in pieces

For the third or fourth time in a matter of weeks, I've encountered a rogue puzzle piece on the sidewalk or in the gutter while walking. Different sizes, different places and times... this evening it was a tattered white edge piece, a thick black line flanked by a very thin black line across the inside edge.
Finally, taking the hint from the lonely pieces scattered about Arlington, I stooped to pick it up. I looked at it's nearly-blank face and wondered about the greater picture it once fit... smirking at the sappy, timeless metaphors abounding:
How we're given but one small piece at a time, and never the greater picture to which it belongs. No box, no neat pile of border pieces, no friends to complete sections for us. We find the pieces on the street. In the gutters, in the mail, in our own genetics. At school and at work. They fall from trees as we sit alone and stick in the wheels of our grocery carts. We examine them with rarely any scrutiny and, if they aesthetically please us or seem likely to fit the piles/sections we have already pieced together... we keep them. If not, we toss them back from whence they came. This must be meant for someone else. But we never know, really. Perhaps it was our own corner piece we just threw back. We'll never know.

I placed the ragged piece on my bed side table and looked at a piece of artwork in progress- a piece framed and littered by puzzle pieces drawn in archival ink. I thought about the many different versions of the piece, the pieces that exist on paper and the ones only in my head.

Pictures and stories enter my mind; the things that make up "me."
It drifts to the summers of my childhood, a farm on County Road 14. Every summer when the irrigation ditches would fill, carrying water to the farms down the road, water would drain into a small mud-lined pond in the pasture to the left of our log home. And every summer, they would appear as if by magic.
We wondered if the adult salamanders burrowed into the mud, surviving year-round, awaiting their brief chance to emerge and propagate... it seemed unlikely they had traveled from any distance, and the rain fell far too sparsely on the desert plains to provide them this opportunity. I sat and watched them studiously, never identifying a species despite my staunch examination of Audubon guides and library books. I caught them and looked at their feather-like green gills. They appeared as instantly as the water. Hundreds, maybe thousands of tadpole-like babies wiggling happily about. I made it my quest to catch an adult, though the task was nearly impossible. Whenever I would spot one on the bottom and wade into the small pool with my dad's too-large rubber waders, the mud stirred, obscuring my vision and giving the black parents ample time to vanish. I would visit them daily.
As summer drew to a close, the irrigation ditches stopped running. Within the week the pond would be gone and the small space between the ditch and make-shift dam would return to dry, cracked, lifeless earth.
The babies, whose still-tiny bodies had doubled in size, watched their world rapidly shrinking. Each day I visited with growing anxiety as the small pond became smaller, smaller, and smaller still. Each year I attempted to gauge the rate at which the water was disappearing, so that I might be there at just the right moment.
When lucky, I arrived just as the pool became the size of a large puddle. I filled one of my father's 5-gallon buckets halfway with water from the spigot, and rushed with some difficulty across the pasture. The ample number of children had surpassed the puddle in mass. The pond had become a small, writhing, gasping dark mass of amphibian childhood. I carefully, quickly scooped them up with a cup and poured as many into the bucket as my small arms could lift. The adults were long gone, leaving their progeny to fend off beaked attackers and the nearby noon-time sun.
One year, in response to my hysterical pleading, my father placed the bucket on the back of his flatbed truck and drove across the street so that I might pour the children into the swampy river. I knew their chances were slim as I watched the fishing loons and herons, and felt the vastly colder temperature of the moving water... but my hopes were high. They stood a far better chance here than baking in the sun atop the hill.
Every year the sight of their tiny, urgently flopping dark bodies burned into my psyche. Each year I mourned and hoped for better results next summer.
But even at age 6 I understood the terribly reliable manner of these things.

What's the point of this story? None.
It's just one piece of my puzzle.

happiness

Someone remarked to me when I first began working at the prison, "I don't know what it is that makes the sunsets seems so much more beautiful here." Perhaps the skies over Concord are more serene and beautiful - after all they captivated Emerson and Thoreau. Perhaps a sky ablaze is more beautiful when viewed through razorwire. Or perhaps we're all forced to look up and out to see freedom.
Every day when I leave work, particularly late in the evening, I feel a tinge of joy. I feel a bit overjoyed to be re-entering the wide world. I feel a spark of excitement and am privately bemused as the final of eight heavy mechanical doors slams loudly shut... they let me go again!
I feel grateful.
I feel grateful to have a life of freedom with limitless opportunity. I feel terribly grateful to have avoided a life of crime and drugs... as I understand how very, very easy it is to slip. I understand how lucky I have been.

