Originally posted on SparkPeople.
I have been writing, nearly non-stop, since I wrote to you here on Jan. 3rd. What I’ve written is here. It’s also in my notebook, it’s in my correspondence with close friends. So I haven’t gone silent, although I have gone somewhat dark. I fear sharing because I know it’s hard not to soothe when someone is in pain.
I want you to know I’m okay. I’m a person who’s been at the bottom, who knows what wanting out feels like. It isn’t so hard to be there if you can find an out for the pain other than leaving. And my writing is that for me. It is the gift I find for sitting in the acid pool of ache.
My husband and I, where are we now…Our lives are so intertwined that even separation must come in layers. We haven’t started our two weeks, and yet in so many ways we have. We’ve taken baby steps towards that two weeks, tasting it, trying it out, running back. I climbed back in bed to cuddle him, so lonely for a snuggle. He asked me not to date any other, so afraid of losing my love. Neither one of us clear that we want to or can make it alone through those two weeks.
For financial reasons, and likely the ones mentioned above, we’re still in the same house, he downstairs, I up. He’s looking for work and starting a business. I’m trying to focus on work and minding my own business. We agree that right now our relationship can’t have the energy we should likely give it. We agreed to pay attention to the rest of our lives, but it’s quite clear, at least for me, this separation hasn’t gone unnoticed and unprocessed. It hasn’t been set aside, instead it’s consumed, like a fire.
My heart and my hands are so close to each other right now that there’s a pulsing rhythm in my fingers coming straight from my core. The words ooze through me with barely a thought and no resistance between them and my screen, my pencil, my hands.
It’s a career in itself grabbing it all and putting it together for examination, rumination and completion later when I’m in an edit, not create, state of mind. In the past I’ve been closed, no one sees. Hundreds of pieces, all kept to me.
I’ve been different this time, opening up, sharing more. A friend insists it has meaning to others, the world needs to hear what I have to say. How moving to believe in me so. I don’t know if it does or it doesn’t, but it can’t be a concern. It is irrelevant whether you need it or don’t because my voice can’t be quiet now that it’s learned how to scream and cry and whisper. And if it has meaning, if you need to hear, you’ll have to take what you can get in the way it comes out, because if I stop to learn how to put it together for you, I am afraid it will stop coming for me.
So for now, I’m letting it happen.
And while this writing and separating and change is happening to me, I am doing the Austin Distance Challenge and training for my first marathon. What an ironic, amazing coincidence that while I’m running for my life, I’m running for my life. And both kinds of running are so new and so painful. They steal my breath, they make me ache. They challenge me, they make me reach out to learn new things, what to drink, what to eat, who else aches like this, what can I do, who can reassure and hold me together when I’m not able to do it alone? I’ve been running on the trail and the streets, at night, in the dark, not really alone, although I feel like I am, just barely on the outskirts of others, doing something others are doing, but not so many. And isn’t that the truth of the running I’m doing in my life as well? The parallels can’t be ignored.
I’m not a woowoo girl, but I have some woowoo friends. They have one leg in my binary black and white world, and one in the world I’ve needed to see but am blind to. They bring me there when I need to be, and send me back safely to mine where I can stand on firm ground again.
One friend had me draw earth cards. She wanted to offer me angel cards, but knew I’m not able to read those, despite the insistence of some friends that I am one, albeit a bit tarnished and fallen right now. My belief on these things is like my belief in horoscopes. I believe whatever you draw applies, like a quote; there is always something to be had, something that is just right for you. I don’t believe it’s about the magic of what you draw. It’s about the magic of paying attention for some small moment to the message of what you draw. It’s not about whether the message has meaning; it’s about the meaning you give to the message.
I drew Dreamtime, Full Moon and River. These represent creation, completion, and movement. They can’t be more perfect, as I would suspect anything in that deck would be at this moment of fluctuation in my life. But the messages I got from these three are what I’m focusing on now, while I complete this part of my life, create something new, and learn to move through whatever is in front of me with as much grace and love as I can.
What I’ve been writing isn’t about my health, it’s about my life, my heart. My pain, observations, joy, fears. But what I know is that this is really what my health is all about. The inner work is always what makes the outside move through the world on the best path with ease and grace.
I love you for letting me be me. For sharing, supporting, soothing. For aching and struggling. For admitting and commiserating with me.
I will share what I’m writing with you here, if you’d like. I don’t know what to call what I’m doing. Essays, snippets, pieces, poems. The irony of this is not lost on me. I don’t know what to call what I’m doing with my life either.
I am not a crier, but I have burst into tears in the most public of places, uncontrollably sobbing and then laughing hysterically. I am trying to stand back and look and see what this is, while getting right in the water with it, both swimming and drowning at once.
I am just being and doing right now.
The smallest things seem so very big in my life. And the biggest things so small. I have to run now, in more ways than one. Tell me where you are. Tell me how you are. And know I appreciate you letting me be here with you, sharing my heart without editing my words and my thoughts.
