I'm Only Going to Say This Once. Or Twice*

I have a deep and abiding and utterly irrational fear of kitchen tongs.  

Bear with me, it's been on my mind for a while....

I write this with all due gravitas, of course.  It is a very deep, very abiding, very irrational fear of kitchen tongs.  

And it is constantly on my mind.  Because I have a house.  Which has a kitchen.  Which has kitchen tongs.  I see them every day.  I open the 'tools' drawer and there they are, staring me down with their utterly pleasant completely benign blue and red tones.  Nestled between microplanes and meat thermometers, they hide until they don't.  Then they strike.

Don't judge my drawer.

I am at subtle war with kitchen tongs.  

Kitchen. 

Tongs.  

You see, when I took my yoga teacher training (YTT) about a million and a half years ago (okay, it is more like 15 but it feels like a million and a half) I almost cut the tip of my finger off.  I know, I know, I have occasionally been known to exaggerate but this is a far cry from exaggeration.  I still break into a cold sweat when I think about it.  That moment when I felt flesh separate from flesh.  When I stood at a sink full of soapy water and dirty dishes closed my eyes and thought if I just leave it in there, it's not really cut is it? 

But it really was.  And what's more, it was very nearly severed.  

Which I found out when one of the other trainees, a doctor, gently coaxed my hand from beneath the murky depths.  Of course my eyes remained closed (I do not do well with blood- particularly my own) but I felt the physicians tsk-tsk to my very soul.  "Well, that is not good," but with an Aussie accent.  Our ashram was too far away from the local urgent care to send me there and really, what would they do other than bandage it up?  So that's what he did.  

And as he did, he informed me that if I took the bandage off prematurely, before the top of my finger had knitted itself back on- because skin is so crazy- I would risk infection and loss of the tip altogether.  

Somehow, I did not vomit.  

So there you have it.  While cleaning it, I cut the tip of my finger off on a pair of kitchen tongs.  That's right- that feeling of flesh separating from flesh? was not from a paring knife of chefs knife or any other professionally sharpened utensil.  Oh no, it was the result of the dull inner lip of the tong and my own zeal for washing dishes.  

I almost cut the tip of my finger off with kitchen tongs and I literally cannot get over it.  

I have YTT-KT-PTSD.  

This is absurdity at its finest.  I fully admit that. 

And profundity in a way, too, I guess.  I mean, here are these lovely, largely harmless, completely commonplace cooking utensils and somehow they managed to change my actual fingerprint.  This thing that is unique and an identifying mechanism for an individual- completely altered.  I know this because I worked for the government for a time and had to be fingerprinted on several occasions.  Where one season my right index finger looked one way, the following season, it did not.  There was- is- a thick white line that now bisects the upper half inch or so of the offending digit.  I stare at it sometimes- mesmerized by it. I have tattoos- loads of them.  I have freckles and moles and scars in strange places.  I have a body that grew a baby, and it shows.  

But this one white line, this one sliver of stiff scar tissue just messed with my head.  

Clearly. 

*Solid chance I've said it thrice or more times.  Alas.  I have made a liar out of me. 

"Welcome."

A couple of days ago Facebook Memories kicked out a post that I made eight years ago (there's no getting around that double 'ago').  It was a photo of Henry, a photo of a stormy rainbow, and a long explanation of how- this is not a joke- we would be moving to Norway.  You see, I used to do things with some aplomb and not a little sense of drama.  

Scrolling to capture to the beauty...
and the bullshit. 

There are a few times throughout the year when my Memories just sucker punch me.  One of those times is now-ish.  The Easter/Spring holiday timeframe.  In Norway it usually heralded some sort of major (or minor) excursion for my husband and I.  One year it was Amsterdam, one year Wales.. another year it was Svalbard.  NATO would go quiet and we would escape. 

Since moving back to the States, things work a little differently.  Holidays are spent with us still- together and grateful- just differently.  Yet Facebook never fails to remind me that I have been places and done things.  

And that I was once a burgeoning Photographer (capital P).  

And that I could write.  

