooed on her chest, a seedling in one hand, ashes in the other. I wanted to draw her, except that I haven't drawn anything in a long time, so I just sketched her out in my journal. And later that week, when I had essentially decided I didn't want the surgery, my perspective shifted. I decided to allow this surgery to be more symbolic than practical. Sure, it's possible that Dear Polly is causing lots of my uncomfortable symptoms in addition to my "unexplained infertility," but what is more important to me is giving over control and allowing someone else to remove the psychic burdens that I've been carrying myself. Psychic surgery, where the thoughts are concentrated into their physical manifestations and removed.

This has given me a moment of peace (so has giving myself permission to back out at any moment). But I still needed to take something with me, something more than the good wishes and intentions that everyone is lopping my way.

And so I'm taking this eagle. My friend, a gifted artist, came and drew this totem on my chest as I had seen it in my vision, in henna, the only medium allowed into the operating room with me. This is my medicine. A shift in beliefs. Asking for help. Listening to what I really need.

What is yours?

I'd Vote for You

When did the American Presidency become a booby prize? 

I'm not sure. I was allowed to take a crash-course in American History over the summer, so I learned six weeks worth of primarily useless information, like President Taft got stuck in his bathtub. My civics class was worse, as my civics teacher was more invested in his (and our) Christian beliefs than - say - civics, which is why he was fired mid-year from my public junior high school. Second semester we covered the judicial branch, so I really have no idea how this process works. But somewhere, somehow, this process appears to have changed.

Sometimes I joke that you (yes YOU) would make a better choice than the vast majority of the candidates out there, except that I'm not confident that I'm joking. You, my friend, have many of the qualities it takes to lead the free world. Maybe you couldn't explain the electoral college in 100 words, and maybe you don't know anything about defense. Perhaps your understanding of geography is similar to mine. I once knew all of the state capitals by heart, and I'm very familiar with every country in the world, as the world was in either 1945, when the globe at my house was painted, or in 1993, when I took geography and had to memorize everything. But I believe a few things give you a leg or two up on several of the folks I've seen flash across my newsfeed as I try (desperately) to scroll past.

Reasons I think YOU should be President:
1. You know how to ask for help. Maybe you don't think you do, but I know you do. I've heard you do it. If you don't remember the precise capital of Illinois (it's tricky), I'm willing to bet you'd google it or phone-a-friend. Do this more. Ask for help daily, like a prayer or a mantra. Say "help me" and my vote is yours.

2. You love someone or something more than money. Maybe you fixate a bit more on what you have (or haven't got) in the bank, but my guess is that you have a few standards when it comes to money, time, and energy. You are working on it, I know. You spend more on coffee or fluffy socks or scratch-off tickets than you'd like, but there are a few things you wouldn't do for money. You know that money is a made-up thing that is necessary in the world, but that it is less valuable than real things like people, plants, and even cool rock formations.

3. You can say, "I was wrong." You do this with some frequency, I know it. Maybe your interval is rather long, as is my mother's. She will go 10 years without needing to admit she made a mistake, but that's because she's nearly perfect. My father says it many times a day (this may be the secret to a successful marriage, although I'm not sure because it didn't work for mine). The more you say it when it needs to be said, the easier it is to make up and go play hopscotch.

Maybe you're not an American, or maybe you're under 35 or even possibly a felon, and all of these things disqualify you. But please don't focus on them, because they don't matter. You have all of the qualities that matter, and the more you execute them, the better the world feels for everyone. 

Also, you share your bananas, which helps.

Keep sharing. Maybe the sentiment will trickle up?

Time

I feel like I've run out of time. I'm heading into surgery on Tuesday (maybe... I think so... in all likelihood) and I feel like it's a momentous event, the excision of Polly the Polyp. 

I also feels like it is an end.

It doesn't help when the nurse on the phone reminds you to bring your ID and health insurance card along with a copy of your advanced directives. And not to bother bringing anything else of value with you. Like St. Peter doesn't have use for your moderately old, helplessly out of date iPhone or your favorite lip gloss.

There's so much I'd like to do in this life, so many more things to write. I've been writing with reckless abandon for the last three weeks as though the sands are all in the bottom half of the hour glass and there are just a few grains clinging to the glass above with a tiny bit of static and a prayer.

But I have more to say, please hear that. I hope I haven't used up all of my good lines. I hope I sleep soundly for three minutes and then pop back into the soundness of mind that I've appreciated to date.

We speak of time as though it is a thing we have, or have had. As though the reality is that we contained the time and kept it captive and not that it had run through us graying our hair and weathering our skin. But that is the reality. Time cannot be contained any more than spirit or gravity. You don't get to cash in your good karma or your 401(k) for an extra few minutes, no matter how many great last lines you've still got up your sleeve.

Time is long at the dentist and short in Hawaii, and no matter how long or short it is, you will never have it, and it will never be enough.

So look at your agenda today, tomorrow, next week and realize - recognize - that this electronic screen or paper schedule is an illusion of time in a cage, of control of what will come. Fill your days with experiences that make time feel short, that steal your breath, not long, grueling tasks that make you hold it. I'm serious. I've been self-employed for three and a half years now, and while I sometimes get to the bottom of my bank account, living this way has not done me wrong.