After the flash of joy I experienced at having been paroled for yet another day, I arrived at my truck to find a message on my phone from the transplant coordinator at Lahey Burlington. I whooped and pumped my fist at the news that I have *finally* been approved to donate my kidney after months of testing and patiently waiting.
I sighed with joy and relished the unique opportunity that I had just been awarded.

I smiled up at the full moon and stuck my arm out into the cool evening air as Adele's young soulful voice reverberated in my ears. I sent messages to everyone most important to me, declaring my happiness to both those who would rejoice with me, and to those who state "I don't understand" in response to my happiness.

On this day - July 14, 2011 - I make note of my joy.

searching for something

wading in a small, serene lake, flanked by bullfrogs and minnows.
sitting along the cool shaded bank and writing.
watching my dog wallow in the shallows.
struggling to bathe my dog.
scheduling a massage.
organic food shopping.
seeing my therapist.
finding a chiropractor.
going for midnight jogs - especially in the rain.
doing fun things for the sake of fun (like ringside wrestling seats!)
planning outings with friends.
cultivating new friendships.
meeting new people.
signing up for Jeet Kun Do and kickboxing.
adoring my home city.
finding and consuming new music.
researching Tai Chi and meditation.
meditating.
reading.
sleeping.
singing.
dog-toy shopping.
pouring myself out onto paper, drawing my thoughts with new imagination and frankness.
buying new art supplies.
taking photos and photos and photos.


These are the things I have done this week to breathe through the pain.
"Isn't it nice," my therapist says, "to know that when you feel this way it isn't going to last for weeks anymore?"

It is nice.
And even though I can be so quickly deflated, and even though I continue to struggle with many long-standing questions, I take comfort in the transiency. Things grow, feelings grow, feelings change, people grow... it's comforting.
I'm still growing.

making it public

Today I cried in the middle of Panera Bread.
I was feeling such loss and loneliness that my head started to reel. I sat in the corner and put my head in my hands, trying to pull myself together until my buzzing led-lit pager went off. I took my salad outside, where my sunglasses could hide my tears, and poked at it. And old man covered in liver-spots and plaid looked at me through the window.
I haven't been able to cry the way I need to. Tears here and there, often, daily... but not the all-out hysterical, sobbing, can't-breathe snot bubble sort of crying. I need that kind of crying. It's stuck. It's won't come out. Something is stopping it. (Me)
I wrote by the lake for a while, with my wet, dirty Newfoundland laying behind me after her dip. She periodically approached behind me and sat as close as possible, nosing my face or laying her head on my shoulder. I wrote about how I know all the things I need to do. I know the concepts, the cure. I am having a very difficult time doing them. The earth feels a bit like quicksand, grasping at my legs, cementing me, rooting me in place.
Instead I have panic attacks all day and a drunken bender that ends in me saying things I shouldn't say out loud. I give up and go to bed in the middle of the day. In the "productive moments" I draw phenomenally sad pictures on a large scale. Sometimes I write in a blog that no one reads.
I am having quite a bit of difficulty with my brain.

I will meditate on this pain... see if I can coax the real tears to come...

these days

There are good days, and there are bad days.
If one were to survey the breadth of my writing since I truly began pouring my heart out at age 12, anyone would likely conclude that most of these days, for me, are bad. And perhaps for ages 12-18 and 20-22, they would be correct about that. But these days, my writing is a small glimpse of me.
"For a therapist, you really don't talk about your feelings very much," commented a lover. "You're always there to listen to everyone else's problems but you don't talk about yourself."
I thought for a moment and realized she was right. Few people in my life evoke my genuine "opening up." Even within romantic partnerships- when the sharing stops, when the "I can share anything with you" feeling dissipates and both parties stop listening... it's always a signal that the end of the relationship is, at least emotionally, drawing near.
I thought about why I "don't talk."
"It's because I write," I answered. The two things are far from mutually exclusive, of course, but my feelings are typically expressed through art and words on paper (or in ether). I've always felt far more eloquent on paper... and far less judged. It's always been very difficult for me to imagine that anyone wants to hear my thoughts.

