The mailable reality, irregardless of our best efforts, finds a way to seep into unreachable soul crevices like the ashy smoke aromas of a  fire gotten way down deep into the cushions of our everything.  Every step into some new life direction serves as  a marker of the growing distance between the years  once knew and the courses which  lay still before us.  In between the two exists a universe, ever growing.  As the mirror begins to rearrange her depictions and stories, I grow less engaged with our lifelong infatuation and venture now to find new tellings.  And when I stand still long enough…I  can almost feel the world turning around me.  I inhale; realizing  that it is frail as anything and as strong as everything all at once.   I can not right the wrongs of life, solve the pending questions of humankind.  I haven’t a clue what happens to dreams lost, lives past and love ill placed…I am instead, acutely aware that amidst my unknowing… this moment; life space we engulf, feels as significant, somehow,  as the sun is bright and the world seems uncontainable.  And she, in aged wrinkled dreams and plans…sniffs  the cuff of her ashy wrist and breathes deeply in the beautiful scent of her life.

The sun slowly baked us into different degrees of already varying skin tones.  This was perhaps the third round as we sat with silly giggles and nonsinsical chatter.  As the afternoon progressed, the roof top jammed more tightly with the typical chicago chic urban crowd basking in the much anticipated warmness of the afternoon.  

 

The line began to wrap down one then two flights of stairs.  We sat center of the roof deck with the cityscape smack in front of us and laughter dancing between the tables. 

 

She…stood out from the crowd immediately.  There, in the middle of the floor standing alone, dressed in a wildly printed green polyester dress.  Her hair hung past her shoulders in a blazing hue of red.  Her makeup layered thickly enough that the creases and streaks were noticeable even a table away.  Despite the 80 degree sun, she wore nylons and cloppery black heels.  Her makeup shone in electric hues of hot pink blush, sky blue eyeshadow and apple red lipstick.  It is not an understatement to remark that manequins are less made up than she was.  Also hard to not notice was that the woman wearing rings draped on almost every finger, built in stature like a football player, adorned on every inch by something that screamed “I’m a woman,”…was actually a man.

 

Perhaps I had too much to drink.  Perhaps this was the moment when the darkness that lives in me won out…but I looked at my friend and immediately made sneering comments in regards to the absurdity of her being there.  My friend cracked a joke that she looked like Wilma Flinstone, and I laughed so hard I almost fell from my chair.  Another friend tapped my arm and gently reminded me how unkind I was being.  She asked if I would want my daughters to behave the way I was; and I poutingly concurred.  In that moment, I whispered internally…it didn’t feel wrong

 

I sat with my counselor the following Monday and he asked me to explain what prayer and faith looked like for me these days.  I told him about the woman that day and how I had behaved.  “ Prayer and faith for me were summed up in that moment when I knew it was wrong; though I couldn’t feel it; had given myself permission to be juveniley, bitchy and ridiculous … then when charged to look at it; my internal think tracks altered  and  I searched instead for the right, the kind, the human…”  I later had the opportunity to talk with her and was grateful for the brief exchange.  

 

Afterall, I explained to my counselor, “  I  realize that I have sometimes been her.  in life, social settings, love, sometimes anywhere.  I have been the absurd one who did not belong or fit in.”  And I cried, because I realized that we…really are all the same.  Some of us just have the courage to be.

  I was sitting to eat with a friend last weekend and he asked if I wanted to pray before we ate.  I froze momentarily.  I asked if that was routine for him to pray before he ate.  I said I was fine to do whatever.  I realize I am no longer convinced that I know what prayer really looks like.

There was a time in my not so distant past when I squinched my eyes and heart and soul in a concerted effort to speak to God  as I knew him with all of my being.  These days, I am challenged by my former thinking.  These days…I am listening to life and telling the truth as I know it and see it and experience it.

