The morning saw me in bed until 10am. 13 hours of rest. I needed it, as any adventuring I do now requires a stealthy amount of recovery time. Without waiting for a response, I text my beloved 3 messages in reply to his “happy sunday”:
sleepy sunday more like it. my clumsy fingers typed sleepy sinday instead of sunday and now I feel like I should write a poem about that.
my vibrator died mid orgasm last night, and it was disappointing and kinda hilarious
I wish I had a tea station in my room.
Sometime in the time after I hit my head real hard, I promised myself to be unhinged (see also: genuine) as often as possible, so I re-read these texts, giggle to myself, and feel a little mischievous eagerness about how he’ll reply.
I toss the phone down, lazily stretch and wince in pain before awkwardly stumbling my sore body upstairs to ask my child if he needs a ride to church. I have got to do the yoga today. Kiddo takes a few minutes to consider church. He's tired. We’re tender in my home, typically teetering on the edge of debilitation. We are ardent lovers of Jesus steeped in stubborn resistance that makes authentic decision making tricky. Of course he wants to go to church, he just needs a moment to work through the resistance.
I grab a novel to read as I walk out the door, with plans to hit up a park while I wait for his church service to be done, and recoil at the wasps enjoying a grasshopper buffet from the crevices of my vehicle. Damn, I thought I sprayed most of them off at the car wash yesterday. I take a second, uncoil just enough to see that the wasps are actually working for me, pulling grasshoppers off the bottom of my ride, aptly named Lady Stay Puft. Okay then, you just keep working your magic, wasps. Get em til they’re gone, please and thank you. This might be the first time I’ve felt gratitude for wasps. I tried feeling grateful for them a couple years ago when I learned they were pollinators but couldn’t get there. Now it seems, I’ve conquered the hurdle. It’ll now only be a matter of time before Lady Stay Puft will be grasshopper free. Thank you new wasp friends. Please don’t sting me or my children.
I drove a different highway to the campsite the other day, one that happened to host a section of road covered in grasshoppers, each hopper pinging my vehicle almost to the beat of whatever Taylor tune was playing. I did real good a few weeks ago to finally listen to something other than Tortured Poets, but as the last week has tortured my tender heart, TTPD was inevitable and therapeutic on the drive, even with the grasshopper fest hitting the beat on the undercarriage.
I chose that road to honor my beloved. I also chose to wait out the sunset that night to honor him because I learned about both the alternative journey and sunset photography from him. Relationships post-trauma are not a walk in the park, even when we are walking hand-in-hand through a park. On the drive to the campsite, my son and I talked about creating new relationships with old friends, how change is inevitable and healthy, and how embracing change with an open, curious mind is a healthy skill. Meet the new me. Hey, meet the new me again. Again, Hi, I’m new. How are you new? I’m trying this technique, trying to not obsess over hurts, trying to give space for my worries to bubble up, over, and out so I can be open to new and healthier, trying to have faith in divine timing and in divine intervention but man, I’m flawed. Which Matt Haig says means I’m human.
I stopped at Booster Juice to snag a matcha monsoon with warrior booster before going to Kin Coulee, sat down to wait for my smoothie and then didn’t leave. I’m assuming a staff member was bumping one of their playlists on the store’s speakers, tunes that had me grooving while sitting at the table working on a different blog post on my phone. There I was for an hour, sipping a smoothie I’d craved for days, having a dance party while writing like some kind of mystical creature in love with the moment. Inner conflict free glee like this is rare and must be treasured and then promptly documented.
Have you ever read Eminem’s 'about the artist' on Spotify? It might be the best one I’ve read on there. I think back to my teenage anger soothed by Eminem’s violent rhymes. That someone else knew anger the way I did inside was validating and appreciated. As was the bit that "flights of absurdity appealed to listeners too young to absorb the psychodramas." My mom grounded me from The Eminem Show CD when I was 17, so I snuck it back for an hour while she was gone, recorded it on a cassette tape, and then just played it quietly until she gave the CD back. I bet creating his new album - with a concept of Marshall Mathers vs. his alter ego Slim Shady - was such a deeply therapeutic process. I understand the inner conflict, the need to address our younger selves. I hope he feels more peace in his life now.