Today as I sat alone in my office, door closed, I took an inventory.

My shoulders, feeling weak, sore and strained as though "a house on my shoulders"- as one of my Spanish-speaking inmates would say later that day.

My neck stiffens, and cannot turn all the way to the right without a sharp pain shooting into my shoulder.

The deep ache in my chest, the one that makes me feel ill.
The feeling reminds me of when I was 14... after being very physically ill for a very long time, my mother took me to a "reflexologist" out of desperation. I had seen every doctor the Valley had available (which took no time at all), had every test... all were flummoxed. My crippling anxiety was, quite literally, killing me. Continuous vomiting eroded away my esophagus, my teeth; I couldn't eat or get above 91 lbs. The reflexologist (or "witch doctor" as we jokingly called her) called upon her bizarre methods, that seemed more like parlor tricks than any sort of science, and told me that I was out of alignment. She stated that my spine was putting pressure on my heart in such a way that blood was pooling in my heart, and in my stomach. When I feel this ache in my chest, I imagine blood pooling in my heart. It thumps loudly. It feels sluggish, as though a tranquilizer dart has pierced my sternum. It hurts.

I fight off thoughts that I can't help obsess about, and ache more. I certainly allow myself time and means to delve into the pain, diving deep down until the clear teal water turns to persistent but non-malevolent black where no light is able to penetrate. To much time, perhaps. Perhaps I revel in it too much. Writing too many sad things, listening to too many sad songs, drawing too many sad pictures. I turn it over and over and over and over again in my head, thinking that surely - as with everything else - I can think my way out of it. I can use my intelligence to solve any problem. This just requires some problem solving! Surely there is a simple solution to fix this heartache...

But there's not. There's no pill. There's no drink. No procedure. Or ritual. Or exercise. No sweet treat. Or letter. Or phone call. Or escape. Or words.
No matter how many times I think about it... no matter how desperately I turn it over and over and over again in my mind, wearing it smooth like a gem in a tumbler... there's just no fixing it.
It just is.

This pain sits rooted in my chest, nestled into the hollow cocoon-like muscle with barbs securely embedded in the tough flesh. Right now, this heartbreak just sits.
And it will sit. Until it's quite ready to depart.

And until this I write. And I cry. And I draw. And I cry. And I think about how very far I've come and how different my existence is now. And I use that as fuel... to remind me that things will change. Continue to change.

Far, far more often then ever do I feel unabashed joy. My heart swells and beats out steel drum rhythms and sings to me. It feels as though it might explode. The tears come, but this time with joy. It comes more frequently. It lasts longer. These are the moments I desperately wish to share with another.

And, as I thought today, sometimes it's hard to be alive. I brace myself against the emotion as it hits me like a wave, washing away the very ground I stand on. My brains reels and yammers in colors and sheets of typewritten paper and stomach acid. Yelping and growling and spitting and spinning.

"What do you have to do to make her/him/them love/respect/want you??" it wails desperately
"Why her and not you?" it scowls
"Why isn't/aren't this/you enough?" it demands
"What are you doing wrong?" it chastens
"Why are you still feeling this way?" it judges
"Why can't you fix this?" it barks

Shhhhh h h h h . . . . I say
Shhhh Shh Shh.
You aren't helping.

I stroke the pain as though it's a scared feral dog and speak softly to it.

Time puts all things as they should be. And you can survive anything.
Anything but death, which will be the easiest thing you'll ever do.
But while you are alive, you will be surviving. Inevitably, without choice, you will survive.
Cry when you need to. Speak when you need to. Try to understand that you cannot always understand. Forgive yourself for emotions that you cannot, should not, and will not ever strangle from yourself.
Forgive yourself.

someone like you

This song punched me so hard I got sick...

the person that I want to be

I have always been adept at procrastination, but these past weeks I have sharpened my skills to a near surgical precision.
Recent heady conversations with dear friends have provided ample fodder for thinking, for musing, for pensive "brooding." In addition, I have been considering the song below. Who I was, who I want to be, who I once wanted to be, who I am now.
My desire to know myself, to truly know myself, is indomitable.
Recent interpersonal situations at work have cast light on parts of me that I continue to hope are not there. I have seen them, they are unnervingly strong and cantankerous, but I continue to hope that with more ignoring they will go away.
I desire to be the sort of person with no penchant for cruelty. Someone who does not delight in aligning with others to bitch endlessly and "talk shit"... As I stop to consider it, that is a rather apt term.
I consider my next tattoo: "primum non nocere" down my forearm, and a part of me fears that I will be unable to live up to this charge I give myself to "do no harm."

