February

February starts tomorrow, and I would just assume skip the month.
As of last year,February became my least favorite month of the year.
Nothing personal, I happen to like February-I actually like Valentine's Day and all the cute decor and tradition.
I like to think of February as a month to celebrate love.
My second child was born in February.
But last February pretty much killed me, over the course of a few weeks.
It was like being in the center of a bad dream, and there was no waking up.
But when February ended, my death in a way was just beginning and seemed to continue on and off, for months, well as I write this, I realize one year, one year of dying.
One year of mourning me.
Not in a "woe is me" kind of way.
But just the clear cut reality of what really is.

I realized the only way I can escape the sadness that descends upon me, is to throw myself in wonderful fantasies, of new love and weddings, and music, and art, and reading and anything that wisks me away to another dimension beyond the here and now in my head.
It is like this dance I am in with myself.
I forget sometimes and stop dancing, and then slowly the band stops playing, and I am just alone on the sidelines with no one to ask me to dance.
And all the fears rise up again and I have my fear that no one will ever love me again, someone that I want to love, and I will have to vanish from my life in order to reclaim any crumb that is left of it.
This is where I live these days, in between worlds.
Mostly I just create a new day everyday and find it exhausting at times.
I cannot stop and look too long at the destruction my life fell into last February, because it only consumes me.
There is no good that comes from looking too long.

John Edwards

What a disgrace this person is!!! John Edwards.

Beyond the affair, which is unforgiveable!! Then the guy has got the "gun loaded" seems an appropriate term, don't think I have ever even used before..I mean it is nuts!! He already has children with his lovely wife, why on earth would he even take a chance in fathering more kids while he is CHEATING!! Just goes to show how irresponsible this guy is.

And to think, I voted for his ticket way back when with Kerry. I thought John Edwards was a nice guy. Not that Clinton turned out to be a choir boy either. But John Edwards, he was so Mr Family Man (hmm sounds familiar!!! ) and he is not at all.

Elizabeth has been fighting cancer for so long now. What a legacy for her, after 32 years of marriage, to have it end this way. And God forbid she passes before her little children have grown, she must die at the thought of them being raised by John, his ho of a mistress, and their baby together!! I mean, why does life hand out such heartbreak!!

Like Tiger Woods, I have ZERO sympathy for John Edwards. I just so feel for his wife, and his 3 children, they so don't deserve this. At least with Elin, she is young and healthy, and the kids are small, she could just move on and have millions (although now it is reported she might stick it out with Tiger, please n-o!) but Elizabeth, she is much farther down the road of life, God I really feel for her.

He is so in the public eye, ran for President and VP, who has so said how much he loves her, who portrays the family man image all over the place..how brazen he is, without conscience--another narcissist, sounds like it.

I am so glad she said "enough." No matter if she has 10 days, or 30 years left, she is putting her foot down. Hell, maybe her cancer will go away now, now that she is dumping that huge weight around her neck. I just cannot get over the fact he is out screwing someone, having a baby with them, while his wife is fighting for her life.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/27/edwards.split/index.html?hpt=T2

Hope Believe Know

Hope. Believe. Know. I read this the other day in an article from Deepak Chopra. I wanted to include the link, but after some kind of bizarre computer problem--you know, when you must accidentally click on an ad, and your computer goes into a frenzy, saying warning, and suddenly a porn address is showing up--and I had been at Oprah.com--so forget the link! I hoped I would find it...I believed it must be simple enough, but now I know to forget the idea! haha.

Anyhow, it was not an orginal thought of mine. But I found the words quite stirring for me. I have probably spent most of my life inbetween hoping something/someone would work out, and then believing--in my case, a person. I always hoped I could believe in the life I had, but I probably knew deep down it was just a frail moment in time at best. But I know now, that knowing something does not mean you believe it. Knowing something can be quite gut wrenching, so it is much easier to hope for and believe in the dream. Now that I write this down, I see I have lived them all, in kind of a desperate circle, often.

I hoped I would find my love of my life. I believed I did. I thought I knew I did on my wedding day and other milestone events..but I can see with some hindsight now that I was often hoping and believing that what I knew was really so.

I can now categorize my life much better. I wish I had even known of these words years ago..it might have helped direct me, or maybe it was there and I just could not see it...possible. But now I know. Know what..that I can no longer sell myself short and let myself down. There are some things I have known my whole life, and those have made my foundation and got me somewhat grounded, when my hopes and beliefs pulled away at what I wanted to build. It is all so strange to me now, like I was really asleep at the wheel for years..I almost laugh at it, because it is all so simple, but for ever, I could not see the forest for the trees.