And that Wales remains the most perfect place on earth.*

But- as I am wont to do- I digress.  This moment in time that Facebook reminded me of felt a lot like a nudge.  A not-so-subtle shove back toward my own/old self.  Slinking away like a thief in the night has never been my MO.  Not really.  Yet here I am, eight years later, not really talking to anyone about the fact that we have started the process of relocating to Portugal.  Lawyers have been hired, documents sent back and forth.  And yet I don't talk about it.  I tell myself it is because nothing is firm yet, we don't have a house yet, we haven't filed for the visa yet. 

But we are going to.  We, my husband, son, and two impossible dogs, are going to firm things up.  We will find a house.  We will file the paperwork, in person at the consulate, and wait until they tell us "Bem-vindo".  

"Welcome." 

And then we will work hard at making our house a home, at creating a community, at discovering all the best places for gelato and the finest spots for fresh carrots and tomatoes.  We will welcome others and all.  We will create and be good and bad and happy and sad and feel everything and feel it on foreign soil.  Only it won't be foreign forever- nor will we be foreigners forever.   

Bem-vindo a casa- welcome home.  

*To me. 

Dry Drowning, Part 1.

I have started this entry in my mind more times than I care to admit.  I have started it over and over in different ways, but each feels wrong:

You hear the stories- you hear the stories but you never expect to be one.  To have one of your own to share. 

My husband and I don't have a fertility problem, we have a cancer problem. 

Have you ever jumped feet first, straight as an arrow, into an unknown body of water? let yourself sink slowly to the bottom just to find out how deep it really is? the air spilling slowly from your lungs as the water gets darker? Sometimes you reach it and sometimes you don't. 

I haven't reached it.  Not yet.  The air is still spilling from my lungs, the water is pitch black, and I haven't reached the bottom of the pool yet.  My toes haven't scraped along the floor even though the heaviness driving me deeper and deeper is relentless and becoming more familiar every day.  And I think that is why I cannot seem to start, compose, or finish this post.  

I've been drowning (to maintain the aquatic theme) for more than a little while now- been pulled down by the weight of unexpected and untenable grief and anger and terrible guilt.  And I don't know how to make my head and heart meet because of- or in spite of- or to address- it, them.  I don't know how to make my intellect and my emotion connect and converse and I certainly don't know how to let that conversation guide my words.  

I know.  This is all very cryptic.  And absolutely none of it makes sense beyond some scary words and pregnant feelings.  But I will grieve.  And I will get there.  

And I will tell my story.  

Our story.  

Who is the Wolf?

My son has this book by Eric Carle, Hear Bear Roar.  It's a typical Carle book with his stylized illustrations and press-to-hear-buttons attached to a tablet beside the pages.  Anyway- there's a button to press to hear a wolf.  This morning we had deep discussions (and belly giggles) about the accuracy of the various animal sounds.  When E pressed the wolf, and I happened to glance at the corresponding photo, well... 

Talk about a trigger. 

During my last- and to date most physically devastating- relapse I finally, angrily, acquiesced to seeing a therapist.  I struggled with relinquishing the punishing self-loathing that kept me from healing but did realize that at some point I would have to heal.  Or I would not make it.  

You see- my disease is as strong as me, stronger during those times when grief or fear or loss of control allows her prison walls to weaken.  In my late twenties (well documented earlier in this blog) those walls crumbled and she came out swinging and I was defenseless against the assault.  

Many moons and so many fewer pounds later at a tall 89 pounds- I was dying and she would not let go.  

So week after week I dragged my sickened, weakened carcass to an unobtrusive brick building, climbed one flight of stairs to an unobtrusive second-floor doorway, and knocked.  

In the middle of one of our sessions my therapist had me sit with my self.  She had me sit there, in her quietly cream-colored office, and close my eyes.  She had me think, or not think.  She let me let my mind wander for a while.  

And then she asked me to describe what I had seen, felt, smelt, visualized, experienced- whatever.  

So I did *shrugs*. 