Of course I will be unable to. I am human. And humans, scampering mindlessly about in their daily lives, injure one another both unwittingly and with great purpose every day. A complete Gandhi-Mother Theresa-Buddhaesque desire for nonviolence and gentility would not prevent me from injuring my fellow man. Injury can occur through ignorance, through unrequited love, even self-preservation.
Instead, the tattoo would serve as all the rest do: a quiet reminder. A reminder to do my best - extend my arm in civility and love whenever possible - to sit in inaction when the desire to proclaim myself "better than" washes over me - to stay quiet when the desire to engage in that delicious, vicious cattiness arises - and, most of all, attempt to never pass up the opportunity to help another.

It will serve as a reminder as all my tattoos do -
As my foot tells me that there is no avoiding my pain or my past, and that the best way of managing it is to lock eyes with it and continue pushing through.
As my chest tells me that good comes from every evil, and that love and growth occur with every injury. That sometimes our very best parts are also our most wounded.
As my arm tells me that death is not to be feared with every dear moment so full of life. Living in the Great Integrity means "she never fears the tiger because there seems to be no place to sink his claws."
As my back reminds me that my heart belongs to one, and that my love for her - whoever, wherever she may be - never stops burning.

When I die my body will be littered with languages, important reminders deserving a more permanent etching than the notes I used to scrawl across my hands in high school.

In considering the song below I challenged myself to think of myself five years ago and remember the expectations that I had of this day.

Five years ago I was a member of a college cohort that I loved dearly... but that never quite seemed to fit me as well as it did the others. The "popular kids." I drifted further away as they prepared for graduation and I prepared for a final year of delayed practicum. I hoped that we would keep in touch. (we did not)
I was in a relationship with a battle-torn woman who cut herself bloody and blacked out her windows. In retrospect, I was in this relationship to prevent her final self-destruction. Alas our relationship ended in the coming months and she did not self-destruct... though it remains touch-and-go to this day.
Five years ago I did not know where my career would take me, nor did I have any ideas. I was broke, digging a cavernous hole of debt, and finding purpose only in caring for others and ignoring myself. My aggravation with life and my partnership showed me these same aforementioned parts of myself- the parts that are cruelly sarcastic and cannot control anger. The parts I first unleashed on my mother after the years of abuse finally stopped. I had gone a year without being hospitalized but there were times I still missed having a gun.
Where did that girl imagine she would be in five years?
Fuck if I know.

Where is she?
She is in a quiet, cool room with the thick curtains drawn for an uncharacteristic moment... feet under the covers and next to a gigantic, long-haired black dog whose features can't be differentiated when she curls into a 110 lb. ball.
This girl knows years more about love and forgiveness and friendship and God. She cries more, plays video games less and loves life so much, much more. She has made her peace with God and is so grateful for the loves and loves lost of the past half-decade. She still doubts herself, but hate is no longer turned inward with nearly the frequency or ferocity with which it once was. I find myself questioning whether this hate is present at all, though I dare not make such a bold statement.

This girl, who is a woman, who still feels odd when referring to herself as such... this girl often finds herself confused and questioning, sad. Lonely. Just as alone as ever in numbers, but feeling far less so than in years prior. Still searching for a soul-mate to lock eyes with and disassemble with. Someone to revel in intensity with.

Still pushing myself to do more, still feeling... slightly... as though it's never enough. This feeling too has dissipated. I am no longer so driven to seek more. More, more, More, MORE. I am more able to see the butterfly effects of all small things. And of big things.
My work pits me against a monstrous corrupt machine in which masses of people are discarded and dehumanized. It is easy, during weeks like this one, to feel as though it's all too big. Yesterday I felt as though juggernaut is unstoppable and the quest for human decency and repair is futile. It's no wonder why I can't remember who I wanted to be five years ago. Sometimes I can't remember who I wanted to be yesterday.