The Divorce Registry

This week I read about a store in England who has a "divorce registry." I love the idea!

Getting divorced is the worst! I want it to be at the top of the list of most stressful events. And it can take forever to go away, especially if you have children.

If your divorce was like mine, there is this very odd separating of household goods that must take place. It has to. It was funny, because my mom was convinced that I could just keep everything! God bless her!! So, if like me, you are not only heartbroken beyond belief, but now you have to go through every f!%^ing cupboard and decide who gets what, and this is so not something you want to do at the moment. And it is kind of a quick decision, because this is not something you want to prolong, and get together about once you have split up. So there I was in my kitchen, going through every room of the house, having to make snap decisions about what to give away in the 50/50 break up. And then it all walked out the door.

People love to hear about weddings. They love to go to parties, buy gifts, celebrate! Divorce..it is kind of like a plague. People want to help, sort of..what is there to say, to do, there is really no fun or celebrating going on--at least not in the early phases--and I do not believe, for the most part, that divorce should ever be celebrated. Shoot me.

So there you are, kind of alone, unless you joined some horrible "getting divorced club" and you have the joy of hearing other people's stories--who you hope will be far worse than yours so you can feel better. For me, I preferred just a one on one approach with a counseler who was like a fan club, just what I needed.

So anyhow, why not get gifts? I bet people would love to go to Target, or Ikea, Cost Plus (notice these are my favorite stores!) Macys, Nordstroms, whatever, and select something off a registry and have it shipped to you. They don't even have to see you right now. But they will feel better thinking of you, and you, you will feel better getting gifts. You can do all your registering on line, so you won't have to fear a tearful breakdown with the clerk when trying to select what toaster to put on your divorce registry.

You can even make it easy on yourself and send out an electronic announcement with your registry information. So your life will suck for awhile, maybe a long while, but at least you will get gifts. Why should marriage get all the gifts?!

Conan O'Brien

I have never seen one of his shows. Not that I have seen many of David Letterman or Jay Leno either. Not really my thing, I don't even stay up that late for the most part, and if I am, I am almost never watching TV.

But I am astounded that he is getting $32.5 million to get fired (with $7.5 million addition going to his staff.) Can I PLEASE get fired for that kind of money!!! I just cannot get past that he is getting millions. Hell for most of us little people, if we get fired, we might get a few weeks pay, whatever we stored like a little squirrel in vacation pay, waiting for this day to arrive, and out we go. A lot of companies let you go at the end of the month so your insurance stops too. Grab your box of junk and your plant, and out the door you go--unless you work from home--send the laptop back to them. Yeah, now you have a few thousand bucks in your pocket, maybe, suddenly a lot of freetime, and a resume screaming "update me."

So while I don't totally get it--Jay did not want to go, but was kind of forced to some weird prime time show, Conan's show had awful ratings, they want Jay back, but Conan has a contract, whatever..so he gets $32.5 million. Sounds like his lucky day to me. I never could get past his weird hair do.

Martin Luther King Jr.

This quote came in to my in box this morning,

"All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. As long as there is poverty in this world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot expect to live more than twenty or thirty years, no man can be totally healthy, even if he just got a clean bill of health from the finest clinic in America. Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way the world is made." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is daunting to write anything after that, like being at an event and having to follow a speech like that. Really. This is such an amazing statement. I read this, this morning, and found myself really seeing how significant we all are, and at the same time insignificant, yet we run around thinking we and our lives are so important. I know I certainly fall in that trap. Here I sit finally filling out my LinkedIn account, and I have to chuckle to myself as to the importance it really has in the big scheme of things..but I also find if I don't do it, I am somehow, possibly, missing something, some connection..as we all try to connect, all day long.

I love love love the line, "I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be."
God it just really got me thinking. I sit here in my little retreat, whirling away the hours at a keboard or painting a room, and while there is a lot to be said for "soul work" in the solitude of one's 4 walls, I see I am at times DIS connected. I am amazed at people like MLK Jr. who are so CONnected..how they do it, without totally feeling exhausted. How they keep charging ahead day after day, in a deep quest they may never reach. Like all the people trying so hard to save Haiti. I read the reports and am quite awestruck by the capacity people have to help. I don't know, this, this line, "All this is simply to say that all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny..." just really holds me in its grasp, and I wonder, is donating to the Red Cross the answer, giving money to your local shelter, recycling, eating organic, sending money to Feed the Children, C A R E, saving the whales, saving the environment, it goes on and on. We have become so bloated with people, it is almost beyond comprehension of the task in front of us. While I believe we have to help, in the name of humankind, I am not sure if we can stop the freight train of the doom of so many, and I hate to say that, but maybe it is like a math problem way beyond my comprehension, and the answer is there, but I just cannot see it right now.

