The closing of a chapter

Today, my youngest child will graduate from high school.  For some families, this is a monumental achievement.  For others, it is a matter of course.  If I am being honest, for me, it is both.

I can remember bits of my own graduation.  There are pictures to help, but I can recall the blue of our gowns, lining up, walking together, the folding chairs, the speeches, but not the words of those speeches, only that they gave them, the band playing endless repetitions of Pomp and Circumstance. The feeling of being at both an ending and a beginning still resonates.

As a parent, I am proud and relieved and again I have that feeling of an ending and a beginning. I am melancholy for the nagging to do homework, to practice the instrument, to do their chores.  I know that in a matter of months, my house will have a vacancy.  

It is hard to put into words what my kids mean to me.  I hear their laughter.  Even if they are not laughing with me.  I smell their bodies, both clean and filthy.  I know the curve of their cheek and what it will feel like to touch.  Though it has been many years since I covered them with kisses, I know that too.  

When I get angry with my kids, it is a fast burn.  Far more often it is an irritation that passes.  We can talk about it.  I trust them.  I believe in their value as humans.   I love them always, even when I may not like them fully (this happened more in the early years).  I learn from them and am thrilled when they share parts of themselves with me.  I strived to support their decisions, even when I did not agree with their choices.

One day, not all that long ago, my youngest was struggling with their confidence when it came to driving a car.  I climbed into the back seat so when they drove I could be there purely for support.  I silently chanted, "I believe in you.  I believe in you.  I believe in you." for the entire ride.  I did not teach.  I did not offer a second set of eyes.  My job in that moment was to just encourage.  It was a powerful moment for me.

I think that will be my job over the next few years as each one steps more fully into the sea of adulthood.  To be the one to cheer, to listen, to reflect as they weigh their decisions.  To remind them that I love them and am proud of them and that I believe in them.  I also have a job that will be less mom, a different kind of wife, and more me in my own right.  Of course, that has been shifting over the years, ever since I went to my first book club meeting and was not a wife nor a mother, but just a person who read a book.  Employment can do that for many, but my work has always been secondary to my family.

I admit, I am apprehensive, because it is a change.  But I am not afraid of it.  And I am excited about this new chapter too.  I am looking forward to spending time with my husband and discovering who we are as a couple rather than just as parents.  I am looking forward to seeing what I do with my life as I move toward friendship with my kids.

Happy graduation.  The world is my oyster.  It will be shaped by world events as well as personal events and will always be subject to my choices of love or fear.  Be brave.

Risking life for the sake of love

I caught this thought yesterday and wanted to sit with it to see if it still made sense to me in the morning.  Well, it is the morning and I still feel this idea merits an examination.

Covid 19 pandemic is affecting our personal and political landscapes.  It is bringing out all sorts of behaviors.  Some are generous, others are polarizing.  

But the thought that I had yesterday is that if we practice Social Distancing, we begin to segregate ourselves into a kind of safe zone.  Even if I intend to practice social distancing, I bend the rules for some.  I am sure I am not alone in this practice.  I know I am not.  So now I have my clan of accepted people.  Some of whom I touch, others I just stand near. I can touch the people with whom I live.  I am often closer than 6 feet to my friends and co-workers.  Sometimes I hug them.  Sometimes I touch them on the back. Small gestures of compassion is what I allow.  Not every day, not all of the time.  But I have and likely will continue to do so.

 Currently, neither my mother nor my father is part of this clan.  They live in a different towns and I have not seen either since before the pandemic.  They are both over 60, so by default they are at a higher risk.  Would I hug them?  Yes.  I may change my clothes and wash my hands first, but yes, I would.  Presuming they would allow me to. But these are people I already know and love.

Now, let's add a stranger to the equation.  Am I less inclined toward social interaction knowing there is a risk to me and my clan?  Yes, of course I am.  I will protect my people already in my circle.  Will I need to take people's temperature before I let them in?  Will I judge them by their health, age, economic status, skin color, religious beliefs, country of origin, gender, sexual orientation?  When I kept everyone at 6 feet, then I didn't judge.  I could be in personal isolation.  But as my boundaries begin to bend, I believe our inner judge of character gets to reign supreme.

