Optimism Has Left Me Without Hope

For all the optimism that is usually pouring out of me, I've lately had the feeling that I've been abandoned by optimism herself. Perhaps she saw me as a stalker; I am hyper-groovy about peace and love and always believe in happy outcomes when none seem possible. She must be overworked and tired from the constant demands on her time and energy that my frequent overuse of her sentiment incurred. It certainly seems I've fallen on optimism's pessimistic side; she apparently believes I have no redeeming qualities and has tiptoed out of town without leaving a forwarding address. She never returns my calls, either.

It's clear that optimism and I are on the rocks, relationship-wise. But like a crippled co-dependent, I wait optimistically for her return knowing she can't stay away for long. We've been through too much together.
Through deaths and divorces and sickness, she and I have bonded tightly, clinging to a hopeful future and seeking solace in the possibility of a brighter tomorrow. She has clung to my side as I traipsed across Europe with one baby, then two; she stuck by me when loved ones went off to war. She heard my plaintive cries for help through my master's degree, especially Statistics which would have made a pessimist out of anyone. But not me, because optimism was on my side.

Perhaps it was the flush of victory and the thrill of coming through so many moments of horror, not unscathed, but certainly blooming with hope, but I think optimism herself began to feel a little slighted. It was as if I believed I'd done it all myself without her help. I believe the final blow came when I referred to her as "my bitch."

As I finally began to bask in optimism's glory, she left me, felled to the ground and leaving me with no way to stand on my own. What I'm left with now is nothing less than pessimism, her ugly cousin. Pessimism doesn't allow me to stand unaided; instead it keeps me groveling where optimism left me, on the ground and flailing. Pessimism kicks a little dirt in my face for good measure.
I must find a way to appease optimism and lure her back to my side. But it is hard for her to find me when I'm trapped behind pessimism's translucent veil.

Search as I might, I can't seem to find the magical key to unlock her fickle heart and bring her near again. Pessimism is severely complicating the issue. So I will wait. I will silence the din of pessimism's howl and pierce the veil of my holding. I will wait for the return of the open mind and open heart. I will wait for the arrival of her joyous promises of a brighter future, knowing she will hear this song of mine, a song I have loaded with hope; for HOPE is the magic melody that only she can hear.

Ordinary World?

I'm laying quietly and simply among the covers on this random January day. It's warm and a breeze is blowing through the open window. I've barely been out of bed today; the incentive isn't there. The pain from my recent hip surgery still plagues me and my recent bout of pneumonia has done nothing to encourage my movement. So I simply lay among the covers and consider my life over these last months and attempt to place a template of perspective on it. My body needs reminding that my life is not over and that healing is actually coming. But in the darkness of winter it is difficult to tell yourself such things and actually believe them. The heart has taken hold of a much sorrier story, that of my own slow and painful demise. It's a beautiful story but it is not mine. I need to stand up and use the leg that has become so troublesome. The time of my convalescence is nearing the end and while I am relieved at the thought of returning to life as I know it, I will be sad to leave this womb-like state for all the comfort it has offered; my fuzzy, wuzzy mother-bed.
My body knows no balance; I will have to teach it discipline again. It can't be either all work or all rest. It has to be a gradual balance of both, but I don't yet know my limits and being too much of either extreme frightens me. It's amazing how the body can heal so much more quickly from disease than the mind. If my mind was willing, I'm sure I could push this hip forward today to accomplish something, if not great, at least useful. But the mind has yet to agree to such a bargain and I'm afraid that until the two strike a deal, this is where I shall lay.

A Child's Mess with Words...or Poems...Something

"Words...
Spinning round my head
Other thoughts have fled
Twirling round with ease
Like a light spring breeze
Words....
Shiny like brass
Coming out my ass..."

"This is supposed to be a children's poem," she rudely interrupts.

"I know."

Blank stare.

"I mean. No. I know. Yes it was just a test."

She isn't amused.

A heavy sigh, she signals again:

"Please, please try to focus..."

"This is not a very good children's poem,"  I smile.

