Two Months Out

I make no illusions about grief. It has now been almost two months to the day of Natalie's death, and I can't say I've begun to learn this language at all. If anything I'm discovering more words I didn't know I didn't know. Grief comes in such tiny splinters that I don't expect them until they are in me—under my fingernails come tiny shards of a life I so dearly miss and they do their best to double me over in pain. The other week I cried for an hour about an AOL email address. Seriously. I realize it sounds ridiculous but that is the thing with splinters: outside of us they are so tiny, but when they are where they are they are monumental. The night I got back to Virginia from a very hard trip to Canada I went over to Nat and Mike's to try on some of her old clothes (yeah nothing emotional about that endeavor) and in all my mental fortitudes I wasn't prepared for the coats to smell like her.
They smelled like her. Her hands were in the pockets.
I felt them there.
I can't touch those coats now because they feel like a hug and I lose it. They are on a chair.

The trip to Canada was agonizing because I was with men who didn't seem too keen on the business of living. All of them had gone through divorces or rough marriages or wars or other losses, all of them exhibited no signs of zest. At times it felt like I spent the trip trying to convince them to keep living. Maybe I am more sensitive to it right now because of Natalie, but to them life was more a chore to be endured than a gift to be enjoyed. I just watched a woman with a love of life lose it and then to spend 10 days with men who have life and seem so keen to trash it was, in a way, utterly profane. It was offensive. I wanted to scream at them for being so careless with something I know others have fought so hard to keep. I didn't.

There is much to say about the trip to Canada but I don't think this is the place to do it. Coming back I felt like my heart was sunburned, rough, raw, flaking and peeling, hot and sore to the touch. I felt like I left pieces of my heart strewn along the highway, on the shoulders of those I hugged, on pillows where I slept. I picked at it in moments of quiet and regretted it in moments of movement. It was never comfortable.

I realize that living can be unsexy; it is by its very nature., because living is sustained and sexy isn't. Living isn't some big constant adventure, it isn't one high after another, because living is real, and to be real, it needs to be rooted and there is nothing sexy about rooting. Roots aren't pretty. They are dirty, they are unseen, they get no glory. But they endure.
And lord, when roots are true, do they produce some beautiful flowers.

Window Shopping

When I was an intern for the consulting firm in Reston one of my favorite things to do on my lunch break was window shop. I loved to walk by the stores and see the wares they peddled in new and exciting outfits, see the life they pretended to sell because most of the time I'd find myself wanting it to some degree or another (but usually it made me dislike what I already owned). I liked the life they showed me.

That's what window shopping is, isn't it? It's selling a life and a lifestyle; it's this perfect dream world where the most fashionable clothes fit in all the right places and no one is ever alone. And it is separated from you only by a pane of glass; something clear and virtually invisible keeps you from the life you might want. Window shopping introduced something into our conscious we hadn't known before: suspended gratification. Not instant to be sure, but suspended and we live in it daily. I'll be happy when I have a nicer car, I have a newer phone, I have the best Mac, the best outfit, those shoes. “I'll be happy when I have...” joined our lexicon. We let happiness be suspended in front of us like the carrot in front of the donkey.

And we don't just do it with material items, we do it with ideas and immaterial goods. I'll be happy when I have the boyfriend/fiance/husband, the best job, the perfect kids, this big project is done, summer finally comes, the best group of friends, the most adventurous Saturday night, whatever it may be. “When I am prettier, when I am more popular, when I am better off, when I am respected then I will be...” and we fill in the blank with every good emotion we can make up. We window shop ideas and ideals. We let ourselves believe that The Next is what is bringing happiness and it never does; we somehow put all of our worth in our immediate happiness. We do this much more quietly than I am referencing; most of us aren't that blatant.
I am completely guilty; I put worth and hope, time and energy into potentials and I window shop at the storefronts that Hollywood and 5^th Avenue sell me. I am sold those lies and I dutifully take them like communion.

I have to say that one of the happiest times in my life was when I didn't own much more than what was on my back, I was single but in a community and thus rarely alone and my work stayed at work and my life lived the rest. It had nothing to do with stuff or what my stuff said about me, it had to do with me and that's it. My worth truly was in Christ. I wish I could get rid of all of window shopping and finally get back to this business of simply being wholly gratified with right here.

Come Away From It

There is something frustratingly powerless and ultimately futile about loving someone who doesn't love themselves, or who loves in a self-destructive and narcissistic way, the way a snake loves the mouse that shares its cage. But each time the best of you wants to believe they will change, that this time is different, that this is the moment the truth is out; that they've finally reached rock bottom. Each time you dutifully take the words and promises like communion. And each time they prove you wrong, they let you down and they leave nothing but destruction in their path. They tornado through the very people who love them. They wring out the very best of your intentions and leave you broken and exhausted, but somehow leave just enough hope for the next time they come around. They are easy to like and impossibly hard to love. They are addicts, manics, pathological liars and sometimes, all three. You don't know whether to hug them and cry or punch them in the face and walk out. Is it possible to do both?

I'm so tired and frustrated and there is nothing I want less than that person anywhere near the people I love, even as I love that person wholeheartedly. I don't want to literally drive into that tornado in a few weeks. Where are the boundaries with a person who has no regard for them? Where do you say, “enough is enough” when life without them is impossible, when there aren't ties that can be cut? How do you love them as Christ loves them and yet not be consumed? This is something I have openly run from and yet here it is again, same person, same situation, different year. Ugh.