Social isolation can lead to loneliness. It can lead to a desperate energy to find a community.  That desperation can cause people to keep one at arms length as the desperate transforms into an emotional vampire.  I have met those folks and I have been those folks.  I know how this story goes.

So, now I encounter an emotional vampire of questionable health.  Do I start to bend and let them into my clan, especially as restrictions begin to lift?  Not easily.  My instinct will be to keep my distance.  But what I think is the absolute right thing to do, is to allow everyone in.  EVERYONE.  Because I cannot be allowed to play judge.  How could I choose this person over that for no discernable reason other than my own bias and bigotry?

As a social introvert that willingly shares some parts of herself with everyone and other parts very few get to see, I find this idea daunting and maybe even a little horrifying.  If I open my emotional doors, I risk being taken advantage of or hurt.  That is the cost, isn't it?  I also risk the others in my clan.  Part of me wants to hunker down and say no, no one else is allowed.  Xenophobic I think the word is.  This is not a healthy option.  Though I am no longer of breeding stock, it limits the social gene pool rather than the physical one.

Instead, I must risk.  Risk myself, risk my clan to be inclusive.  To trust in the goodness of humanity or else be confident enough that I can give away all I have and know that I will not want.  A belief in a universal consciousness enough to trust it.  Believe that we are all in this together.  For some, this may not be such a huge leap of faith.  But for me, it surely is.  I do not trust easily.  It is a huge shortcoming of mine.  But I feel strongly that this is the right thing to do.

My employer asks me to wear a mask, gloves and practice social distancing.  I will do so as I can.  But I must try and forge connections through these barriers and continue to do so once the barriers come down.  Risk love.  Risk connection.  Risk life for the sake of love.

Sharing the darkness

I write a lot about the darker side of my mind.  And it freaks people out.  It makes them worry.  It makes them want to fix me.
Maybe I am broken.  But I don't think so.  Not really.  I am sharing my darkness because I want you to see it.  I want you to know that if you have darkness, you are not alone.  By sharing the darkness, it shines a little light into the corners and gives me perspective. 
I remember years ago, I read Conversations with God, which I found fascinating.  There is a concept that sticks with me, though I lose track of it too.  The concept is that we were created by God, from God, to give God perspective.  Like 7 billion points of view, none greater than any other, to illuminate the darkness, to show the details a single point of view would miss.
I think collectively we tend to think that some folks have the correct point of view or method of coping or have their shit together.  Maybe they do, maybe they are older and have lived through experiences that have honed them a bit more.  But I think that we are all in a constant state of evolution.  We change.  From each cell in our body to every thought that comes out of our mouths, we change.  As long as we breathe, we change.  A beautiful metaphor is that we don't step into the same river twice.
So if we find ourselves stuck, we aren't stuck at all.  We just haven't illuminated the darkness fully.  I get stuck thinking there is a path for me that I haven't found yet.  That I missed a turn somewhere that would show me my destiny.  I remember being on a hike what seems like a thousand years ago.  I was at Upper Lena Lake in the Olympics and met a forest ranger.  He told me it was important to look up, to enjoy the journey.  How fitting.  We get in the car and fall asleep, not bothering to look out the window.  We read the book, watch the television, play the video game, which while enjoyable, does nothing to help us to see.
Admittedly, seeing can be exhausting.  Paying attention, remaining alert and vigilant takes a fair amount of energy and as I was saying in my last blog post, living in this pandemic is exhausting.  When my kids were little, I spent so much time managing my household, just trying to keep up, that I had very little energy for personal growth.  I read novels.  I played video games.  I surrendered my brain because I was so empty.  I thought it made perfect sense that the spiritual leaders I knew of, namely Jesus and Buddha, were not mothers of small children.  And why the Catholic church makes those who choose to be nun or a monk, choose to not have a family.  It isn't that you aren't capable of having spiritual thinking when you have kids, it just takes a certain focus.
I have dropped down a rabbit hole.  Surprise! But I think what I wrote is worth stating, so I won't go back and delete it and start again.  It is all linked to the darkness I have and I would guess others have as well, so one degree or other.  My darkness does not consume me.  It is not a place I dwell all of the time, but it is a part of me.  I think it is a part of learning and fear.   It tells me when I am exhausted, empty, spent.  It triggers the fragile child in me who does not believe in herself or find herself worthy.  She is scared and alone.  And she cannot hear you.
She cannot hear you when you tell her you love her or that she should not feel the way she does.  She can, however, feel you when you let her know she is not alone.  Love is a verb.  It is a gentle touch, it is a helping hand.  It is the adage that we will get through this together. 
The darkness is an emotional vampire.  It can suck the life out of you if you are not careful and center yourself.  Being around a person in darkness can be too much.  I know that another person's darkness can call to my own and for a while I can be empathetic and supportive, but at some point I start to get angry.  Quit being a flipping victim!  Hopefully, that is when I say enough is enough for myself and I remember who I am.  I kiss the child on the head, give her hand a squeeze and say it is time to go.  The folks who remind me how to laugh are the ones I need then.  Show me the wonder you have found, remind me to see it with my own eyes.  To look up.  To enjoy the journey.
There will always be darkness.  But it will not always be dark.