"You're not funny."

Ouch.

Letting Go

I've worked hard to dig out the root of the fear in my life and to let it go. I've identified some key moments in my life that I think are the cause of much of it ; just recognizing that is a breakthrough. But I took it a step further and did my best to forgive myself, forgive those who have hurt me and to take a deep breath and let GO of the things that have hurt me in the past.

You see, the thing is, I can't afford to live there anymore and I can't afford to have all of it coming forward blanketing me in negativity. Suppressing it is not the answer; bringing it out into the light, staring at it, letting it hurt and then saying, "It's okay, it's over now." -- THAT goes a long way towards healing.

I refuse to stay stuck in old patterns. Instead, I stand ready to remain open to all the love in my life, which is present in so many forms. I am creating the reality around me that will bring me that which I seek...and in fact, in many ways I've already done that. I've discovered that I am the soul I've been seeking, I am the soul I've been longing to connect with. Everything I need and everything I could want is already inside me. It’s that way for all of us, we’re all self-contained, perfectly proportioned units of everything we could ever want and need out of life. All we need do is look INSIDE rather than outside for our own answers.

Releasing an attachment to outcomes is extremely difficult, but if I'm to stay emotionally honest with myself then it's time I exercised this power; or rather, that I relinquished such tight control over how things turn out. I don't have the power to determine how anyone else feels about me or about the circumstances of anyone’s life. What I do have the power to do is to open my life to possibilities, to stand ready to embrace whatever comes, to remain unattached to the outcome by trusting that God or the universe actually does know better than I.

My conviction is thus: I will surrender to the flow as life begins to unfold before me. I am at peace. I am complete with who I am and where I am in my life even if I am sad or suffering,. This kind of inner contentment has been a long time coming. I am grateful, ever so grateful, for all that I've been given. No matter what happens, I refuse to fear and I refuse to place my fears (in the guise of expectation and disappointment) on anyone else. This life, when all is said and done, is all about love. Love is meant to be unconditional, unobstructed and unending. It is not based on any pretext or subversive desire; it is founded only in the power of what is good...because where there is love, there can no longer be fear. So today I am letting go. No more fear. Only love.

Joey

In the scheme of things, this is not my loss to grieve. There is a family. There are children. And a wife. There are brothers and parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews and friends and all the usual acquaintances. This is THEIR loss to grieve, not mine. Yet there is something unique and grievous that I feel, something quiet and simmering that doesn’t deserve a card or sympathy of any kind. Rather, it is the kind of loss that tugs a little stronger at the heart than the usual evening news and leaves behind a little hole of silence where once there was a small flutter.

Joey was my first love. We all have one. Joey was mine.

Joey was killed in a car accident yesterday. He was horribly and violently ripped from life and thrust into whatever comes next, probably before he even realized what was happening. In doing so, he leaves behind an entire life of people who will need to grieve deeply and learn to function without him. I have no such pretense. It’s been 20 years or more since I’ve even seen him. But his memory occupies a space in me that died just a little with him and it’s not something I can easily ignore.

There was a group of us, all friends in some way and we watched each other grow from children into young adults. Joey was part of that group. To me, he always stood a little taller than the other boys, always looked a little different, always gave me a different feeling. Only when I became a teenager did I realize it was because I had a raging crush on Joey. Everything about him made me swoon. He was a little bigger than the other boys, broad shouldered and tall and muscular. He had blonde curls and a wicked smile. He was a little devious, intense and secretive, but when he let you into his world, it felt like you had won the golden ticket.

I remember the way he made me feel more than I really remember HIM. It’s been so many years that many of the details of him have faded. The man he had become is vastly unknown to me. There were some vague reconnections across social media and through mutual friends over the years, but nothing broad or deep or even that direct and, to be honest, I had no expectations otherwise. But deep inside me, there still lives the boy who made me swim in lust and admiration and excitement and fear. There still lives in me the young girl who leapt at him and drank in whatever he was willing to share. He was the one who made me feel things that I didn’t know I was capable of. He was the one who introduced me to what it felt like to be a woman. He scared me and made me a little crazy and he left something of himself in me that transcends time and distance.