The Sound of Silence

I read the other day that we should be able to sum ourselves up/our life purpose in one sentence. I feel like I have just been given a tough assignment. Trying to sum my life up one in sentence that defines me in an important way is such a ..I don't know..that fact is that I don't even want to think of myself like that, at least not at this moment. It makes me feel very alone and under a spotlight, of "what did I accomplish" the same unsettling feeling descends on me when I think "what if I never find love again, someone I am excited about..what if that was it, and now I am doomed to spend y e a r s alone.." and when I don't think about it, and just keep moving, doing something, keeping my life going, I don't feel bad. But just writing it right now, as a moment ago it was a fleeting thought, I start to feel sad about the romantic state of my life. I don't want to place ads, I don't want to join clubs, I don't want to go to events purposely looking for someone, and the more I write right now, the more sadness descends on me, and I realize I better find the escape hatch, and fast, because I have avoided this pretty well for quite some time.

So now I have just depressed the hell out of myself, as I don't know what I would say is my life purpose, and I am alone. I feel so sad reading that, it almost becomes funny, like a line from a sitcom. Then when I start thinking about it that way, the vibration gets a bit light again.

It did not help yesterday, when a former colleague of mine left me a voice mail saying she heard I was let go..now I have been told by my management that that is not the case (usually if you are let go you prefer to hear the news from your company and not someone else..) but it cannot help but get wheels rolling in my head--did someone tell her something that is to happen ...and who the hell told her that..even though I would like to leave it be, and in many ways I did, much better than I would have in the past..I cannot deny it has rattled me a bit, in conjunction with feeling alone and not being able to articulate my life purpose.

I read once, we should have something to do, someone to love and something to look forward to. I am feeling a bit shaky on all 3 right now. Honestly. I have not come to any conclusions with this tonight, except I am going in a circle. I am going to see if I can move the energy through some other means, maybe I will paint my closet. There is a very thrilling Saturday night in the single life. It is not that I won't enjoy painting it, it is more the thought that I can hear the silence, and today for some reason it was tough.

Haiti

The 7.0 earthquake in Haiti. Strange today I had no idea..until I decided to log onto CNN.com and then saw the headlines--it was like, "where have I been??" It is incredible the destruction that these natural disasters cause to undeveloped nations. The fact that maybe 100,000 people are dead, and bodies are in the streets, people cannot get medical attention, there are not enough medical supplies anyways...it reads like a disaster movie. And I am reading this all today, while I am sitting in my lovely little home office, typing away on the computer, and find it such a stroke of luck, really, that we have these lives based on so much luck, just being born in the US was the first piece of luck, and then the rest is all extra. And yet we c o m p l a i n--I reminded my child tonight, as grandpa says "no one likes a complainer." So true.

Years ago, about 13, we had a trip to Dominican Republic. Classic trip for me in the married days, having to go somewhere where my husband could do something he wanted to do, wind surfing at the time. There were so many other places in the Caribbean I would have rather gone to..but that was that. It was not a bad trip. Actually where we stayed was pretty nice, with tons of restaurants lining the beach, and other places to stay. Still I always felt a bit nervous. The sales people on the beach, they were overwhelming! They did not take no for an answer. No one had ever left the island. We were their business. It was tough to avoid them.

One day we took a tour bus trip, and it was pretty interesting cruising around to different sites and stops. Then one part of the tour was seeing a sugar cane picking village. It was awful being in our air conditioned bus, and driving through what they called home. I felt so guilty. But then..then..we crossed a very shabby bridge, and then we were in the Haitian sugar cane picking village. It made the other one look like a ritzy first class neighborhood. It was the single most poverty I had ever seen in my 30 something years. It was honestly beyond my comprehension. There were make shift homes, like out cardboard. And people lining the street corners. There was no hope there.

And that was the single most powerful memory I took of the whole trip. I was on vacation and felt sick to my stomach with guilt, and I really did not know what to do with what I was seeing. And now it all came back to me.

So lucky, so lucky just to be born here.