The severing of ourselves

There is a wicked thing about self loathing, it severs us from ourselves and from others.  We don't talk about it like we would if we were angry with a spouse, a kid, or a co-worker.  We keep it to ourselves to fester like a wound. For it is a wound and like a puncture that goes untreated, even with clean water and air, it spreads, corrupting more and more tissue so much so that the original damage can hardly be seen.
The commercials on the television have the calming music as the auto company talks about "these challenging times". But these are challenging times and I have started to rot as I have started down a path of self loathing.  I don't want to write about it, except that I have a strong sense that others are struggling with this too.
I admit openly that I have a long history of depression.  My depression manifests as suicidal thoughts that usually come to a head when I am tired because getting good sleep helps me function again, as does a daily dose of anti-depressants.  Over the last couple of months, I have been experiencing a different kind of depression.  The kind where I don't care about things I love doing, like beekeeping, hiking, painting, reading, gardening, singing to name a few.  The soul renewal kinds of things that make me feel good about my self and my life hold little or no interest for me. If my husband asks me what is wrong, I honestly can not answer because there is nothing to say.
If I were a person who believed in Satan as a force that acts upon humankind, I would tend to think this is a big push to divide us from one another.  I think the reason I don't believe in Satan as a singular figure as the embodiment of evil is that it removes personal responsibility from the equation.  Instead, I am drawn to believe we have the capacity for both divine good and divine evil.  And it is our choices that we make moment to moment that are important ultimately.
This disease and our response to it is changing us.  We are divided from one another without knowing who is the enemy.  There is no face, no identifying characteristics.  There is no us, no them.  A virus is too small to see, we can have it (be it) and not know.  We didn't chose this side, this team and we cannot fight it, it cannot be destroyed.  It is in the air.  We have to adapt or die.  And we are being asked to look out for one another, lest they die first. We are tired of it.  We are tired of the masks, of the sanitizer, of counting to 20 when we wash our hands, of the paranoia that washes over us when someone coughs, even when we cough.
We are being confronted with our mortality and I know I am wondering if I am worth it.  What do I have that is of value, that I have to offer my community?  My dogs adore me, so I can see in their eyes that I have value.  But I don't see it in my own just now.  What if I didn't have a dog?
I think I am being challenged to find a new way of being.  To find my worth and value as a person of compassion and a willingness to look out for others.  But I am broken! We all are.  Being compassionate takes energy that I hardly have.  So I am in the process of transforming, and it is painful and sometimes ugly.  And there are moments that I am not sure I will make it.
There is no enemy only a limited capacity for compassion.  And hitting that limit feels wretched.  And provides the opening for self loathing.  So this is the light and air that I am using to heal.  To acknowledge the injury of my own limitations.
I feel like I am not saying this right, that I am missing a part.  Is this the great conflict of good and evil?  Or is this that recognition that we are capable of both and that every moment gives us the opportunity to choose, to force our way past the self loathing (evil) to the compassion for all, including ourselves (good).  The game is not over.  There is no victor at this moment.  There is a metamorphosis happening, the breaking open of the seed, the shell, the chrysalis, to something new, something better.  The life after death that happens before death, that we can work toward, strive for and maybe never achieve, but that does not make it not worth striving for.  Goodness, self care, compassion for others, lighting up of the moral center,  Evil cannot be vanquished.  It is in the air.  And we cannot see it.  We can only adapt to survive it.
My tried and true methods of living are no longer adequate.  Allowing self loathing to take root, to take hold, to strangle the life out of me is not the best choice for me.  I am embracing the light of mysticism because I am , we are, fighting an invisible war, so light, air, clean water, good vibrations (!), positive energy, Zen space, ethereal, woo woo, prayers, meditation, crystals, chakras, flower essences Sufi mysticism: it is all good and can change my world and help me thrive. 
My skepticism has not served me well.  There is healing to be done.

