I have missed you.
Life has swallowed me up, and I've been unable to spend any time here for a long while. I find myself this morning with a lovely little stretch of time while I wait for my mother to have a bronchoscopy at Mass General Hospital in Boston, and well, without the usual distractions, I am tempted to do a little writing. I'm not sure if just being here in this gargantuan bee hive of workers and drones and Queen bees at MGH has reminded me of the times when I myself have been the patient and needed to process, dismantle, defuse the building, encroaching shadows, or if just simply watching my mother navigate the increasing menacing terrain of aging has triggered this sudden need to examine where I am with it all, but whatever the reason, here I am, eager to fill the blank space with a few words. Not for work--where I write the same kind of email, have the same kind of conversations on the phone, over and over again, the repetition bordering on the inane dripping from fingers, paralyzing tongue. Not on Facebook--where I slice and dice snippets of my overlapping worlds and force them into tiny little boxes of intrigue and wit--the status update. Sigh. No, this kind of writing is just for me, perhaps, and for you. A bit of sublime, self-directed, creative play with words. An expression of this moment. A look back, a new perspective. A romp through my sleep-deprived brain. Do bare with me. (yes, pun intended)
I was up early, after all. 5 am. Thanks to a wake-up call full of sweetness and unexpected humor from a friend and neighbor (a farmer who is up even earlier than that most mornings), I was able to ease into the dark morning with a smile ("Front desk," he deadpanned on the other end), offer my mother some reassurance with my own wakefulness, and look forward to the day.
Long drive into Boston aside, I often think that early morning time is the best part of the day, if you can get it. The kids are still asleep, the dog and cat are full of sweet, sleepy love, and the world is quiet, save for the morning doves cooing in the thick fog. Of course, I can't get it all that often, given how late my teenagers keep me up (and recently, all those fiery, get-up-and-do-something speeches from the DNC), how sleep has become such a necessity, how exhausted I usually am at the end of a full day. But wouldn't it be nice, to wake up long before the fog starts to climb the distant mountains, catch the ripeness of the moon setting every now and then, sit with a cup of tea and write those morning pages.
Strange to think that nearly every day for many, many months I shared, here, so much of what was going on with me, my internal landscape laid bare and brazen for the picking. At the time, it was all I could do: share my story, process all the muck before it destroyed me, and let it go. Faced with an unexpected breast cancer diagnosis, blogging became a matter of survival. Without it, the sheer weight of the uncertainty and ludicrousness of the initial diagnosis--that blasted, spitfire bitch--would have toppled me. Without it, the insidiousness of the fear and dread would have hooked its barbed teeth into me, eaten me alive, spit out my bones. Without it, I never would have realized that the 'bitch, as with most difficult, life-altering experiences, offered unexpected opportunities and lessons in wisdom, clarity, gratitude. Without it, I never would have experienced my own sense of rebirth--back into a light and love through reaching out and connecting with all the shimmering juju that is ours for the taking, if only we ask. The best thing that came out of all my earlier blogging was hearing from so many women who were going through similar struggles with breast cancer, who were re-experiencing the world with fresh eyes, and rediscovering what really mattered to them.
(as an aside, I just went to the bathroom down the hall; it seems my 5 am wake up time has left me with dark circles reminiscent earlier days of nursing my babies through the night, and still earlier, staying up several days in a row, for marathon study sessions, or, more likely, rugby-banquet-inspired 3-day drinking-round-the-bonfire binges)
We make our choices: we can swim in the dark, brave our murkiest depths to shine the light on our two-headed, cross-eyed monsters, and bring them to the surface for refashioning; we can stay in the light, and never venture below, staying close to the surface and denying ourselves rich opportunities for getting to know our truest selves, the unplumbed dreams, hopes and fears that make us who we are. The sun rises for us each and every day; cancer taught me that we must never lose sight of that chance for renewal, growth, change, even when, especially when the darkness threatens to overwhelm.
There's a great Aimee Mann song (there are many), Humpty Dumpty, about the push and pull of depression, and particularly, being in that stasis state when nothing, it seems, is working to "bring you back to zero":
"Say you were split, you were split in fragments
and none of the pieces would talk to you
wouldn't you want to be who you had been
well, baby I want that, too..."
Life does that--over and over again, shattering your world into bits and pieces that suddenly make no sense to you, or to one another. Parents suddenly announce their impending divorce. A cancer diagnosis comes out of nowhere, and four years later, an over-sized pick-up truck does the same, slamming into you with the same kind of force that leaves you grappling for meaning and purpose amid the wreckage and gasping for the breathy lightness of gratitude. Another blip, another reminder: it is good to be alive, after all.
And there are times when we are the masters of our own destruction, for good and for bad. We end a long time relationship with someone who used to mean everything to us. We switch jobs. We take a hiatus from the rush 'n go and hibernate, a forced sabbatical to deliberately re-set our balance, reclaim what matters most.
Our task, after all, is to constantly engage in that ongoing rich, creative process of dismantling and re-assembling the pieces that make up our lives, to intentionally deconstruct, take apart, surrender to the natural falling away; accept the sudden, unexpected decimations; consider the pieces, through close, careful examination, and decide which are worth saving, and which must go. Our task is to listen. It all comes back to the central question:
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Starting at a young age, we develop tools that provide critical support for getting us through. I started writing at an early, early age, and there was great power in that: to recast something unsettling in a more manageable light, to edit and revise my life in a way that allowed me to listen, reflect, let go, move forward, forgive. It was a way to stake my claim in a life that sometimes seemed beyond my control, to reassert my own presence in directing its course, to make sense of it all. And when everything was blasted to bits, and I had to gather up the pieces and get on with it, writing often proved to be the best way to get those wayward bits and shards and pieces to talk to me, to make peace with their dark beginnings, put myself back together.
If you've read any of my other Flip Side of Forty posts, you know that Walking, and all its wonderful charms, has always proven to be just as therapeutic, and healing for me as Writing. I walk so I can stay grounded; I am instantly transported back to what gave me strength, heart and hope as a child: our undeniable inter-connectivity to nature, and to each other. Walking fine tunes my sense of all that I love about the world, hooks me into the rhythms of the natural world, and forces me to be here now, take notice, listen and learn. And the combination of Writing and Walking has been especially powerful: a delicious, cathartic tonic to whatever ails me.
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So, I encourage you: Go find what it is that works for you, and whatever it is--that allows you to connect to your best self, discover and get to know all the fragments that make up your mosaic self, change your course, decide your next step, and inhabit your "one wild and precious life"-- that's where your time and energy has to go. Be disciplined, be dedicated, be relentless in your pursuit of what keeps you well. Set those boundaries and prepare to fight for what you need. It's your right--don't let anyone ever tell you differently.
I'm trying desperately to do the same, to get back to my Writing, make more time for my Walking, count on more quiet and stillness in my day, surround myself with the good vibrations of intentional practice and let myself, my life, breathe.
(funny, all this talk about breathing while Mom comes out of her bronchoscopy)
I don't want Life to swallow me up. I'd rather air out legs, head, and heart on the lovely back-country roads that surround me, spread my wings on the pages of my writing, and fly...
I wish you well.
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