I was in the massive quake in SF/Oakland/Santa Cruz in 1989. For the most part, things withstood the earthquake so well it was hard to believe what had happened the day before. Sure there was destruction with the Cypress Structure (a freeway section that led to the Bay Bridge) the whole upper section just crumbled into the bottom section--it was an incredible site--I think the worst of the whole quake. I was on that freeway every day, commuting, always at 5:05 going back home. But on Tuesdays, I had just started a Tai Chi class with my mom, and was leaving at 4:00 instead of 5:00--it is possible the class saved me. And there was quite a bit of destruction in Santa Cruz, and parts of the Marina in SF..but for the most part, life went on, we were overall.. fine. And I recall being somewhat awestruck by it all.

I don't know what it is like to see dead bodies on the street, children lying under plastic sheets. It is beyond the life I grew up in. There certainly is no "finding Saratoga" for most people in Haiti.

Retreating and Renewal

"..retreat has several related meanings, all of which have in common the notion of safety or temporarily removing oneself from one's usual environment in order to become immersed in a particular subject matter. "

These past 11 months I have sort of created a retreat in my own home. I would like to go on a retreat, I really would, but perhaps I have found the best retreat right here in my own 4 walls. My dear friend the other day told me my house was a retreat and I should be open for business. What a compliment! I love, love, love the idea, and that is something I could even see down the road..not as this home, not really set for it, but some beautiful spot, like in Hawaii, or New Mexico, or Montana, somewhere remote, with breath taking views, and moments that are filled in only by space. But..until then..as I get lost a bit in a reverie..my home has served me well as my own little retreat.

I don't know if I created it, or if it came in with the moon on a rainy night last winter, when I sat here, sobbed here, in the depths of loss, on so many levels for me..but somewhere along the line my home took on a new energy. I believe that energy was always here, sometimes hiding itself a bit, from the firestorm and the facade, knowing that it could not shine through. Maybe it was my sage smudging early on, or the Tarot cards, or small alter in my bedroom, the large ornate metal crosses that stand like talismans in my front hall, the candles, the order that has been reinstated, the garden, with all its little statuaries and plants that come back each spring, and my paintings that now grace my walls, I don't know..maybe all, maybe just time, but I do feel more and more like my home has become a retreat. Exactly what I want it to be.

Now this is funny, because it has become an idea of mine that I really want, I mean really do, want a nun's habit. Okay, are you laughing?! I love the idea. I can wear it around the house. I want to be like Maria in Sound of Music. I do not recall ever actually wanting a nun's habit, let alone thinking of wearing one. Now this could not replace my clothes, because I love clothes and high shoes, but it could be another piece of me. Years ago someone at work said I reminded her of a nun, and I thought that was so sweet..I am happy that I channel that energy.

I realize I have often hid in these 4 walls this past year, and I may have overstayed my retreat time, but I had to. I have had times that I could not even walk out to get the mail. But those days seem to have gone away for the most part, and I am no longer so much hiding, but finding renewal. I do feel like my home in many ways, saved me.

A New Year

I don't remember the last time I was really glad to be in a new year. But this time around, I am t h r i l l e d to be in one, done with 2009, just done with it. Now I think that is pretty much the sentiment for a lot of people for 2009, as a big picture, it was a tough year. For me personally, it was such a...a...it is hard to even put in words..visually I see myself falling, just falling, not from any location and with no destination in sight. Sometimes a face of fear, sometimes of sadness, sometimes of quiet, sometimes of laughter, and sometimes of pure anger.

And then, I don't recall when now, but maybe I started landing a bit over time, and would pop up again, but I feel pretty much on the ground these days. I chuckle to myself just for fun, and love to think slightly mean thoughts about someone--terrible I know, but even right now I do find it humorous. I decided I had to be my biggest fan.

January 2009, I was dying, like some weird slow death, but I knew it was coming.
February 2009, I died. It was clear.
March 2009, I brought a cake to my "after funeral" party.
April 2009, I died again, big time.
May 2009, I saw some light.
June 2009, I embraced summer.
July 2009, I recall stumbling a bit, and wondering how I would feel 6 months later.
August 2009, I did not find myself in Vegas, but realized I was never that lost, and turned another year older.
September 2009, I watched my summer slip away, and loved the onset of fall.
October 2009, I embraced my inner witch, and loved it.
November 2009, I almost did find myself in Disneyland, a new laughing me, and felt completely reborn as our huge family celebrated my father's 80th birthday.
December 2009, I relished in Christmas music, laughter, white wine, even too many Lemon Drops one night, good food, friends, family, shopping and gifts, all the pictures of the holidays that we see in magazines and movies, I felt like I lived it. Some moment, without much fanfare, my feet touched the ground, and I knew I was no longer falling.

Next month will be one year since my husband walked out of my life, and then the dark truths really came out. I welcome the anniversary oddly enough. It has been a very good year..