Saturday, July 24, 2010

Holding On

I seem to find the wrong ones.
I seem love the wrong ones too.
But really--what does wrong mean?
Wrong can mean unreliable.
Wrong can mean untrustworthy.
but Wrong can also mean Different
or Odd
or Unique
or Complex

I am all these things too.

I love the flaws, the dark, my own and other peoples'.
Sometimes the darkness hides incredible light.
Sometimes it's just dark.

My sister calls them my projects.
What or who am I trying to fix?
Myself or them?

I want to hate men right now.
I can't. I love them too much.
An ex once told me I would never get married--
You can't, Carolyn. You just love men, men in general.
I love this prediction.

Men as men think differently.
My aunt is reading the book Committed.
I can't, because this book makes me cry.
But then, everything right now makes me cry.
It makes me lose (more) hope, if that is even possible.
My dad hates the book.
"Put the book away Kath." He knows it's upsetting me.

He's pragmatic about relationships, to the point of simplification.
Men as men think differently.
Women as women think differently from men.
Men, he says, are all the same way, hardwired to cheat.
It's something they have to
learn to control, that's all, he says.
It's just that some don't learn. Couldn't. Or hadn't been given the example not to.
This all makes sense.

Men as friends care deeply
They don't worry about the number of calls
Who called who
Who wants who more
What is needed, what is expected.
They just arrive, in the message box, on the phone
Checking in.

I want to hate men but I can't.
I'm still curious.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Parallels

Is there some place, out in the universe, where we live out a parallel existence? The one we get when we take a different side-street as we make our way through life?
A close friend of mine is dedicated to the theory, the 'where-we're-supposed-to-be-of-it-all.'
I have to agree with her. Those side-streets where you veer off, lost perhaps, but finding something all the same, are part of what makes life interesting, what makes life 'happen'.
In the best of times, when you can describe your state of mind as 'optimum' and your being is humming with the alive-ness of it all, the where-you-are is present, stable, and confident.
It's the dark times when you start to question things. The 'fear of life' as I once heard it so eloquently described by an admired writer.
Well, I do, anyway.

Recent events leave me wondering--am I experiencing a karmic backlash of some sort? Or is this simply a random, benevolent turn of events, put into motion to save me from something much worse? I try to believe it's the latter.

No amount of running, starving, drinking, or lying-in-bedding will make the bad feelings go away right now. They are here, they are part of my mind (really "the mind" if it were in any way 'mine' at all, it wouldn't entertain things the way it has of late). The feelings seem like part of my being right now.
I'm not in control of my thoughts, and it's kind of making me crazy.

I don't have a parallel life, or if I do, somewhere out there on an identical planet, I don't know about it. The one I have here is flawed and bit dark at the moment.
For all those I've snapped at, I apologize.
For the phone calls I've been unable to return, so sorry.
But it's for my thoughts, and the wandering tendencies they have that are what rip at me most right now.
I want peace. I want peace of mind, peace of soul. I want to forget it all happened. Give up the last five years of relationship-ness, built on lies and deceit, and bury it in a pit somewhere.
I don't want to think of the 'duality' of him, or 'it' as I have re-christened that being. Doing something like this makes it hard for me to properly label it as 'human'.
My role? Sure, it's there. My explosions of temper when he rolled in at 7am, nary a call or a warning. My frustrations at his frustrations when something didn't go right for him and he simply could not cope--hey, welcome to life. IT DOESN'T ALWAYS GO RIGHT.

Today I'm not peaceful, I'm not mindful.
But; parallel to this--I'm coming back to myself. It's not about IT. It's not about THAT.
It's about me, in my life, overcoming this obstacle that has been sent for some divine reason, I'm certain, and in neatly moving it out of the way, not kicking it wide open, the way I would have a couple of years ago. As one friend said, sagely, "There's something to be said about maturity".
Too true.
Today, I look for the parallel in this disaster. The silver lining, if you will. The bloom of the next flower. My parallel life is just around the corner. It's not on a far-off planet, out of reach of my existence. And I am responsible for taking the parallel and its 'where-I-want-to-be-ness' and inserting back where it belongs--in me, my being, my soul.
Every day, every marked-up X on the calendar date takes me away from the shock of it all and brings me back to where-I'm-supposed-to-be.

Please.

Let me make if happen.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

You Know Who You Are

I'm getting food down without it coming back up.
I'm down to one pill a day, not two (most days).
I'm no longer having coffee for lunch, nerves jangling in time
to the keystrokes of my computer keyboard.
I am still running 10 km on Saturday mornings, splitting
up the rest of the remaining 10 km on various days of the
week.

I am holding my head a bit higher, but watching where I step.
I'm holding onto my heart a bit tighter.
I'm not wallowing in thoughts that make the hurt worse.
I'm calling friends again, but
No one's had to come over to my loft and pull me out of bed.
I am creative and functioning at work.
I have taken some time off from commitments I can no longer fulfil right now.

I have experienced extremely cruel behaviour at the hands of someone I loved,
who supposedly loved me.
But, tenfold, thousandth-fold-- I have seen goodness and kindness from others
Towards me.
I have had friends cry along with me.
I've accepted hugs, and offers to talk about it, and I've peeled away some layers.
And taken a good long hard look at how damn lucky I truly am.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Thank You Dylan

It hasn't been an easy week or two with what I've dealt with but the universe continues to give gifts, even when you're in the depths.
I have had trouble coping in recent days, and I needed some help in dealing with my overwrought emotions so I booked an appointment with a cherished therapist to give me some much-needed guidance, a little solace, and some coping strategies.

I got to the appointment early, despite the infamous Toronto traffic. I parked my car, and decided to take a brief walk in the very humid weather, to get a coffee, and kill the twenty minutes time I had on my hands. Heart heavy with my thoughts, I started toward the coffee shop, just a few minutes down the road on the Danforth.
I waited in line, my change purse out to order and pay for my coffee.
Out of nowhere, a guy, probably about thirty, waiting in line behind me, with a five-dollar-bill in his hand said to me, "Oh, I will buy your coffee." I stared at him, uncomprehendingly, my sunglassses on against the Toronto afternoon sun; my female armour on, after my recent betrayal.
"Why are you going to buy my coffee?", I said to him, kind of incredulous.
"Oh, I try and buy a coffee for someone every day, and I haven't done that yet today".
I will admit, here, on my blog, my source of such comfort: I dissolved into a web of tears.
I couldn't even speak. He didn't seem perturbed by this. He just let me cry. I found my voice.
"I just...I've had a difficult few days. I found out that my boyfriend, I mean, my ex-boyfriend, had an affair, and we were living together, and he moved in with her, and my dad has cancer, and I can't believe...you would offer...to buy...me a... coffee." I was in floods. I let him in on my world, my pain, the way sometimes you can only let in a stranger. We got to the order taker--he gestured to me to order my coffee, then he ordered his. He spoke.
"Well, listen--you have to think about things that you have to be grateful for, that's all you can do." I was struck by this. I've had a hard time feeling gratitude lately, I will admit.
I nodded. "It's true," I said, "I look around this city and see people on their bicycles, their entire lives fitting in a bicycle basket." I stuck my hand out; "I'm Carolyn". He shook my hand. "Dylan. Do you want to go somewhere and talk?" I deferred, "I'm on my way to a therapy appointment". We were handed our coffees, which he so gallantly, so gracefully, took care of.
We said good bye and wished each other well.

Angels on Earth.
Angels.
On Earth.