oh this is hard

I’ve written almost incessantly about my particular struggle to live in the present, about the way my near-constant preoccupation with both yesterday and tomorrow quite often entirely obscures today. On Saturday morning I felt a simultaneous impatience for fall to arrive and a desperate sorrow that summer was ending, and the moment perfectly captured all of this agita: push-pull, hurry-slow, there-here.

There are lots of reasons that I’m this way. I’m just wired that way, sure. I’m sensitive and I cling and I fear farewells and abandonment and things cut me deeply even when they are not about me.

I recently decided, too, a connection might exist between when I was born and my difficulty with living now: I think my late-summer birthday may contribute to my sense of myself as liminal, to the automatic way that I lean forward or back, turn the page sooner than I need to, generally feel frantically unable to just be here now.

I think my childhood of hopscotching across the Atlantic may also be part of this: I was always in constant motion, always either anticipating a goodbye or getting over one.

But something hit me hard this morning. This is true Captain Obvious territory, I realize that even as I write it, but it was insight to me. I was at my parents’ house in Marion, which represents summer to me, sitting still for a moment, windows open. I listened to the cicadas outside (which always remind me of summer nights spent at my father’s parents’ house in Long Island, lying in a narrow twin bed at 90 degrees to Hilary’s, summer wafting in through the screens). I watched the light flicker on the trees and thought of Lacy, whose hair is like mine and of whom the turning-to-fall light always reminds me, and suddenly it occurred to me why it is that I’m so impatient, so forward-focused, so quick to dwell in the past.

It is often simply too painful for me look this moment in the eye. Doing so requires me to accept the loss inherent in every minute of my life. To recognize the red leaf in the green grass is to really live with the fact that summer turns to fall, that life cranks forward and I walk closer and closer to the end of it every day.

Suddenly, this morning, I understood. I’m hurrying into the future and hiding in the past to avoid staring into the sun of my life. To escape the reality that every minute is gone as I live it. To pretend that it’s not true that I can never have any of those moments back, ever. My life’s single most painful truth is the slow turning forward of my time on earth and the inherent loss that that represents.

It hurts to stare into the sun. I blink and my eyes water and sting. But that’s not a reason to hide. I know that in my head, and even in my heart. Making it so is harder, though. The impermanence of this life is truly heartbreaking to me. Every single day contains goodbyes and I find fact the of that nothing less than brutal.

But what is my option? I will be a lucky woman if I have another 36 years ahead of me. May I not squander them in the same fear that so eroded many of the first 36.

When I’m at home I almost always run the same loop.  A creature of habit through and through, I am.  The route takes me past the used bookstore that I used to go to as a kid with my sister and father, past a kid-friendly restaurant where I ate when both of my children were small, and past a front porch festooned with prayer flags.

It’s those prayer flags that are on my mind today.  They are tattered from from being whipped around by the wind, bleached out from the sun and rain.  Yet every day they recommit to the same task, snapping around according to the wind’s whimsy.  Even with their faded, worn-out fabric they continue to transmit their hopes, their prayers, to the world.

I feel similarly buffeted by the wind, likewise faded from the elements.  It’s been, as I’ve written, a summer full of wind and sunshine, memories and joyful moments, but also one that has bruised my heart and made me feel tired in a bone-deep way.  The reasons are personal and I’m aware of and sorry for being a broken record.

Still, the prayer flags snap away as their edges fray and their colors fade.  I’m not sure I have the same conviction about my prayers and hopes as do those small squares of colorful fabric, though I wish I did.   I picture them in my mind’s eye, take a deep breath, try to inflate my exhausted heart, and steel myself for more winds ahead.  May I keep waving.

I was at BlogHer this past weekend. Honestly, the weekend was kind of underwhelming, but I don’t want to go into that here. What is on my mind is the reaction that several of the people I was most excited to meet had to me. I’ve heard more than once since the weekend that people were disappointed in me and that I didn’t seem to be the “same person” as on my blog. This from people who never actually talked to me.

How did I feel this weekend? Lonely. Awkward. Intimidated. As though nobody really wanted to talk to me. Not invited to lots of various events. And then, surprised by the reaction I heard about after the fact (and sensed in the moment). Startled that anyone who reads my blog expected that I would be outgoing, confident, and self-assured in person. I feel upset at my own inability to convey how I actually feel. I can try harder, and I will, but I worry that the enormous difference between how I feel and how I seem represents some deep and fundamental lack on my part.