Today I want to be kind.
I want to continue to be fond of myself, and I want to begin caring for myself with the same ferociousness that I feel for those I love.
I want to let my heart be the most important part of me. I want to show how big my heart is. Not for any sort of acknowledgment or accolade, but for the purpose of surveying it myself. And improving the small bit of land/space/time that we are each given upon receipt of a soul.

Side note:
During my recent ECHOcardiogram I was able to see my heart. I lay uncomfortably on my side with a pretty woman's hand grazing my left breast and watched the grainy gray valves of my beating heart flapping open and closed, open and closed, open and closed. I felt joyous and unnerved. It looked... so strange. Alien. More than that, it looked very small. My heart is actually not very big at all. Not at all like the romantic muscle responsible for my being alive, my blood flow and my every love and devotion.

(Yes of course it is not the 1500's and I do know that my every love and devotion resides in my brain... but I nonetheless I know how intensely my heart aches when my brain breaks)

The tech examined a brightly colored map of blood flow with great focus. To me it appeared to be a beautifully lit mess, blood swirling in and about in a terrible, jumbled-up frenzy.
As many times as I had thought my heart surely broken, I was mildly surprised to see it there in front of me- pumping along reliably, no nicks or cracks in sight. But small. The size of my soon-to-be-removed kidney. So small. And so fragile.

I am a girl with a normal sized heart and a normal sized brain. Ever wanting to do better, to be better. As a friend recently commented, the best thing I can accomplish might be to realize just this. That I am a extremely normal, normally flawed human. Not as an act of resignation, but as an act of forgiveness.

I know that more than likely

I will continue to fuck things up.
I will continue to get unrealistically upset with "bad" drivers.
I will continue to eat more sugar and drink more beer than I should.
I will continue to procrastinate with mindless activities, avoiding valuable ones.
I will continue to curse like a prison inmate.

But I can also

Learn from my mistakes and make good whenever possible.
Take every opportunity to meditate and improve my frustration tolerance- or at least sing along loudly with a great song.
Enjoy the sights and sounds of a walk in the way that my dog does, and find joy in healthy food that nourishes me.
Give myself time to think of nothing and relax, balancing it with distraction-free time for thinking and doing.
Speak words of love and encouragement to those in need.

There is ever room for improvement.
And there always, always will be.

It's comforting to feel that I might just be the person that I want to be.

in my mind

"In my mind
In a future five years from now
I'm a hundred and twenty pounds
And I never get hungover

Because I
Will be the picture of discipline
Never minding what state I'm in
And I will be someone I admire

And it's funny how I imagined
That I would be that person now
But it does not seem to have happened
Maybe I've just forgotten how
To see
That I'm not exactly the person that I thought I'd be.

And in my mind
In the far-away here-and-now
I've become in-control somehow
And I never lose my wallet

Because I
Will be the picture of discipline
Never fucking-up anything
And I'll be a good defensive driver

And it's funny how I imagined
That I would be that person now
But it does not seem to have happened
Maybe I've just forgotten how
To see
That I'll never be the person that I thought I'd be.

And in my mind
When I'm old I am beautiful,
Planting tulips and vegetables
Which I will mindfully watch over

Not like me now
I'm so busy with everything
That I don't look at anything
But I'm sure I'll look when I am older

And it's funny how I imagined
That I could be that person now
That that's not what I want
But that's what I wanted
That I'd be giving up somehow
How strange to see

That I don't want to be the person that I want to be.

And in my mind
I imagine so many things
Things that aren't really happening
And when they put me in the ground

I'll start pounding the lid,
Saying, "I haven't finished yet,
I still have a tattoo to get,
It says, 'I'm living in the moment'".

And it's funny how I imagined
That I could win this win-less fight
Maybe it isn't all that funny
That I've been fighting all my life
But maybe I have to think it's funny
If I want to live before I die
And maybe it's funniest of all
To think I'll die before I actually
See
That I am exactly the person that I want to be.

Fuck yes.

I am exactly the person that I want to be. "

-Amanda Palmer