Time is short today, and for that, I am grateful.

When time is short, I'm running with the tide, not against it. And wherever it goes, wherever it takes me, I am grateful that I'm not in line at the dentist or the DMV, that I'm not tediously recounting all of the miles I've driven in a year.

I would rather live my life in the sunset - the brief moments that pass too quickly that can never be captured. I would rather be inspired by time than held captive by it.

Certainty

I get really irked by the known things, more so than I should, given that they're "known." Death and taxes. If you've known me at all in my personal life, you know that it takes a heaping helping of coddling for me to do my taxes every year. It shouldn't, I'm not trying to hide anything, and there's nothing terribly complicated or exciting, but the grueling work of sitting down and crunching the numbers inspires a tantrum in my inner toddler.

Death does the same thing. It is as inevitable as birth. We know the curtain must fall, and yet when it does on those we love (on those I love) I find myself grieving the end rather than celebrating the show.

My friend lost a brother yesterday - suddenly, as though the suddenness matters more than the loss - which it doesn't. But we always qualify a loss as either 'expected' or 'sudden' even though I've never been able to figure out which is worse. I mean, we all knew it was coming, right? As surely as I know that next April I'll sit down with a box of Newman O's and a Venti whatever to pacify the angry toddler within, we ask as though this qualifies or lessens the blow of the curtain.

No matter when it hits the stage, it is always too soon.

And then we need to know how, but we know the answer there, too. The heart stopped. The breath stopped. The mind stopped. Did the soul carry on? Did it wait to say farewell, or did it slip out while you were in the bathroom? 

Where will it go next? 

I take comfort in the entirely bizarre idea that my grandmother was reborn as my friend's dog. She had a hard life last go round, and I can't imagine anything better for her than a life of ease and comfort. It brings me peace. I always wish people, pets, animals on the street and people lost in the freakish human events a favorable rebirth.

Which, I'm afraid, is all we can do. Some people pray, others meditate and hold space. Others drink and throw rocks at raccoons because there isn't A THING that we can do, other than the THING that feels like the RIGHT THING or the ONLY THING. The hardest part, the saddest part is that no right thing exists. Whether our prayer is within the context of faith or the desperate act of eating all the Newman O's, it is what we have.

And it is perfect.

Grief takes many forms, and it ricochets between the basest, ugliest qualities of our humanity and the tiny sliver of grace which always exists somewhere within us, like a sharp or soft beam of light that pierces the clouds above the sea as the storm passes over.

So today, tomorrow, as the days pass I'll wish for my friend's brother a favorable rebirth.

And a glimmer of grace for those he left behind.

Courage

I used to face the fall with a sense of dread, like I knew the hard times were coming and I had to get pumped up and cope and throw all the pumpkin spice in the world at it just to survive. When I worked in the world of constant work, constant "on," I would wash my suits, my 60 pairs of underwear, grab a PSL in each hand, and buckle in for the wild ride that was both exhilarating and exhausting.

The last few years have been different.

In truth, blazing through the fall was a happy coincidence, because then I didn't have to sit with the sad memories, nor did I have to watch the world go to sleep around me. This past year I've watched the odometer click (again) on the number of years I've been trying to get pregnant.

Most often, this ends in tears. Or historically, this has ended in tears. The world is dying, the echo of the misinformed doctor's voice telling me my eggs are "old," and the worst part was that I had given up the PSL because it wasn't good for my fertility. Coffee is bad, chemical pumpkin whatever isn't great, and of course there's the sugar and the dairy.

(It was particularly frustrating when the pregnant woman in line ahead of me ordered a grande PSL and gleefully sipped away).

But this was the ritual that helped me face the various anniversaries of death, of loss, of going to sleep. And I had cast it away as a crutch that I didn't need, and prematurely walked on legs that weren't ready to bear my full weight.

I'm learning these days that I don't have to bear my full weight, and more importantly, I don't have to punish myself for the lies I told myself for so many years. I don't have to work hard and push myself to the brink of collapse to be worthy of what I think I want. And I recognize that one crutch is helpful, two is a bit better, and there is no use for three.

I would like to tell you that I can meditate and drink only chamomile tea, and that it gets me through. That sunshine and exercise and a good night's sleep help me through the dark times, but that is not the truth. The truth is that the help I need is bigger than me.

Crutches are self-help, and I have (historically) had a bad habit of letting the weight of my body fall to my armpits to relieve my weary legs instead of accepting the help that comes with it's own legs and can walk beside me.

And this is what is different this fall. This time, I'm leaning and allowing others to help me carry my burdens.

If you are reading this, I am leaning on you.

If you are walking alone, muscling through in a power suit and armed with a latte in each hand, then let me tell you I have been there. And leaning into cups of coffee or Facebook or other flavors of time-sucking, life-force-sucking behaviors is not the answer. Neither is 108 sun salutations, or 1,000 hours of meditation, or "just smiling."

You can do this alone.

But you don't have to.