What separates us

I have been listening to an audiobook by Yuval Noah Harari called "21 Lessons for the 21st Century".  It quickly became clear that Mr. Harari is far smarter than me, or at least better educated, but I appreciate that he reigns in it to help me understand the future that I face as a redundant worker.  I had to stop listening actually as I felt overwhelming despair, especially in light of recent events, namely CoVid 19. But I had a fierce realization the other day, one of those that live deep in my belly or my brain that I only unearth when I get to the bottom of my darker emotions.  It was the knowledge that what makes me human is the choices I make.

The book is about the ever increasing presence of AI in our daily lives making decisions for us because we give over decision making.  We trust them to choose better than we choose. Perhaps they do because they can, as an algorithm, use far more data than you or I can, even if we bother to do the research, which I do, but minimally.  I google it, read a couple of pages tops, and make my choice.

It is comforting to let someone or something else make my choice for me.  It removes that sense of responsibility; it allows me to trust and to rest in that trust because the world is overwhelming.  There are so many choices to make every single day.  It is exhausting.
But it is making those choices that I exercise my free will and my humanity.  It is where I am not redundant nor am I a victim of circumstance or a victim of an algorithm.  I want to surrender the choice when it comes to things that I know my knowledge is limited, say in legal or medical matters or architecture, or building pretty much anything.  Seriously, I could go on and on about the things I do not know.  But if I surrender my gut instinct, than I truly am redundant.

My gut instinct is different than my impulse.  My impulse is a fickle thing that is shaped by pretty much anything, culture, advertising, the opinion of others.  It is easy to take that impulse for truth.  Take body image for example, something I struggle with.  Most of that struggle is due to outside influences.  Fear of rejection, in all of its forms, is at its base.  But I can move past the superfluous and take a look at my body and how it is functioning, I can get to my gut instinct.  That instinct tells me to drink more water, take a deep breath, go for a walk, choose a vegetable to eat.  It doesn't rattle on about pant sizes or how I look to myself or others.  It can see that cause and effect relationship outside of emotion.

The frustrations I wrote about the other day were mostly due to fear, both mine and that of others.  Collectively, we have been acting mostly from a place of impulse.  I do not wish to surrender my choices to any one or to any thing.  I wish to choose my skills as a human, my brain, my gut instinct, my thoughtful consideration.  There are certainly things outside of my control.  Lot of things, actually; there always are.  But I choose rational, considered contemplation which makes me who I am, to propel me through each day.