I ran an 8k two weeks ago amidst an unseasonal snow storm.  Friends sent witty text messages advising me to wear my snowpants and boots.  I had every reason not to run that morning, the weather, the weather; and quite frankly a lack of training.  I pulled thin layers on over my body and flaunted the just purchased hoodie with the words running up my arm, ” run like a girl.”

I got to the starting line ten minutes after the runners  had left the corrale.  I began down the frosted city streets, watching by own breath in huffs and rubbing snot from my dripping nose.  The streets were empty and the landscape of the city hung before me.  My toes were wet and frozen…but there just ahead, the runners were now within view.  I kept reminding myself to pace…this is only mile one.  The first runner I passed appeared to be an older man in perhaps his late sixties or early seventies.  His run was more of a pronounced scoot with his feet; I almost cried as the sight of him shot inspiration through every part of my being.  I made my way to the pack, passing people with prosthetic limbs, couples cheering one another on, people struggling with severe obesity…all there; pushing through.  By mile 4, I played a game with myself to pass as many runners as possible and ended the last uphill stretch with a sense of elation .  As the finish line came into view, I sprinted as fast as my legs could carry me.  The cheers of strangers clapping and screaming, “go runners,” echoed me through.  The photographer snapped my picture as I waved my arm in accomplishment.  And then it hit me…’ what now?’  I watched for a second as the runners were greeted with hugs and signs by friends and family.  In that moment it dawned on me…” no one is here for me.”  For a millasecond I allowed this great sadness to be present.  Then I  consciencely left it behind me and headed home.  In retrospect…this experience felt more like praying  to me than any of the  poetically strewn together words ever spoken amidst circles of hand holding friends. 

It is so strange now as I interface with the practices that have so shaped my life for so many years.  If someone asks to pray before a meal or at any other time…I have learned to listen; as with everything else. 

These days, however, I am allowing my soul to figure out what prayer is and means and looks like for me. 

There was no rhetoric as I ran that day.  But my soul felt alive in the silence…

 

From childhood, we are bombarded with metaphors, depictions, and illustrations of what happiness is and the ingredients needed to get us there; and furthermore the entitled proposition that life at its core revolves around or includes somehow that very delineation of happiness. 

 

The definition of the word happiness struck me as I gnawed on the concept of it. Contentment, pleasure, gladness, cheerfulness, bliss, exhilaration, delight, joy…

 

Have I fallen so very far off the grid of balance that I no longer subscribe to the proposal that as much as I would enjoy to frolic by the pool of our cultures mainstream version of happiness… I believe it is not a necessity nor legitimate ingredient to live an inspired life.

 

Is it ludicrous thinking that perhaps the ideology of happiness itself becomes such a driver towards lavish; vacant ritual which pushes me out to the farthest outskirts of trueness that I would do better to abandon the pursuit of it altogether?

 

The superimposed imageries of smiling happy people with unflawed lives, plastic bodies, logical storylines read like overdone scripts and I have grown exhausted with the agonizingly predictable re-runs and plots. 

 

What if…I simply allow my life to intersect with my soul; moment by complex, random moment.  What if I make peace with its capricious, volatile, ever evolving existing without contrition?

 

What if…I allow the places where I fail, fall short, that pain me most; Instead of distancing myself or running from them towards the mirages , I turn and  welcome  these spaces with the countenance of peace and allow them in… to teach me about myself,  the people on this journey with me,  and what I am made of. 

 

 Unlike the collections of so much else I have spent my lifetime using as the metrics for my own happiness, this… making peace; integrating with the broken pieces of my life and soul; learning to listen to my life, irregardless of place, players, haves, have nots, losses, gains, beauty, suffering, knowings… infuses my heart with a deep sense of contentment, pleasure, gladness, cheerfulness, bliss, exhilaration, delight, joy…happiness.

 

 

 

 

 

This buzzword has been humming in my life for some time now, as distinct as the chimes of St. Peter’s church, proverbially present; soberingly familiar.  I sit in his office, frozen mid motion and thought, as my heart beat protracts to an audible thumping.  “This is it,” I realize in the elasticized minutes.  “I am in the belly of this beast.”  Codependency.  The obscurity of the word has eluded my most arrowed thoughts and understandings.  I have come up against this invisible, stealthy nemesis who has pummeled my dreams and souls dance…relentlessly, mercilessly, since almost forever. 

