Tag: grief

Humanity

Topsy Turvy

Lovelovemotherexpletive

The world is all fucked up. The country that I live in, especially. The Right, the Fear Mongering, Keep the BOrders closed from Brown people, the ‘its okay to kill brown people, they weigh less on the scales of justice’… that group is stronger, everywhere.

the quarantine is not over, but we’re all leaving the houses, exposing ourselves and our children because we can’t bear it. we just can’t bear it.

WE JUST CAN’T BEAR ANYMORE.

and that, of course, segways into the Black Lives Matter movement. The most shattering thing? White people needed to be reminded, or to have it brought to their attention. again.

I am not holding myself apart from this.

All lives are worth the same. The value is in the LIFE.

I’m not one of the oppressed. Color has never been a barrier to anything for me. and my cute and chirpy little white girl face has gotten me out of more trouble than you could imagine. None of it is intentional, but I’ve been aware for a long time.

I acknowledge it. I see it. I imagine it will happen again, because the society hasn’t changed yet.

and the thing is, the fairness actually comes in ALL OF US getting the good stuff. ALL OF US getting a warning instead of a ticket, a smile instead of a baton to the forehead.

ALL OF US DESERVE LOVE. JUSTICE.

AMERICA NEEDS A NEW WAY.

(in absolutely no way am I saying ‘all lives matter’ in opposition to ‘black lives matter’. in absolutely no way. you sure you get me?)

Divorce, Humanity

Right Here.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

right here.

I think I wrote about this ages ago, when my dad died. BUT that was another lifetime ago, and I just tried to go look it up and find where it was,  and reading that stuff was too hard, and too foreign. The lifetimes having slipped far away down that river.

when my dad died, I was wrecked. Not only was his heart attack in my backyard, and my now former husband was giving chest compressions that kept him alive long enough for all his kids to get there to see a living body…  but the suddenness of the loss and the incontrovertible NO, HE WILL NOT MAKE IT. . . there it was, there it all was.

I found my mind racing and racing and racing, and I couldn’t get back to where I needed to be to function as myself and as the mother and householdrunner that I needed and wanted to be. it was memory, and memory and more memory world-shift and fear and grief welling and complete detachment from the people I was sharing a house with.

and oh, the racing. the fucking racing of my mind. pinging from wall to wall. a highspeed badnews montage, looped.

Quickly after the death, I drew a hand and wrote ‘RIGHT HERE’ and I don’t know if someone suggested it to me or if the HUBSJatthetime suggested it, but I hung it on the cabinet door next to the stove. I saw it multiple times a day.  and I physically put my hand in front of my face multiple other times per day. I smelled my skin. I closed my eyes.

Here I am. Here is my skin. This is all that there is, RIGHT HERE.

the circles are small. the physical space I am is all that there is. when the quakers say ‘center down’, this is how I feel, all the energies bringing me back to the RIGHT HERE.

I kept it up there during the long and painful divorcing process. Really helped when I put out the wrong number of plates, or when all I could hear was his disapproval, even after he was gone.

Somehow the hand fell off the cabinet, or I replaced it with another missive. Its been quite a few years now.

And, this week, I noticed it moving from place to place in the kitchen, showing itself in my new time of need. In this new sadness that is so familiar.

so, i’m going to put it back up. because…

HERE I AM. HERE IS MY VERY OWN SKIN. BLESS WHAT IS RIGHT HERE.

 

Right HERE hand Unwifedmotherexpletive

Humanity

Misses (our lists are long)

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I miss being able to go to a diner and have someone pour me questionable coffee in a white ceramic mug that I want to steal, each time.

I miss smiling at people with my whole face at the grocery store.

I miss putting my hands on my mother.

I miss LM, but I think its still right, because I missed myself, too, and hadn’t realized the depths to which I had gone missing, again…

I miss not feeling sad sometime each day.

I miss not worrying about the health of my kids, in a death-fixation way.

I miss browsing tangible things, and buying something I can’t assess from a practicality perspective.

I miss being lazy about food.

I miss school busses.

I miss editing and proofreading other people’s stuff. in quietude. in a timely fashion. without interruption.