I had witnessed a wolf.  A she wolf.  A rangy, wild, angry thing- hungry for something I could not feed her.  Lonely, cruel, hurt... I had sat with my self and instantly conjured this beast into being.  I saw her so clearly caged in a dense forest, pacing a clearing.  I heard her as she growled and whined.  I stepped back as she charged some imaginary threat, relaxed back into voyeurism as she paced some more, alone with herself.  And me.  Still it was that anger that drew me in.  Hypnotic in its intensity, her anger was like her- trapped and desperate to escape.  All that anger was pain and her pain was palpable.  

I could feel it and she could feel me and- 

"Who is the wolf?" my therapist asked.  

"What?" I blinked.

"Who is the wolf?" 

She didn't lead me, would never have said "you or the anorexia?"  But I didn't know how to answer her.  I didn't know who the wolf was- me? my disease? the part of me that was dying? the part of me struggling to just get over it all?  To be perfectly honest, to this day I still don't know the answer to that question.  I don't know who the wolf is- but I do know that she is still with me.  

What I have come to understand and accept is that the wolf has become mine and I am hers.  What we are to each other beyond that is something mysterious and often frustrating.  In my bones, in the essential parts of myself, I don't believe she is bad.  

But I do believe that we are sharing space meant for one.  Which sometimes feels like it is occupied by three.  

On Motherhood- and Some Other Things.

My son still wants me to hold his hand as he falls asleep.  

He will be three in a week.  

I know what people think about that- so many have offered their opinion.  But at the end of the day- at the end of every long day- there is going to be a time in the not too distant future when he doesn't care if I'm in there, out here, inside-outside-upsidedown. 

So for now, for as long as he wants and lets, I will hold his hand.  

I came out swinging last week, reentering the blogosphere with a lot of information without a lot of context. Go ahead, read that sentence again, I don't blame you.  The fact is, I am in the mood to write tonight and while there is an obvious choice of topic, I am making the easier choice.  

Because it has been a hell of a week and I need a break.

So- let's start with the whole 'had a baby' thing. 

I didn't know, I still don't know to be honest, what kind of mother I would be.  I didn't spend the duration of my pregnancy starry-eyed, holding my belly with mother-earthen anticipation and dreaming of my future child.  We elected to wait to find out the gender until the creature's illustrious arrival so I had no way of knowing who to talk to, or how to talk to it.  (Last night he and I talked at length about the airline seating arrangement of a Heffalump, the Gruffalo, a baby shark (actual - not PinkFong), and a dragon.  How things have changed).  Instead I spent it committing every cardinal sin- eating sushi, doing inversions until my MFM Doc told me to stop, adopting a puppy.  

You know. 

Like you do. 

I don't remember them handing him to me in the hospital, but I will never forget the first time I held my son.  I can't fathom what inspired it, but the first time he smiled is imprinted on my soul- he was only hours old. 

I don't ever recall reading about how the amount of laundry in a postpartum household increases exponentially.  

I have no idea the moment it happened, whether it was in that critical moment of reality, or later- maybe after my first uncontrollable weeping when I could not comfort him and he and I finally came to a sort of understanding- but I love being a mom.  His mom specifically, but a mom.  

Don't get me wrong I have my moments, and he has his.  I don't want to feel shame, but I do, in admitting that they happen more often than I like.  But that is honesty and transparency for you.  Oh- and I have tantrums to rival his own.  Even his own terrible twos.  But he is the brightest star in my universe- as warm as flame and as wild.  He's my feral boy and my cuddle buddy and honestly there are some mornings when he is the only reason I get out of bed.  

He is the reason that food goes in my system every day.  

He keeps me.  

The thing that no one prepares you for- not one book, not one blog, not one class or course or comment, is the depth of feeling that you drown in every day.  As a mama, mommy, mom.  The way it feels when they call for you in happiness, or in sadness, or in pain.  The way they make you.  

How their innate goodness, openness, indiscriminate interest in everything- how their joy makes you want to be so much more than you have ever been.  

How when they open their hand to yours, it is an endless gift.  

An endless, tremendous gift. 

It's Been a While.

Editions. 

Okay. 

I'm sitting on a plane with my almost-three-year-old son, listening to Cold War Kids while he commandeers my tablet for the duration of this flight.  (I am actually rather strict about his screen time- for these moments exactly).  

Some things have changed.  

