Originally posted elsewhere back in April of this year, but I find myself re-reading this and trying to take it to heart especially now, in the holiday season.
Dear me,
Not very often, but sometimes, as you are busy remembering what's gone wrong before or predicting what will go wrong later, it is all you can do to keep going, but you must. Do not stop. Continue: to put one foot in front of the other, to give your loved ones hugs, to help your children get dressed in the morning, to do the grocery shopping and the laundry, to think about what you want to do with your life (to believe that you have a choice about that), to pick up your camera and leave the house, to clean the toilet and the litter box, to stay in contact with your friends, to go to choir rehearsal and sing your heart out. Keep going through the motions, and fake it until you make it, whether that only takes the next five minutes, or the next hour, or the next day, or the next week. There will come a point when real pleasure and ease return. There will come a day when you feel real joy.
Let this stand as a reminder to yourself. The real pleasure and ease and joy: they will always return.
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A week or so ago, I had an argument with Geoff (or rather, the argument had us). I was talking to him, thinking that he was listening even though he was sitting in front of his computer, because he was making occasional reassuring type listening noises ("uh huh" and "yeah" and "oh"). There came a point when I discovered that he wasn't listening at all, had possibly not heard a word I'd said, and I felt so stupid for talking to myself, for not being able to tell whether he was actually listening or not. I stopped mid-sentence and walked out of the room and upstairs to bed, but then I wasn't sleepy, and so what followed was one of those fights that's about nothing and everything at the same time. Unlike most of those types of arguments we've had, though, this one ended with both of us calm and comforting each other. Geoff admitted he was worried about the music at church for Easter Sunday, and had been trying to finish with a piece he was working on when I was talking to him. I sympathized and comforted and told him he's a brilliantly talented musician (because he is). It was better, but still exhausting. Sometimes it still feels like we have a lot to worry about.
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These days, a specter of myself and (of what I see as) my failed career haunts me, telling me that I've brought shame upon myself and my family (all that debt; all that effort; all of this selfishness, wanting to leave that behind). Most of the time, I see right through her. I wave her away, I tell her she has no power over me, I tell her that a life pursuing what I love doing is better and more important than following through on something I don't love just because I started it. (And I remind her that I tried so hard, so unsuccessfully, for so long, to get a legal job despite the fact that I didn't love it.) I tell her she's a jerk and a liar, and sometimes I think that she is really, truly gone. But she is preternaturally patient, and so far she always returns. She waits as long as she needs to wait, until my guard is down, until I am vulnerable, until she can hurt me again. I am determined to outlast her. (I am taking an online class with Brene Brown & Jen Lemen called ordinary courage, on love, shame resilience, and worthiness. I hope for further healing.)
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Our trip to London, which I will write about in more detail soon, was wonderful. I love London, and I loved being there. The trees were blooming, the weather was pretty much perfect, and the company (my mom and Katie) was excellent. There was this thing, though, that at first I had some trouble identifying. For awhile, in London, I felt one step removed from myself, and wondered whether I might be losing touch with my emotions - whether I had lost the ability to just feel, without worry, without doubt, without a sense of level-headed temperance. No matter how much beauty surrounded us or how intrigued I was by anything, a part of me stayed detached. So I did have a marvelous time. I did love the experience. But because of the circumstances (most notably, my beautiful and sweet but devilish seven year old companion), I was mostly unable to truly relax or to be completely wide open to what I was experiencing. This is ok, I think, but I am glad I have recognized it and named it. It is not a flaw in me.
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A week and a half ago our cat Lucy (the mother of the eight kittens who were born at the end of April 2010) was hit by a car in the middle of a street a few blocks away from our house. She was killed. Geoff and Katie and I have shed many tears over her. We buried her body in the back yard, between the fence and the back alley, and marked the spot with daffodils that we picked from our back yard. Lucy's life, and the birth of those eight kittens, was a joyful blessing to our family at a time when we desperately needed it. Her fur was the softest. Her eyes seemed the wisest. When we'd drive up to our house after having been gone for awhile, if Lucy was outside she'd be on the front porch waiting for us, and she'd stand up and pad over to greet us as we got out of the car. When I sat on the couch and watched tv before going to bed, she'd come over and lay on my legs, purring. I miss her. It's been almost two weeks, and Katie cries about her death almost every night, and apologizes when she cries. "You don't have to be sorry," I say, and most nights, I will stay there in Katie's bed next to her, petting her hair or rubbing her back or just letting one part of my body touch hers so that as she drifts off to sleep she will know that I'm there with her. Lucy is gone, but I'm not. I'm right here, sweetheart. I'm right here.
