My friend said that lately she was wondering where that motivated, excited self of hers had gone.  Just a few years ago, it had seemed so clear what she needed  – no, wanted – to do.  And she had set about it – dived deep, surrendered, engaged – in a way that at the time made me, frankly, a little envious.  I wanted her confidence.  I could see how good it felt.

I was surprised to hear she felt so out of step with her inspiration.  I don’t see her that way, and I said so as unambiguously as I could. (There’s no schadenfreude punchline to this story, in case you think you see that coming).  It’s very hard, this losing of the light.  I’ve sat in the dark most of my life.  I tell myself it’s because I won’t abandon my own sadness, but maybe I am just scared.  Anyway, it’s a feeling I understand and I take no pleasure in thinking someone I love has to grapple with it.

We get a lot of encouragement to commit ourselves totally to a dream.  We are enticed to wear our accomplishments of growth and art like a glowing skin for everyone to admire.  But we have little experience of forgiveness and forbearance with ourselves when the inevitable crash of disappointments shroud our dreams in thunderstorms and fog.  We have to find a different kind of navigation – one that knows our destination without a clearly lighted path.  Of course it’s scary.  In the dark is where the risk is, and risk is really all there is to count on.

It makes sense that sometimes we feel like going away to find ourselves.  We can be quite shy animals, and sometimes it is best to approach our inner world sideways, by increments.  Partly this is because we are not always right in our conclusions about what is happening with us.  We feel we want to look at the situation straight on, but maybe that is just another way of punishing ourselves to avoid really taking the blame.  I don’t know about you but I have found that strategy a useful way of hiding, more than once. Away from home, though, it’s harder to avoid being where you are, even if you feel nervous about missing the bus or getting lost.  You focus on why you are here, whether you are momentarily pleased or not.  And often, you let people help you.  This may be the most alien moment of all.

The top of the table doesn’t have to be clear for us to talk.  Dogs can stretch out under our chairs, hoping to be invited to a lap seat.  Why not?  We can share.  Is there something new crowded into the china hutch? Don’t tell me – I want to see if I can find it.  Just shove the magazines over, hon, and get the coffee and embroidery. That’s really all we need.

It is funny – and I mean “ha!ha!” funny – that the belonging I have found with my Embroidery Sisters of A Certain Age is at least as noncompliant of me as immersing myself in the night time world of dark-shadow eyes and dancing til 4 a.m.  If anything, it feels further out there.  Just getting older and not disappearing is breaking the biggest rule we didn’t think would ever apply to us.

Feels good- really, really good.

This has been a week of last-times and long-agos but mostly I have been facing the fact that I am still fighting the last war.   Changes I thought were soul-searched and hard-bitten are re-runs of strategies that have failed me before.  It unnerves me to realize I am not brave enough to risk a different way.  Not yet, anyway.

But maybe it isn’t so important.  Does it matter so much if I get it wrong, again?  Amidst all my screw-ups – perhaps even due to their epic persistence – I have learned something about love.   My friend said it, and I wrote it down:  You have to connect to good people.  Otherwise it’s just too fucking hard.  That’s something to hold on to.  And the yard is always full of sparkles.

It isn’t so important for life to be tidy, or to know why you do certain things. For instance, I forgot that I made either of these pictures.  I never intended to put them together.  On the other hand, there’s really no plot twist when this lady is reunited with her medicine.  Or, as Dorothy Gale would say, she had never really lost it to begin with.

I don’t want to waste this visit with you, but somedays I just need to give myself something pretty to look at.  Straight up.

If I won’t believe in silver linings, how can I re-frame the ongoing failures and discouragements that keep slamming into me?  Well, silver linings are for clouds, and clouds are just too far away to reach.  Here on earth, the only thing that helps me understand is connection.  Remembering I am not alone in these feelings. Remembering that patience with this experience might somehow help someone else.  And I do wish I had some more entertaining way for you to know me than through the sadness and hurt I feel at the relentless cold shoulder I encounter as I search for work and some basic stability – but at present I don’t.

On the other hand, it is only human to want to feel better, and that is connection, too.  Comfort is harder for me to give myself – but then it helps to remember that you want comfort too.  And I also remember how much I want to find the pretty pictures for both of us.

You know how just when you are meaning to call your friend, the phone rings and it’s her?  I’ve been getting those calls for the last week or so, and it’s been wonderful.  One friend made me laugh so hard I cried, another made me feel so seen I cried, and one scalawag pointed out that feeling disappointed was fine, but underneath I might really be angry – which was so true.

I don’t know what I ever did to deserve this friendship and concern, but I surely do appreciate it. My heart is indeed more than a little sore from looking for ways to fix things that aren’t working out.  As usual, my mistake is looking in the wrong spot.  All I really needed to do was turn in your direction and see you’re there.  You know that I can’t be perfect, but I am alright with you.

Also, in case there is some static on our psychic message line, and you are trying to reach me, and I am not getting the signal – let me clear it up.

I love you.

There.  That oughta do it.

“Pain engraves a deeper memory.”  Anne Sexton

Yesterday I was “tidying up” my room – which means moving papers and books from the place they currently don’t belong to some momentarily less inconvenient place where they will rest, un-belonging, until the delusion of tidiness passes.  A folder of Mom’s clippings has travelled from one surface to another for a few months to remind me I want “to do something” with its contents.  Treasures hang precariously out its open sides – an image that reminds me of a butterfly in an embroidery hoop (it isn’t), a cartoon cat silhouette Mom cut from shiny black paper and folded into a greeting card, directions for getting to the Irish Embassy.  As I stood clutching the folder, gripped by indecision (shove it back on the bookshelf? hide it with other butterfly remnants?), I remembered the reason I started this blog.  I truly, deeply needed to find something in my own life that was beautiful and totally mine.  I thought making pictures for myself would give me something new to see, and even a way to be in love again.

I feel so strongly about this – that we are in a kind of trance waiting passively for other authorized people to show us what our lives should look like.  Then, grief comes into your life and cuts through that.  Grief is so powerful, it soaks through the pains that have carved us up and makes them soft again.  Grief leaves us as whole as we can maybe ever be, living nowhere but in this world as it carries us along.  You can’t make anything out of grief.  Grief makes something out of you.

“You have to have a certain detachment in order to see beauty for yourself rather than something that has been put in quotation marks to be understood as ‘beauty.’ ”  Marilynne Robinson

In theory, this is the dance – go in, stay in until, implausibly, you somehow find yourself larger than whatever you imagined was inside.  But, I find it very tricky, not to get lost in mid-air.  I am not always able to tell the difference between frozen and free.  At least, that is how I see it.