Through time and in this real life, I never expected to see him again. But somewhere in me is still that girl that longed, just for a moment, to feel again the way I once did in his presence. First love is personal and universal all at once. It’s beautiful and fragile and it lingers on inside of us long after the feelings have subsided. It leaves an opening to that moment when we discover that love is so much more than we ever imagined; it leaves behind tiny footprints of who we were that show us the path to how we 've become who we ARE. First love is tragic in its essence because it almost NEVER lasts, but it does live forever inside of us. It breathes the innocence of youth.

The finality of Joey’s death takes something away from that. It locks a door that has always been left slightly ajar.

With Joey goes a little more of my youth, a little bit of optimism, a little bit of the expansiveness that first love brings. Joey’s death brings a familiar but sad reminder that all of life is fleeting and that the moments we cherish never actually do come around again. It reminds me that it’s important to tell people how they make us feel, especially when those feelings are loving, rather than waiting until they’re gone. It reminds me that, if I’m being honest with myself, none of us actually really understands why we’re living this life in the first place. It forces me to stare down the black hole of uncertainty that surrounds life and death and ponder the nature of why we’re here, why do we feel such joy only to lose it just as quickly? Why do we live moments that we never get back again? Why do we long for a past that we can embrace no more than a thin fog? This is the luxury of thought that comes with the type of grief that doesn’t rock your entire world, but rather refocuses life through different lenses.

My heart aches for Joey’s family. I’ve been through my share of sorrows in this life to know well how loss tears the fabric of your life into shards. The simple act of restitching your life back together takes the effort of Sisyphus, constantly pushing the boulder up the mountain only to have it roll back down again. And when you finally reconstruct the pieces of you into something resembling a life again, you discover it doesn’t resemble anything you’ve ever known before. It can be good. It can be bad. It can be emotionally eviscerating. For Joey's family, it will hurt forever. Over time, my sadness over Joey’s death will level out and I will stop coming back to it 100 times a day. Maybe next week, I’ll only think of it 50 times a day, and the week after only 20 times. But when I come back to visit that place inside me where Joey and my first love reside, something will always be missing.

Rest in peace, Joey, and know you were loved.

my divine

There is nothing that compares

To when we touch

No precedent

For the feeling of your soul

As it rises up to meet me

Every time our lips part

To kiss.

For when your lips touch me

We’re joined

Because we are connected.

The blood of the earth

Flows through us.

I can feel a thousand stars explode

And touch the face of god

Through you.

Through you I can know

I can finally feel

What it’s like to love and be loved.

What we’ve made here is something more than ourselves

We’ve connected to heaven through earth

We’ve been kissed by creation

By stardust, by time

As we partake in this ritual our ancestors know well.

The orgasmic shattering of that mystical door,

The partition between ourselves

And the divine

Joins us together

And unites us with what makes us all one.

It is so much more beautiful than I ever imagined...

The Shape of Me

 It's like a quiet disappointment. A frozen strand of hope. The silent crashing of one crystal vessel...shattered to a million pieces without making a sound. So my heart stands broken, frozen in time and space, still and quiet with no plans to move or grow or breathe. My heart wants nothing, it yearns no longer, it feels no pain, no sorrow, no grief, no agony; nor does it feel any joy, any awakening, any love, any adoration or any hope whatsoever. I am but a plastic life form set in motion by a loveless universe, here to complete my earthly tasks like some robot programmed by a maniacal creator. I will go about my days and nights and seek nothing, feel nothing, be nothing and hope for nothing. All I have is what IS. Nothing more is coming, nothing more is possible.

For all that I hoped for, all that I longed for, all that I believed was true is no longer. No amount of faith can make true what doesn't exist. I cannot wish into existence a love that isn't real, nor can I change him or his life or his decisions. I cannot look to this god for comfort for it is this god who has slapped me so hard, awakening me from the dream that I perpetuated in my blindness. It was not god that I saw, not god who guided me. For god is only some unfeeling, uncaring, distant prime mover who cares not for our trivial lives or desires nor for the stories we tell ourselves. All that I believed in, everything that gave me joy, it was all nothing more than my own thoughts and dreams.

