Leaving me behind so I can come forth

When things move like gravy, thick and lumpy, inside me, I am prone to think I must change something. Exercise! Lift out of it and perk up! Picture an aerobics instructor with that irritatingly high-pitched voice that stays always at the same, over-cheery tempo while you are about ready to keel over. I am sorry to say I have pushed this cheery militancy many times on myself and others. But I have been gaining more comfort with a middle ground of "enh," as I call it. And today I woke up below "enh," and a wave of sadness washed over me.

It felt just like that. The story behind it? I lost a friendship that I imagined had deeper bounty to it than was the case, and this disheartened me. I had been trying to ignore it for days. Every time I thought about "losing" it, there was a certain shame outstanding and I tried to shove it away. It was the sort of shame you feel when you get picked last for soccer. I felt "bad" the way small children do, when their mother tells them they are "bad."

The unpleasant feeling made me look at all that I do not like about myself. I picked apart my way of being, and wondered how I could be "less" me to be more appealing and make my friend like me better. I thought about how I provoke and demand and urge people on and how this was perhaps a "bad" thing. And I knew I would not change it. BAD. All bad. And if I were to become "better," how could I teach as a new me? Whisper? Lay there and play dead? Wear pastels? I had taken it over the top, as I am prone to do. This sent me into early morning chaos.

All this distress was in the back of my mind, and while I was thinking about it, I sent some correspondence to someone I respect, regarding a nutritional question, with many errors in it.

Sometimes I have errors in these posts. And I remove them if I catch it. But so you know, I do not proof "to the death," because then I would never print out a single post. This is truth. I will keep arranging and rearranging like a dog chasing its tail. It is how I will hide, and I love hiding. Right now, in fact, I am slunken into a seat with abominable posture, with a hat pulled low over my face and a turtleneck yanked as high up as it will go. And it is not cold out. I am sitting in a dark corner. It makes me feel invisible and this is comforting. So I am not defending my errors; I know proofing is good writing, but my need is to get it out and have it be coherent at once without a century passing, while my writing sits hidden in some corner like that of Emily Dickinson.

However, this is not a good excuse for what happened this morning. It was my worry and chaos leaping out. The person, who knows fairly intimate details about me and my nature, remarked that my thoughts were jumbled, my sentences full of errors, and my tone, full of worry and anxiety. They insisted that they were not scolding or disparaging me, but holding me to the standard they knew I was capable of and asked me to rewrite my question. Then they would be happy to respond. There was no malice in it. Kindness and concern shone through in every bit of the comment. This is the kind of thing people will not usually tell you. They may just "tsk" at the sight of your name the next time it comes up and discount you completely as "that idiot." This is the same sort of thing people do when you have bad breath, or are wearing something that makes you look like a house. Just sneer or pity you in silence.

I complied to the request and re-wrote in a style that even my "editing" self could appreciate. And then, I began to reflect on what had precipitated the jumble of a question I had first vomited out of my brain to this person. I thought about how there was something disrespecting in myself, to spill words out without clothing them properly. And how it looked to them. Why did I not care enough about myself to make a nice presentation? This was enough to open the proverbial floodgates along with my own narrated sad tale of being unlikable. That and some emoting music of Dido on my little headphones put everything in motion. But I wasn't quite through with the crescendo to lift-off, so I continued hacking at myself a bit more, just to really get the tear ducts working at full power.

This was furthered by "The List." You know this--the list of all that is wrong with you. I thought about it in a general sense. "Generalizing" is always a troublesome thing in relation to surmising all that is "off" about oneself. It worked. A whole assortment of untenable, unlikable and irritating things about me, according to me.

I felt bad.

Then the wave arrived, like the swells that come and go in our Pacific Ocean. I cried. And cried. And kept going. I didn't fight the act of crying and grimace, as I often do, trying to resist. This is an odd sensation where the corners of the mouth are being yanked up when they want to fall down. Disconcerting, to say the least. Notice it the next time you are fighting sadness. It is sort of a Twilight Zone moment. But this time I cried perfectly. I was a consummate emoting professional; The tears came without resistance.

When I went upstairs much later (I go downstairs whenever I get up, which is usually at un-Godly hours like 4:00 am) , my husband asked me right away, with a lift in his voice, "Did you put on makeup?" This was funny, because it was actually that I had not bothered to take off my new habit of eyeliner from yesterday. He is not a morning person per se, but this interested him. This is what is so reassuring about men. They are delighted by what they see as beauty and this delight is in no way diminished by the stupid thing you said yesterday at 2, to your mother. It helps make you less crazy about yourself.

He was looking at me and admiring it as I debated about telling him what was happening. He loves makeup on me, which is unfortunate, because I tend not to wear much. (I make up for this by not properly removing it, which makes it look like a heavier application.) The crying gave my eyes a perfectly smeared look that you would see on fashion models which I can never get right if I try. Eventually, I told him I had been crying. He lit up and was happy to know this. This is not because he is a sadist. He is always relieved when I am not attempting to conceal my feelings like I do my teeny little pieces of paper in my backpack composed of receipts, numbers, old wrappers, cards, and other junk. It makes him feel like he is on the inside loop.

What was it about? he asked. I told him it was a wave of feeling. He looked at me with his blue eyes in perfect solidarity. He gets this concept because he is a surfer and knows the ocean like he does my body.

Frankly, I have a hard time separating from people I care about, even when the dynamics aren't working. I worry and wonder what I have done wrong. I feel like the imperfect garment labeled "irregular/damaged" that is discounted and no one buys. I fret as to why I am "bad" even though it may not be what I want. I had forgotten all about this because I was too busy castigating myself.

The truth is, that friendships come and go, even if you don't overly put your foot in your mouth, so to speak. This passing of unions and moments are no less natural than birth and death. It was not about this and could not be about this. I know this because the feeling just blew right out of me as soon as my tears passed. I cannot find the importance now that I attached to this person. I could not remember why I was upset. And the "story" seemed to fade quietly. There was only the pure feeling that came over me like a torrent that just released easily and like the waves pulling you in, it then left little behind. I felt tired, but calm. The pure feeling of emptying was the essential part. Like an orgasm. I felt like a flat beach with my sands pounded down into smoothness after the arrival of the tides.

When I could see this, I breathed lighter. I began to think about my new batch of meat biscuits I am making in my dehydrator and dashed off to get my dose of morning fat that I like to fry up in the pan. Really, the coming and going of my wave was just like the weather in Hawaii when we lived there for a few years. Torrential downpour one minute, and the next minute, bright sunshine. This used to be very bothersome to many people who visited us. Sun, rain, sun--you get the idea. They wanted consistency.

But I am mostly okay with the mercurial nature of life and my place in it. Now my eyes are long dry, I have lived out twelve hours of my day, and my body is recovering, quietly and peacefully. I don't want anything to force it out of where it needs to be. No brutal aerobics instructor, thank you very much. This is the act of a true friend. From me to me. Just letting things be. Seeing what I want. And just because I like myself a little bit better now than before, I will try for me and you to spell correctly. Because that's what friends do.