Seven

I stood on my balcony tonight alone and watched the heavens, breathing in the fullness of universe and breathing out the empty that resides inside me and I watched as the meteor shower displayed it's glorious performance.   Seven.  I counted seven in the half hour I gave myself.   Breathing in the fullness,  breathing out my disappointment of regular life.   Breathing in more deeply as the meteors shot across my head hoping to consume stray stardust to fill me up with the very elements which I am made of.  The basics.   The basics that wear down and become lost as we turn our attention to frivolous concerns of our life.   Frivolous memories that, if not kept in their proper proportions will become too big for us to hold in our hearts without them breaking.   Breathe in the fullness,  breathe out the pain of everyday emotional life.   Breathe in the chaos of the universe.  Breathe out control.

As I breathe, I pray for sleep with out the physical pain that follows me everyday.   I pray for sleep without the mental merry go round of reproach.  I pray for permission to allow myself compassion for just being human.   I pray that I remember to say  "thank you for giving me one more day to get over myself and to get out of my way"  before sleep comes and the stardust has settled into my DNA.

I pray I dream of groundlessness.

she said to be careful...

As I continue to move through my struggle to climb higher up Maslow's diagram it has continually been pointed out to me that I need to be careful of what I ask for.   Asking for something from the universe is sure fire way of getting it.   But being cognizant that Physics won't be fucked with helps when you find yourself with a gift. Repeat after me,  "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction..."  Your gifts aren't always going to make you feel good.  Well maybe for a while but within the gift, there is also a test or a lesson that needs further action.  If you don't want the next uncomfortable thing, don't ask for the gift.   Simply awful.  I always assumed that enlightenment and empowerment would always feel light and powerful.  It simply isn't so.   I am in a place today were I relate my internal frustrations to Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin:

See, I did join the army, but I joined a *different* army. I joined the one with the condos and the private rooms..."

"My name is Judy! J-U-D-Y Judy and I'd like somebody to call me by my name! Oh, okay I took my life in my own hands, I made a mistake fine I'm sorry! I'll never do it again! I wanna wear my sandals... I wanna go out to lunch. I wanna be NORMAL again!"

Too late Judy, errrr N-I-N-A...

At least I didn't kill Ed...

It is about gratitude.   It is about fear of self.  The self you don't really know is there.  Or the self you know is there and you are too afraid to admit it.  It is about looking at life with a wider lens because if you don't you get to a place where you almost kill someone who just happens to be in your small line of vision.  It is definitely not about Ed.   Unless you are Ed and didn't know about your possible fate, sitting just inches away from me one Sunday.  If I were Ed,  it would be all about me.   I hope Ed never reads this.  But in case Ed, you do.  I apologize from the bottom of my heart.  I promise it really isn't about you.

I sat in the blue chair one day while I explained that I was horrified with what had almost REALLY happened.   What I had almost REALLY done.  For all intents and purposes, I considered that I HAD done it.   It got inside my head and then there was the fact that there was that second where I moved forward,  absolutely no one else could have seen it, it was so tiny, but every sinew of my body reacted and moved me a tiny bit forward before the rush of shamed shock and horror engulfed me.  True horror at myself.  And shame and embarrassment.

The blue chair tells me that at least I didn't do it.  That I could choose to be grateful that somewhere inside of me I had enough humanity and knew right from wrong and could control myself even if murderous thoughts got so close to the surface.   I was not having any of it.  I remember tearfully saying how pitiful and small I must be if THAT was the only thing I could say about my character.   I was grateful I didn't  kill Ed.  I started to look for a rock to crawl under.  And waiting for the guilt police to come to take me away for the crime I almost REALLY did commit.   It didn't take long for guilt police to get there.  But instead of taking me away to my cell,  they stayed.  Settled in as if I had invited them over for coffee and a danish.

I, still in turmoil, sought out more counseling from my pastor.  She saw how stunned I was.  We talked about the safe places we all have and expect to always have and when it is violated it can be frightening and confusing for our spirits.  She also mentioned that I hadn't been the only one who had experienced a jolt in our spirit over the whole ordeal.   She mentioned that I should consider, once I had  brushed the gravel off my knees, that I should sit and share with Ed, the affect that horrible Sunday had on me.  She also mentioned that I might not want to explain, in detail, what could have happened to him had I been of a different constitution.  Good plan, we both decided.

I remember sitting there after having these conversations and I was still disgusted with myself,  I took a recipe card and wrote,  "I Didn't Kill Ed"   I stuck it on the long mirror in my bathroom.  This mirror reaches from one end to the other.  A huge space, yet this note card, as small as it was seemed to be the only thing I could see.  So big and horrifying, I couldn't even see my reflection for a long time.  It was there to satisfy my sense of irony.   My desire to beat myself up over and over again and to mock myself at how truly small and stupid my attempts at living a grateful life were.


“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”   -Anne Lamott-