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Sunday, February 26, 2012

some things change you forever

That was my reply to a comment on one of my last posts. Which?

It's been a while. You probably thought I was gone from this blog forever.

No. Just positively overwhelmed by life in these last few months. I've been trying to swim in the great tidal wave of life folks. Probably just like you but, funny, I manage to always convince myself that my problems are more complex, my feelings wider and deeper and more fragile, and this my friends is exactly how we get into too deep waters alone without a lifeline.

The sixish month old kitten I adopted is sitting quietly blinking at me with her night-time black eyes by the firelight. I can't tell if she's grieving over her lost sister who we buried just yesterday. I am. Grieving particularly hard that I couldn't stop her illness, couldn't find the right alchemy of love and medicine and herbs and such, had to watch her die rapidly, helplessly and hopelessly holding her tiny head to feed her useless concoctions written by our last-hope-vet. Grieving (absurdly, I know, I get this) that I failed her.

And perhaps my mind uses this grief a little too much because at least it's grief I can handle, instead of letting sink in all the way to my marrow just how messy Kyd's life is, how I have so little control over that, how I failed him too (yes, again, absurdly brow-beating myself -- it's what we mothers do). Though it is in my marrow. I never escape that swirl of guilt, sadness, hope, frustration, anger, and love. I am driven to an awful distraction.

The fire is waning and I'm mostly here to purge. I have work left undone that must be done by morning and instead of doing it I have slipped into that familiar paralysis that accompanies self-pity. This is a predictable formula. Self-pity = paralysis + procrastination = more self-pity. I don't need to check the math on this one. 

I got an email a couple days ago from a Buddhist list-serv asking for tonglen practice for this woman's sister-in-law who in the last year was foreclosed on, ended her 15 year marriage, witnessed a drug/alcohol induced suicide off her own balcony, and then just recently was beaten to within inches of her life by two robbers who stole away with a measly $150. She will need facial reconstruction surgery and may lose her sight, at least in one eye.

And it knocked me into perspective for a moment. My god the suffering life can heave upon one person's shoulders in such a short amount of time. It hardly seems accidental, does it? 

My own life rushed back in, as our lives are wont to do, in short order. The sick kitten who needed tending, the grief and rage over her life being stolen no matter how fiercely we wanted her to live. Kyd shifting from helpful and pleasant to raging and toxic without warning, without clues. And the packing up house to move, something that is supposed to be joyful. We, or rather Roi, bought a new house and it's beautiful.

I have so many feelings about this house, about moving, that I can hardly keep up with them. Instead, I become mute, fold in on myself, find comfort in the physical activity of packing boxes, and then lay sleepless on my bed wondering if I will ever feel ok again, or if indeed as my comment suggested I have been changed forever.