 

The lingering image of the little girl watching out the window of the brown and yellow townhome for her father, whose presence had lapsed in frequency and depth as time paced on, wanders amongst the hallways of my recollections.  Somedays I catch a glimpse of her still sitting there, watching for him.

 

I sat in the cushy chair and asked my counselor, “Do you mean I have spent all of my adult life looking for some skewed version of my father’s love?”  I framed this with equal parts sarcasm, absurdity and wakefulness.  “Yes”…he squarely answered.

 

That is, I paused, perfectly tragic. 

 

The invisible materialized in that next moment.  The ambiguous, the illusive…the; my…codependent self.  An uncontrollable stream of tears burst from the ducts of my eyes.

 

 “Oh my God…how fucking tragic.”  I have been pouring all my life, my soul, down black holes of men In the hopes that they would love me, and not…not abandon me.  “How fucking tragic.  I have wasted all that time, all that life.” 

 

She came slowly into a clear focus…the bright eyed, beautiful girl watching through the window; awaiting the arrival of her dad.  Believing he was coming.  Waiting; willing for his presence…always. 

 

My head tilted as I shared in her encumbered silence.  I reached out my hand to touch her back.  She was motionless.  I brushed my palm against her back…and she slowly turned her face to mine.  Her eyes wide with anticipation, hopes and innocence.  I smiled at her, reached out and closed her delicate little fingers in my hands.  Tears filling my eyes and choking in my chest.  “He’s…”  I began, “Sweetie…he’s never coming.  Never coming.” 

 

She stared perplexed into my eyes.   She grew agitated and began screaming, insisting that I was wrong…that he had to come, that he was supposed to come, that she needed him to come.

 

“I know.  I know,” I concurred.  But… he never, never will come sweetie, and I’m so sorry for that.  But he never, never will.” 

 

 

Crying now, she climbed gingerly into my lap.  I wrapped my arms around her and brushed my hands through her hair. 

 

“I will always be here for you, “I whisper.  “Right here, with you…always.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Somehow she managed to slip into the spinning doors past my searching eyes.  I spotted her ear length dark blonde hair in the waiting area of the restaurant.  We walked towards one another, she wearing a lovely hue of compassion and love on her face. I, relieved that this beautiful woman whom I respect and adore so unreservedly …loved me still; despite and through what felt like an avalanche of regretful choices I could finally no longer shroud with pleasantries, denials and schedules.

 

She reached out her arms and enveloped me with her support, love and acceptance.  I inhaled part of her knit sweater as I pushed back tears. 

 

We sat across from one another, I twitching my fingers and fidgeting my sleeve as we talked of all that had happened in between our last exchange of truth.”  It was if I was living behind a wall of isolation where I could not touch or be close to you or any of my friends.”  “ This thing kept me separated from my own life.  And I feel as if I have re-gained my life, again.”  “  Welcome back,” she smiled. 

 

But there was more…this I knew was somehow bigger; for both of us.

 

“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”  “A loving restlessness became obvious in her eyes.  For the last almost decade we have loved, worshipped, prayed to and shared a life defining perspective of the same God together.  “I can not make my heart believe…and right now, I paused, it doesn’t.” 

 

A quiet sat softly between us as we gazed together at this unknown landscape before me. Vast; Dangerous; Breathtaking; Heartbreaking; Beautiful; Unknown; Terrifying… She holding my hand as she had done so often before.

 

I spoke with my counselor the following Monday about the knowing that my new paradigm would not be one that those I love will make peace with easily.  “What do you hope in then?”  She asked with quiet intensity.  My answer had always been blanketed with faith and God speak.  Without pre-meditation, I spoke from my heart…” I have hope in the opportunity to live authentically without the repression of bending my soul to fit in some box or line or place other than where it belongs.”  She, I’m sure was taken aback, as was I.  I had not truly expected to have an answer…a hope outside of pragmatic religiousness; but I did.  And it…is the most elating sense I can recall in quite some time.