I believe in nothing anymore. No god. No dream. No love. No hope. No joy. No pain. Belief is immaterial to my programming. The joy I felt with you was nothing more than a glitch in my brain mass. It wasn't any of the things I believed it to be, wasn't the universe telling us something nor was it god speaking through you to me; the earth wasn't really moving beneath me when you touched me. You and I didn't actually become one when we made love. My heart didn't actually overflow with love when I thought of you. My soul never cried out for you nor did it really recognize you at first glance; it was nothing more than my misguided misinterpretation of neuronal interaction.

These glitches in my mind have done nothing to help me, done nothing to make me happier. Perhaps they provided a period of time, the time I spent with you, that I thought or believed that I was happy. I believed I was joyful and that God was smiling on me.
I was wrong.

It's better I recognize the reality of actual living, that we don't get to create our own happiness nor do we have choices about our own lives. We think we do, but in the end we really don't; we're trapped adhering to our pre-written protocol. Those moments of sheer joy and utter bliss that I spent in your arms are not real life; real life does not ever feel so good. Real life is THIS, is what I am now, is life minus the feeling, minus the ups and downs and the trap of belief and the lies of faith. Love is an obligation not a feeling; feeling is extraneous, is useless, is overrated, is a waste of time. The love I have felt for you must have been an illusion, part of the neuronal overload, a sad glitch in an overworked system. Any lingering love, those moments of intense feeling that grip my heart and produce a physical feeling of suffocation in my chest -- those feelings are the remnants of my recovering mind and heart as they bounce back from the depths to which they sunk during that time that I was so filled with feelings. Too much feeling will ruin my life.

In order to protect myself from this danger in the future, I will stand guard against feelings whenever they threaten to creep into my life again. In fact, it is better that I remain stolid, unfeeling and cold. I will accomplish more, I will feel less and will generally be more productive. I seek nothing and no one to warm me, nothing to move me to feel. Much better that I should march forward and never, ever feel that way again lest I lose my mind for good. My heart is not needed; it can exist locked away. My mind is something I need but when engaged with my heart, it becomes useless therefore it is much better that the heart will no longer entice, no longer tempt, no longer whisper dangerous words of longing and desire to my mind. I've broken, frozen and packed away the shards of my heart he left behind, no longer to be brought back out. Only now is my mind safe to proceed without the temptation of the heart. With it, my heart takes all its feelings, all the love, all the pain, all the hope and faith....and good riddance. Without it, my mind can function, can focus, can move on without you.

But woe to the accident of fate that might awaken my sleeping heart....for only YOU exist inside. If my heart is ever to feel you again, that awakening will pour forth such passion the likes of which will overwhelm my senses and destroy my equilibrium. To liberate my love for you from its dark sleep would take a miracle; it could only be done by you and for you.
Without you to share it, it would become nothing more than the instrument of my own death.

Hope Is a Gaping Hole

There is a gaping hole, still; a void that was never here before. In this fully wonderful life that I lead, I opened up and made room for you because I wanted to, because love always has more room to share. But the withdrawal was so intense and so devastating, torn away from me so harshly, that love flaps like a deflated balloon. That space created just for you still there, and will probably always be there for you in some way, but it feels like an empty home that's been vandalized.

Rather than trying to scoop meaningless flotsam into the void, I'm just sitting here holding this "thing" - this empty sphere, just sitting with it and feeling its emptiness. What other choice do I have?