Kiddo’s in the car now so we cruise home. As I pull onto my side street, I see people walking into the windmill and feel longing. That’s it, I’ve decided, I’m going to the greenhouse. But first, a walk around to neighborhood book libraries to donate some books, and see what’s available. This is a thrilling development because Sunday’s usually feature me, burrito’d in a blanket, dreading the upcoming week, without stamina to do much. My updated approach to food must be working for me.
More books is the opposite of what I need. A girlfriend told me the other day that she gave up feeling bad about having an endless to-read list. I’m still considering the plausibility of that for me. Shaking out some shame about the never getting smaller pile that lives beside my bookcase might do me well, but so will keeping expectations about reading realistic regarding stamina and possibility. I do want one of those wooden spinning bookshelves, like the ones the library has now in the summer book exchange program, though.
I’m considering lowering the selling price of goosesong. I suck at marketing, just wanna have faith that the Universe will get her in the hands of those it was intended for be my main marketing strategy. Mysticism but for marketing literature.
I forget, in moments of misery, that across the street, there are fans pulling floral air outside the neighborhood greenhouse. I tell myself, once more, to remember this next time I feel isolated in my basement with my discombobulation. I inhale gratefully as I saunter past. The books held clumsily in my left hand shift through my wrist as I exhale. I feel different in my body, more capable somehow. Like a person who thinks a thing and then is able to do it. Again, I wonder if my updated approach to food is working on my behalf.
I split my book donation between the two neighborhood libraries close to me. I quickly snag The Comfort Book by Matt Haig and close the library door before coming to terms with adding yet another book to the pile. This one has promise. Comfort is one my 3 C’s after all, along with Connection & Creativity, so the finding of this feels divinely intervened. Maybe I’ll take this book to the office. Maybe the counselor on my team will use it with our counseling clients. Maybe I’ll keep it for my office. Maybe I’ll be a person and not a professional and just read it at home. I read a page while walking towards the greenhouse and wonder how I appear to my neighbors. My ratty black thin sweatshirt & sporty black shorts, long wild hair dancing in the breeze, glasses sliding down my nose in book while I saunter down the block. 14 year old me would be thrilled with 39 year old me. When my mom was the age I am now, she was a grandma, and I was a new momma at 21, in the depths of navigating a life I would never want to experience again. 21 year old me would also be thrilled with 39 year old me, would be rejuvenated with hope to know that the ache dissipates, would be buoyed up knowing that love becomes even more loudly accessible with every challenge we conquer.
I say hi aloud to my friend from church while walking past her house and think about texting her to tell her. I haven't attended church in years. I consider texting another woman from church who has sent me a few texts checking up on me. I don’t know if she’s messaging me because she genuinely cares or if she is trying to add a checkmark to the list of women she’s supposed to care for, gaining unspoken extra points for connection with an inactive. I resent that program for creating a sense of obligation and inauthenticity in relationships. I wish more people would know about religious trauma, and that congregations would be trauma informed. I also wish more churches had community funds to support vulnerable community members, not just share their millions with only congregational members, but that’s a ranty post for another day. All I know is that when I hit my head real hard; when it mattered to be a person tasked with supporting me, there were crickets.
I marvel at apples growing from trees in the greenhouse yard, think back to spring when I appreciated the beauty of those blooms. Nature's cool. I wander through the greenhouse, noting the aroma differing in varying sections, think about how every note of floral verdancy marries through the fans, providing me with a balm for my misery if only I’d remember. I promise myself to keep attempting to add whimsy into my life like that. To somehow hold onto the floral lightness of the day, to marry the magic of nature into a salve for my wounds.
I decide to start a paper quilling craft when I get home, a landscape inspired by a sunset photo I took while camping.
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