I think prayer and or meditation can help separate impulse from reason.  I have been told, in my former churchgoing years, to surrender to God.  To "let go and let God" was a phrase.  Let "God take the wheel".  What are those people talking about?  Seriously, I do not know.  Unless God is another name for that deep instinct I am talking about.  I could not surrender and have never understood how others could.

  I could not drift.  I remember trying to have and out of body experience when I was in my early 20s.  A gal was trying to get me to relax and surrender.  I can relax, but I cannot give over.  There is always a part of me observing the goings on, curious, but fully intact, not surrendering.  But to let all of that impulse talk itself out, so to speak, can help to get to the bottom of things, to what is real, to what is human and not a victim of advertising or political catch phrases.

At my core, I am neither good nor bad.  I simply am.  I am a heart beat and the movement of blood and other matter from place to place.  I have an energy that is not contained within my skin and makes up my personal space.  The form and function of the physical and energetic components of me can change all of the time, adapt and transform, react or ignore.  And I have an amount of say in the matter because of how I choose.  I will never be redundant in my own life.

A new normal

My husband has been working from home since March 3rd, so that gives me a general timeline when I start to lose track of time and days and years.  I suppose it started a bit before that, maybe a week before when people began panic shopping.  Seems like ages ago and only yesterday.
Our shelves were getting cleaned out of hand sanitizer and elderberry syrup then aloe vera gel and oil of oregano. Then zinc and vitamin C vanished. Finally, what should have been first, the hand soap started to sell out.  And this is just in my department.
People would look at me and ask why I haven't ordered more and when it was going to come in.  They would demand and demand and demand.  As things progressed, more people understood the scarcity, but still others would sigh dramatically and mutter, "I can't believe you don't have zinc."  I am their problem.  I am their inconvenience.  They lay this on me.  And I take it as best I can.  Sometimes my voice is a little harsh as I try to put a smile on my face or maybe it is just a grimace.
Over these last weeks, things have shifted to a surreal normalcy.  People still ask and now I often have what they are looking for.  Maybe not as many choices as before, but I can at least offer them something.  Yet I still get the annoyance from folks who say, "I got this shampoo from here before!" indignant that it is no longer available.  Sometimes it is a stock issue, but it is also a shift in product choices that comes from the corporate office, not from me or my co-workers in the shop.  People call and ask if I have a product and if I say I am out of it, they ask if another store would have it.  I am sorry, I do not have access to their inventory.  While in my head I am screaming at them for the fact they think I can know this thing.
I am not sick.  They are not sick.  But there is a malaise that rests over everything like a fine dust of toxic particles. Every day when I take a shower, I sit on the floor and let the water wash over me.  I used to do it as a teen to help wash away the mood that had come over me.  It used to help.  It doesn't now.  I drink a bit more than I once did, but again, that isn't helping.  I try and sleep and wake with vivid anxiety dreams.  I am walking most days now and that helps most of the time, but not always.  Some days, nothing helps.
I am desperate for something normal, something that makes sense.  My son turns 18 and will have dinner at home like every other day.  My daughter graduated from college to me humming Pomp and Circumstance as loudly as  I could.
I am not alone in my hope that this will change us to be better.  To be kinder.  But I don't think it will.  I grasp desperately at the home videos of people doing silly, every day things.  I play ridiculously boring video games and read shallow romances to distract me.  I eat with the same goal.  Distract me.  But I am bitter and intolerant, less kind, less compassionate than I used to be.  Screaming in my head.  I feel like I am a disappointment to everyone, my friends, my family, my community, my self, except to my dog.  To my dog, I am a great human.  I don't feel heroic for going to work.  I am glad to get out of the house.
I try and walk around my yard to pay attention to the signs of spring, of change.  Spring is the season of hope and transformation.  A celebration that you did not die during the winter.  Another chance to grow and to flourish.  It is the one thing that helps.  There is no emotion in it, simply tenacity and the ability to bend around obstacles.  My path has been altered, there will always be a scar marking this time in my life. I want to get back to cultivating kindness, but for now, I can only show up.