I'm getting on with life because I have to, because I have other things, other people that I love, who love me, who depend on me and ignoring all of it isn't a choice. Or at least isn't a choice I would make. But I wonder about you every single day. I think of you. I dream of you. And I know I'll never see you again. Never hold you. Never feel you breathing against me. Never feel your hands or hear you whisper to me. Never see your smile. Never hear your thoughts. But I still hold your soul. Pieces of you stay with me, will be with me forever. Nothing can change that.

frozen

frozen in time
a place i never want to leave
but know i must

wondering of the cruelest
actions of man
the choices of god
lead us where we've been

when each step
seems to take us farther
from where we want to go

what is the plan?
what is the point?
where is the reason?

you ask me to trust
you ask me to let go
how can god have a plan?
what happens to our will?

i can't believe
a loving god
plans for so much pain
that is not the god i believe in

i can only surrender so much to you
before i give up
when you leave me so little to believe in
o great and mighty god

i have emptied my heart and soul for you
and come up empty handed
sorrowful
what then do you want from me?
what more can i give?

everything in me is frozen

empty
barren
don't ask for anything
i have nothing to give
not now

i wait for the thaw
view the destruction
and at last see the smallest buds
of new life...
maybe then, god
maybe then i will understand

Companion to Our Demons

And I fear

I have nothing to give

I have so much to lose

Here in this lonely place

Tangled up in our embrace

There's nothing I'd like better

Than to fall....

I've felt for so long that I have nothing at all to give. For so long I've been an empty shell, a shadow of the me I used to be. Now I have grown into the fullness of the woman that I've always been inside. It's taken time. It's been slow. 

But now that I have so much to give, you quiver at my touch. The sound of love falls like clashing cymbals down a set of metal steps, blood-curdling and inducing a fight or flight reaction. These are the demons you live with, the demons I share. We all walk hand in hand with the deepest beast inside of us, though at times we choose to bury it. Bringing it to the surface to coexist with everything that we are is the only way to take the sting out of its bite. Exposing it to the light of our lives and our love boils it down to nothing more than a sticky sap, something inconvenient but bearable. 

I've cried like you, I've died a thousand deaths like you, though our demons may be different. I've hidden myself away, unnoticed by time, unnoticed by love. Too afraid to feel the pain, even the most wonderful feelings get buried in the rush to avoid what is so unpleasant. The larger part of you is trembling at the touch of love, terrified by the pinprick of its searing heat. Even the smallest show of love throws up your walls, the pain too much to bear, even to endure the beauty of love. When you've lost too much, this is the response. It becomes a twisted knot to untangle the pleasure from the pain, so the pleasure dies with it. But deep inside the soul there still lurks an innocent; pure and beautiful and bright, it is your essence waiting to be rediscovered, uncovered, brought to the surface, no matter the consequence.

Wind and time

Rapes the flower

Trembling on the vine

Nothing yields to shelter it

Without taking a leap of faith, without the risk of losing, there is no life. Trees don't cease to grow because they fear losing their leaves; crocuses don't stop forcing their way through the late winter snow because they fear the cold; caterpillars don't decide not to become butterflies because they fear turning to liquid inside their chrysalis. Love is in our nature and we cannot stop it, no matter how our ego tries to protect us from whatever baggage we have attached to love over time. Keeping this in mind, feel love in your life and focus on any other feelings that surface along with it. If love produces anxiety, ask it why...if it produces anger, trace it back and find what happened...if love causes fear, consider your life and your history. The things that have gone wrong in the past when we've loved and been loved become attached to our expression of love no matter how outlandish or inappropriate they may be. It's called conditioning. 

We then avoid love because we avoid the association of what we've learned accompanies love, even when we're wrong. The avoidance is our mind's way of protecting us. But we are so much more than our fragile egos say we are. Our hearts and souls speak so much louder than our minds. Our inner life force comes from those places, sometimes so quiet it is softer than a whisper; sometimes we have to strain to hear its voice. It's hard to do over the constant chatter of our hyperactive brains, but it is possible. When we can silence that chatter or at least hear past it, we can feel the presence of our essence and from there we will feel the pure exhilaration of love without the baggage, without the fear and the pain. 

These beasts will always be with us. Learn to love your demons because they are your constant companion. But then tell them to take the night off. You and love are going to spend some time alone. 

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. ~ Bertrand Russell  

I am so ready to fall....