Some have not. 

But let's get through this- 

Since I last blogged... well a lot has happened- but here's the nutshell version of events.

We moved from Norway

    to Spain

    to Virginia 

    to Florida.  

I wrote and self-published two *terrible* full length novels.  

My husband completed another Masters Degree. 

My education stalled in the wake of Motherhood. 

Ah- we had a baby. 

COVID- 

Cancer- 

More COVID- 

More cancer- 

F*ck it, let's start traveling again- 

This time we actually GOT COVID instead of just dealing with it's constant presence in our lives.  

Hurricanes. 

Evacuations. 

Possibly more cancer.

    and 

    

The inevitable return of the demon eating disorder- my oldest and least-beloved companion.

Oh and we rescued another demented shepherd dog.  

Oh again- navigating cancer while trying for another kiddo led to IVF, genetic testing, and the most profound and shattering grief and sense of loss I have ever felt (hello trigger). 

So here I am on this plane- here we are rather- traveling back to Florida after two frigid weeks in Colorado- and I thought I would take some time to reintroduce myself.  

Additions.

I started this blog well over a decade ago, a humble attempt to detail my travel escapades.  After a while and some heartache, it became something else entirely- a confessional of sorts.  An invitation to live through the worst possible (so I thought at the time) life moments with me.  Eventually I beat back the beast of a relapse and this space became, again, a journal about the journey.  

About life and how and where it takes you- me- all of us.  

In 2018 I decided to step away from this outlet, to take a break in order to collect myself and gather my words around me.  Today on this plane, I started writing again.  I started jotting down what was happening around me in my illegible shorthand.  

And it felt good.  

So I guess after all of this life, and all of these stories, I am back.  Back with more to tell, more to confess, more to admit.  

Hiatus? That was just the beginning. 

Les Pays Bas/ Hiatus.

This may not come as a surprise to some, given my waywardness and wandering mind, but sometimes I feel lost.

Sometimes I feel like I am floating outside of everything.  I could have used a better word there, a more poetic one, but I like the practicality and all-encompassing-ness of 'everything.'  I feel simultaneously cloistered and adrift.  Anchored, but not anchored to anything.

And yes, I recognize that this is only my fault.  I make the decision, have made the decisions, that lead me from Point A to Point B.  I am far too willful for it to not be my fault. 

But anyway, here's where I am today: stuck inside of my head, outside of everything else; disappointed, fretted, and ever-mindful of the future and my place in it.  I am acutely aware that my writing has been sub-par.  I suspect it is because of the mountain of chemistry and geology that I've climbing over the past six months, but some things are cyclical and sometimes I lose it, them.  Sometimes I lose my beloved words and have to wait it out.  

For me, forcing language is like arguing with a zealot.  It just doesn't turn out well for anyone.  

So I am going to stop for a little while.  Until it comes back, I am going on hiatus.  From this blog; from the empty, accusatory journals; from the pen and the (s)word.   I won't write until I'm ready to and I won't allow myself to feel bad for not writing.  I won't weep over words that I am losing because tears won't accomplish anything.  

And until next time.  

Stay tuned... 

The Long Game.

I've reached that point in the term- Oregon State runs on a 10-11 week schedule rather than a semester system- during which I lose myself in a blind scramble to figure out how to either save the world, or extricate myself from it.

Seriously.

I feel a little bad for my husband because he's been though this before, and he's going to go through it again.  This is the same point during which I become morose, taciturn, and angry.  Angry like you would not believe.  It's the kind of anger that has me tucking my nails into my palms until I break the skin to keep from punching every idiot I meet.  It's the kind of anger that leads me to believe that most people I meet fall into the aforementioned idiotic category.

It is the kind of anger that I turn back on myself.  Because I'm smart.  But I'm not brilliant.  So I can't save the world... not the way I want to anyway.

And here's where I run into trouble- I get angry and I lose patience.  I lose patience for everyone and everything around me because I feel so alone.  I wonder why no one else cares the way I do (note: on an intellectual level I know this is not true.  I know that I am not completely alone and, in fact, there are many many many people who care and are equally as angry and frustrated as I am.  But recall I'm currently seething and emotional destruction seems so much more satisfying than intellectual qualifications).  I wonder how long it's going to take everyone else to figure out how incredibly irresponsible we humankind are.