I miss being able to not go to a yoga class when the kids are away. I miss the choices I didn’t make.

I miss the potential of meetings, to offer more choices in writing, in expansion of subjects, in simple conversations.

I miss coffee rolls.

I miss spontaneous visits.

I miss opening the door to let someone into the kitchen.

The world is going to be different, for quite a while. and I miss the old one, with all its problems, because at least I knew it.  Now I’m missing something I don’t even know. and that gets complicated, this not-knowing of the world.

peace be with you,

uwmfHouseplants Unwifed MotherExpletive

Humanity

let me reassure you.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

let’s be frank, shall we?

i am not going to learn a new language during my stayathome pandemica.

i am going to read more books. many of them will contain dwarves or thwarted knights, or possibly detectives. None of them will address racial inequity or the doomed American government.

it has been noticed, that LM, in anxiety/frustration/pandemica exhaustion, will stab frozen ricotta. he does not stab people, which is what i want you to know. but ricotta? that sucka died.

i have purchased a new lawnmower, because i have saved so much money in having all my vacations cancelled. and while i hate that one night at a waterpark hotel is the equivalent of a garden tool that i will use for at least 5 years, and that one night is what ‘all my vacations’ consist of.

i’m probably not going to figure out how to cook Indian food.

my kids are going to watch too many screens, way way too many.

i’m not going to think good thoughts about men. they suck. too many of them have jobs that directly affect my life. i’m talking politicians here. they suck. across the board. it is not time to pretend that the women are just the same. what women?

there are these perfect, golden shard of light moments that keep happening. almost every day. i’m just trying to stay alive to catch them. i can’t collect them, or share them, they just melt away, but they are sustaining me.

one of my 7-year-old’s teachers is reading ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ by C.S.Lewis for the class on youtube.  I can’t get over how much I love listening to it with her. Its fulfilling my life’s purpose that at least one of my children will get my love for C.S.Lewis before adulthood.

so, golden shards, stabbing ricotta, lawnmowing in circles.

got it?

love you. hang in there.

uwmofo

Old Mower Unwifedmotherexpletive

 

 

Humanity

COVID MY ASS

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Yesterday Sucked.

I didn’t want to get out of bed. I had a headache and I wasn’t ever nice, all day. It was a little grey out, and rained in the morning. The kids watched screens for most of the day. I made muffins from a box kit. watched some Miss Fisher. Yelled about school work. Yelled at the LM, with legit disappointment in myself and in him.  Got them all outside for a hot second in the afternoon, onto the trampoline as a group. That was the only feel-good moment of an entire day.  The headache never left, was probably the inadequacy of acetaminophen against allergies.

TODAY IS A NEW DAY, again.

i guess, that one of the things learned is that they DO keep arriving, these new days. I, evidently need the reminder that the days just keep coming.  As my brain falters, and my steps stutter, there is always a new morning.

One of the things I hated most about my ex was his ability to wake up in the morning, fresh as a daisy.  No matter what had happened the night before, each morning he was FRESH AND UNSCARRED.  ( i will never discount the scarring it caused ME, mind you, to have to beg for acknowledgement all of those days…it was almost as if i was living a completely parallel experience, more evidence that i was alone in all of that, so definitely alone…) But still, it was a skill… think of how that must be, to wake up like that?! and now…

TODAY IS A NEW DAY, again.

the kids are resilient.  i know, we all keep saying that.  Resilient doesn’t mean happy or unhappy, anxious or calm, it just means Survival.  The kids are surviving, as am I.  Because we are so lucky to be together, to have the means, to have a yard, to have electricity, to have me being an educated in education person, with a ton of calmness and ability to provide all the bits and pieces to get them all through this… as I get myself through this too.

*regular things:

I did get my hearing checked, by a real ear dr., and got meds and relief and hearing. SO YAY. now i can hear all the yelling.

I’m cooking an awful lot, which is necessary, obviously, but LM is magically helpful. and, truth? i’m not bad at it.

i’ve got an entire zombie-fighting arsenal of resources at my disposal, and they are all inside my body, heart, brain … isn’t that fucking astonishing?

 

LOVE TO YOU, in your zombie-fighting.

UWMOFO