The thing is, my words and writing here do represent the authentic me. This is the place where I really AM open and true. So to know me here is actually to know the contents of my mind and heart. I’ve heard from more than a few acquaintances, from all phases of my life, who stumbled on this blog, and every single one noted that knowing me in passing they never knew I thought about this stuff. This is the real me, and I’m struggling to inhabit her in my day to day life. Not the other way around.

I am lost, again, in the whitewater that fills the perilous lacuna between perception and reality. I feel disheartened to have alienated people who have come to mean a lot to me in this space. And I feel frustrated by the speed with which people seem to jump to conclusions about me. Disappointed in myself for a few assumptions I made, too.

We should not presume to walk the terrain of the hearts of others without guidance. We stumble on our own paths, so how can we imagine that we would be able to navigate those of others without finding surprising contours, confusing switchbacks, darkness and light that flicker and disorient us? This is true even for those we know best, and it is certainly true for those with whom we have limited interaction and small amounts of information.

We do know that no one gets wise enough to truly understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our lives to try.
– Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

I think this is easy to forget. It is easy to assume, to conclude, to extrapolate from tiny experiences and infinitessimal indicators. Let’s not. I recommit myself to remaining open, and I urge you all to do the same thing. In the meantime I promise and swear that any lack of warmth perceived this weekend was about my own insecurity and awkwardness and nothing else, but I am still sorry if I caused any hurt.

I love Kelly Rae Roberts’s post on being mothered, mothering, and becoming who we are meant to be. She writes beautifully about her own journey towards motherhood, the heartfelt progress of which I’ve enjoyed following. But the part that I’ve been thinking today is her reflection that ” i am mothered by so many people and friends in my life and that i soak in these moments as my favorite moments.” She writes about how she can’t get enough nurturing and mothering lately and that she is trying to “be present for these offerings” rather than dismissing them, as she might have in the past.

Kelly’s words summon two strong feelings for me: a familiar and tinged-with-sadness awareness that I feel a similar need for support now, and a deep gratitude for the people in my life who have provided the nurturing friendship she describes.

I relate intensely to Kelly’s description of a heightened sense of wanting to be taken care of. What I don’t understand is why.

I’ve been focusing this summer on my mothering, trying to be as engaged as I can be with my children. I’ve been trying to offer them special experiences some of which I hope will become the glittering gems of memory that stud our recollection of certain times in our lives (in this case, their childhoods). Despite all of this summer’s joyful adventures, though, I’m struggling. I ache to be nurtured, for the kind of gentle witness and patient holding that Kelly describes receiving from her friends on a weekend away. It’s easy to assume that I am tapped out from the effort of this active mothering, drained, but I know that interpretation is simplistic, and that the weather inside of me has a more complex source.

Some of this is just my baseline, and reflects both my persistent difficulty in receiving help and my discomfort with true vulnerability. But more than ever, I find myself feeling lonely, and un-seen, un-known, and I am unsure about the rising volume of this need. As I change and grow, are some of those sources of support I counted on the most falling away? Am I walking through a valley that I need to cross alone, before reentering a more comfortable, familiar world?

Though I am in a fallow period, on a lonely passage, I still feel tremendously thankful for the people in my life who do support and take care of me. My parents (and let me be clear that when I talk about being “mothered” I speak about that broadly, Mum, I am not speaking about you!), my sister, and some very special friends, the native speakers of whom I have spoken before. This small group of people, a handful or fewer, have made me feel not alone and not crazy more times than I can count. I am deeply grateful for their patience with me, who can be so difficult and dark.

I recognize this as a time of transition, so perhaps this sensation of chill is just that my native speakers are changing, new teachers emerging. My deep longing for nurturing likely has almost nothing to do with those people doing the supporting and everything to do with me. I am so very raw right now, for reasons both known and unknown to me, and I guess it makes sense that this is accompanied with a persistent sense of being alone. And I am acutely aware of the tremendous gifts that this rawness and sensitivity brings with it; I can feel them showering over me, even on my sad days.

In the midst of this ache for being known, which rises and falls from potent to vague, I still feel certain that I am headed in the right direction. Even in the darkest moments there is a shimmer of truth and of calm that is new. I am, I know, becoming who I am meant to be. I cling to this, and hold it close as evidence that this too will pass. It always does. “That is life’s greatest sorrow and greatest solace. It goes on.” (Mary Pipher, Seeking Peace)