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A few nights ago, all of us were tired and grumpy, and Annabel kept saying "uh uh" in her whiniest voice, incessantly, over and over (as she does every day lately; a few days ago she said it so many times, and refused to even explain what she was saying it about, that I lost my temper and yelled at her, which made her cry so hard there was no way I could feel anything but regret and shame), and after Annabel was in bed, Katie was whining about everything, too. As Geoff and Katie and I stood in Katie's room, getting ready to tuck her in, I said something about the drawing Katie had done on her whiteboard, and she misinterpreted what I'd said as a criticism, which in turn hurt my feelings. As we stood there, frustrated and full of hurt feelings and disconnect, Geoff reached out to pull us both closer, but instead of feeling comforted, I suddenly had a flash of insight into the future between Katie and me. I was suddenly sure that when she is older, we will not get along, but instead the air will be charged between us, full of miscommunication and missed chances to reach out to each other. (I thought of Angela and her mother on My So Called Life, actually.) I cried about it a little bit then, and I cried about it later, about how much I will miss Katie when we aren't able to get along with each other anymore. Geoff says it won't be like that, but he doesn't know. Of course, I don't, either. But the possibility of losing Katie's friendly, easy companionship during her adolescent years has never felt real to me before, and now it does.
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Saturday morning, there was coffee and playing in the backyard. We rehearsed beautiful music for the next day's Easter service, and we visited with friends from out of town. Later, the ingredients for lemon curd (for lemon cake, for Easter dessert) simmered on the stovetop, and the smell of lemons wafted all through the house. The very first spring tulip opened that afternoon in our backyard. Annabel & Geoff were napping. Katie & a friend were upstairs laughing. There was sunshine everywhere, after so many days of rain. And this is what sprang into my head: Joy in my heart today.
Despite everything! Despite everything I can think of that is sad and heartbreaking, still. Joy crashes into me, overwhelming me, drowning me, and I'm so grateful and amazed.
I posted about this joy on Facebook, and then went back to making the lemon cake, and I started having second thoughts about posting about joy right there out in the open, for those 500 plus friends (or "friends," in some cases) to see. Should I delete it? Should I have written it? Am I ridiculous to think that my joy matters to anyone else, or is even real?
I knew the right response to these doubts, as clearly as if I heard a voice telling me: it would be a waste, a great sadness, a tragedy, a huge loss, to ignore this joy. These moments of overwhelming joy don't come along that often for any of us, or at least not for me. If I had one of these moments a week, I'd say I was living a pretty joyful life. How wrong it would be to let any one of those moments pass by without recognizing that it is here!
Katie and her friend had gone to her friend's backyard to play, and while they were gone, I started working on the cake batter. They burst back into the house when I was almost done, just mixing in the last ingredient, and Katie asked if she could play in Chyanne's house, because Chyanne had Just Dance, and they could play it. I said yes, she could, and then she asked if she could have dinner at Chyanne's house, and I said yes to that, too, as long as she was invited, as long as it was ok with Chyanne's mom. Chyanne said it was, and so I said it was ok with me, and the two of them shrieked with their own joy, bursting into huge grins, running from the house. I followed them to the door and watched them leaping down the sidewalk happily. "Bye!" I called, feeling bemused, and Katie called back a goodbye. "I love you," I said. She kept running alongside her friend, didn't turn her head, didn't look at me. But I heard her call, loud enough for me to hear, "I love you, too," and I was both comforted and devastated by the easy casualness of her declaration of love, by the way she is growing up and forming her own friendships that have nothing to do with me. Amazingly, joy continued to run through me as I watched them running down the block. I cried a little bit more, and then I went back into the house. A huge shaft of sunlight streamed through the dining room window and lit up the dust motes and pet hairs. Only the sunlight mattered to me.
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Dear you,
You don't remember exactly when it was, the last time you felt this kind of joy. You don't know when it will come again; do we ever? When it comes - when it is here - you owe to it yourself to grab hold of it, to hold it close to you, to let it overwhelm every other emotion that's going on inside you. (I am holding this joy. I am holding it tight.)
When joy comes, let it take your breath away. Let it drive its lightning bolt through the core of your heart (at least as deep as the moments of pain and despair have traveled). Let it make a mark on you that will last for hours, for days, or for weeks. If you are lucky, you will still be reeling in its wake, rocked slightly off balance, the next time that it finds you. If you are lucky, the joy of this moment will be your lifejacket in future times of grief, when the heaviness of loss threatens to drag you so far down that you will be lost forever.
If you are lucky, your joy will shock you, and make you cry real tears, and you will stand there open-mouthed for a second, and then you will laugh.
You may be tempted to feel embarrassed about feeling your joy so deeply, especially on a day that looks so ordinary on the outside, but ignore that; this is not silly. This is not shameful. This is what life is all about. (Isn't it? And if not this, then what?)