And then I have to sit back and let despondency wash over me like so many waves in a vast sea of anxiety.  Yes, I am prone to thinking dark thoughts and feeling my way through hard times and tough situations.  So I'll get over this, too.

But not before yet another crack wrenches at my heart and wrecks my brain.

And it's not even finals yet.

Time Flies.

Weirdly enough, it is Facebook that sometimes reminds me how quickly time passes.

This morning, for example, it told me (because like Google, it is creepy and all-knowing) that six years ago today I set off for New Zealand.  For 42 days.

In those 42 days, my weight plummeted from dangerous to deadly; my mind fractured, knit itself back together, fractured again; I got my first tattoo; I cried until I felt dry on the inside; I was given a name that is not my own, that still feels foreign to me despite a great man's conviction that he was right (and by default, I was wrong); I met some of the most intensely alive, vibrant, and giving people I have ever met.  Ever.

I learned yoga.  I learned to teach yoga.  I learned to let go.

Still, sometimes those many days don't seem real to me.  Sometimes they feel like a dream I had that sustains me even while it shames me.  It feels like something I didn't do, but some other version of me did.

Some version of me that I still want to be- with thin arms and ragged ferocity.  With terror and honesty and lies; with creativity that exploded because of desperation.  I miss that version of me.  Beyond the disease that is my oldest, most unrelenting companion, I miss that version of me for her flagrant, bold insanity.  Never was my writing so raw, never were my feelings so scattered or simultaneously so underwhelming and so overwhelming.

Never was I so wild.  My journals from that time, this blog from that time, are uncomfortable but they are real because they are hers.  And because she is me and they are mine, too.

Sometimes those many days don't seem real and then sometimes it seems like they are too far removed from me.  That she is.

Time.

Just.

Flies.

Mizpah.

Here are some things you may or may not know about me.

I often become obsessed with words and I get lines of poetry stuck in my head the way others get songs stuck in theirs.

I am frequently far away.  In thought or in my actual physical being, I am often separated from the people and the places that I love.

I have tattoos.  I have tattoos of birds, runes, witches.  I have tattoos that depict ancient Celtic folklore and everyday nursery rhymes.  I have a tattoo on my foot that failed to take it's intended shape but that I'll likely never cover over or fix because I sort of like failed, burnt look of it.


No one... I mean no one... would accuse me of being a Christian.

I am (I think) an okay person.  I have morals and understand right, wrong, and the vast gap of space between the two extremes.  But I do not believe in the god that Christians believe in.  I do not have the same faith.  Nor would I propose to.

Which is why I am likely as confused as you are at this point when it comes to my utter obsession with the word, the concept, 'Mizpah.'

It is a Hebrew word which means 'watchtower' (which is cool enough on it's own to be totally honest) and yet historically it has taken on a meaning so much more than that.  Mizpah is a sort of emotional bond- a word that signifies care and keeping and ongoing love even when separated from it all.  And from everyone.  It is a way of saying goodbye with the hope and intent of seeing each other again, in good health and happy.  And right.  It is important.

But hang on, it gets better.

The Genesis quote in which it appears (yes.  Genesis.  The first book of the Bible.... I am, in fact, waiting for the lightning bolt to strike at any moment):

'And Mizpah; for he said, the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.'

There is something eerily beautiful and mesmerizing in that phrase.  Something that makes me want to jump in feet first and have it put on my body.  'watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.'

I have always been hesitant to have words tattooed.  Runes don't really count.  At least not to my thinking; they are an ancient, unused language.  One for the gods and old time.  And the 'everyday nursery rhyme' I mentioned earlier?  I translated it into Runic before I had it tattooed.  So that was a thing.

But this- this would be something different.  This would override all of my ideal and young notions of TS Eliot lines as tattoos.  This would be a permanent reminder of all the people from whom I am parted; of all the time during which I am parted from them.  This would hearken back to a world that I willingly left behind.  This would be something different indeed.

And until next time,

Mizpah.