Tuesday, August 31, 2010

no longer home

i'm in my husband's house
where my children live
and i'm in the spin--the vortex--of how i felt before i left.
all those feelings are still here--still igniting and whirling and angry and gross and tired.
exhausted really.
and i consider opening all the doors and windows and sending those feelings on their long holiday.
and i get lost in the suburbs now.
i go on the endlessly long route to nowhere and use up all the gas.
i get lost on all the iterations of bollinger canyon road--
confused and turned around by the endless string of windemere parkways north and south, east and west
i get lost.
zoey spins, too.
enters the "i don't want to go to school if i can pretend i'm sick and be with you all day" dance.
and i meet her in it--
'cause we love playing hookey and eating crap and watching movies and doing what we can to get away with our day out of time.
i buy her bras.
we go to the dollar store and rent movies.
we buy crap--but it's a dollar--so somehow the crap seems like its worth it.
and i whirl and spin.
it is crazy making for me here.
there is no place that feels like me--like mine--
and yet everything that is here is half? mine? including the debt?
and so i whirl and roar and gurgle and sputter and freak out.
we put in "the lovely bones".
we watch the movie.
i notice, she notices, that it's symbolic language that connects the inbetween and the living.
there is a tree like the girl's supposed heaven on the opposite hill.
it was the woman who built this house--it was her heaven, too.
i walked there one day--talked to raven from under the tree--left offerings of gratitude for being the thing opposite me on the hill of my never once belonging.
it is gone for me--the miracles of this landscape--and yet i remember and love and want and long for the romantic ending to my whirling.
it isn't coming.
it will never come if the emotions i felt here can't get released from this house.
we talk about the paperwork in the middle of the unfortunate night.
we will file the paperwork.
i dream about getting a bike and a job at the mall by the water in alameda.
i want to wake up and go to work and get a paycheck for awhile.
this, too, will pass, i suppose.
i am not who i was and i am not yet who i will be and i feel like that damn child trapped in the inbetween.
i feel like i might die in this chrysalis--though it feels, too, like my wings are wet from the locust i've just become.
i consider the owls, who are back, bigger and more alive than every.
i am done with that spiral of underworld for the moment.
i want to come up for air and normalization.
find a twelve step group for my co-dependency and enabling.
start over, again.
or not.

i breathe on this red couch--and i watch this gorgeous girl child of mine in her headphones and sniffles, taking notes and connecting on line with some one or thing that makes her smile. i observe but do not investigate. she's doing math homework. it's 9:30. i'm so glad we stole the day.

3 comments:

Megan said...

ECHOS!
Echos!
echo.
o.

I have in me another person in the story you share. I have the Zoey in me. I remember the stolen moments. (I still look for them.) The suffering of mine... and theirs. I remember the awkward negotiations.

Later, much later, it is less disorienting, less biting, less uncomfortable and distressing. It is never gone but shifts from suffering to acceptance. Sometimes I look at it with compassion and others like a scar I used to think was ugly but now I bare as a part of my survival story, with the pride of what makes me, me.

Blessings.

Robbyn McGill said...

i cannot add anything to what you've said other than thank you, for putting it into words. and your words, in particular. <3

Unknown said...

Mama-love, love and loss, observing it all snf living life - you are amazing! C