 

I stand at the end of  a way I had never expected to come to.  No longer afraid of the notion of being nomadic of soul.  Authentic.  Unconvinced.  Open to the possibility…of life.

 

 

There are times when I try to establish as much distance between myself and reality as humanly possible.  “I don’t want to end up here, again.”  I exhaled with passionate resolve.  The clarity of a dysfunctional life pattern having materialized with startling exactness.  “My work is to figure out how and why I end up, despite my best and most intentional efforts, here again…to do an autopsy on this thing.”  He grimaced that an autopsy sounded too morbid a reference of it. We agreed to reframe the verbiage and look again at the relational prototype.  “I stopped believing in myself, again.”  “Surrendered the truth that was in my heart and soul for something…someone who seemed more credible.”  So I exchanged again my truth for lies, because I wanted to believe in them; because reality is raw and callous and uncomfortable.

 

He pointed as his brows furrowed quickly, “that’s it.”  “Not to oversimplify things, but there is your autopsy.”  “always telling yourself the truth.”  

 

 

I sat for a moment.  “Denial is a place I have often arrived at.”  “It is a space proverbial and dysfunctionally comforting.”  I thought further…” It is because, I think…reality is sometimes almost too painful, and so I fold back into the place of aligning fabricated storylines to construe my own reality.”  Denial

 

I am almost exhausted just thinking of the work it entails to stay truthfully in a healthy mental environment.  “Don’t we all have some form of dysfunction at the end of the day, am I over thinking this?”  “Should I just resolve to accept that I am imperfect and make peace with those actualities?”

 

He explained the purpose of our work as being the opportunity to learn from ourselves in order to grow and become more whole; evolved and informed in our choices and living.  “Just because the world is covered in shit, doesn’t mean I want the shit all over me.”  I nodded, grinned a tiny bit.  That was truth; life covered in shit; the notion of going through it while attempting to not be drowned in excrement. 

 

Having the courage to not merely face, but to summon and furthermore remain present with the pain and the fear and the brutal realities.  The courage to learn what they have to teach us about ourselves.  To rightly make peace with the truth.

 

…and nothing but.

 

 

 

I have been huddled in indistinguishable spaces; hiding…missing my own life; again.  I had grown accustomed to the once enchanting cave I wandered into, which became a portal back to a darkness I attempted to leave behind. 

 

This…cavern became the place where I forced my soul to fit into, despite her screaming and defiant outbursts.  I shushed her, pleading with her to sit still, quietly, acquiescing to the obscurity. 

 

She sat restlessly, patiently, knowingly.  Eventually convincing me again that this place was not our home despite its glossy veneers, its melodic rhetoric’s and poetic intentions.  She knew… we were confined by the darkness of denial which would lose its hold once we ventured past the imaginary parapets and construed realities.

 

With squinty eyes, I place my hand in hers.  I stagger clumsily, tripping over the mendacities that kept me anesthetized, past the shattered records of twisted words and voices.  Toward the truth; which I had long ago betrayed. 

 

The daylight flickers with warmth and a surprising console. The clocks have carried on and life is noticeably a bit more weathered than when I was last here.  The wild flowers are scattered in bursts of brilliance and simplicity, color once more.  The wind strokes against my brown flesh…I inhale, finally… once again the daylight makes my eyes squint, as they have become accustomed to the darkness.  I hold tightly to her.  I trust her now fully; perhaps only.   I am sorry that I ever stopped…she, I have forgotten is wise and kind, is knowing and beautiful, is all I want to be and become.  “I am so sorry,” I clinch her hand, “that I have betrayed you again…forgotten all we have endured, survived, learned.”  She walks with me in the quiet calm and stands at my side through the swells of grief that often roll over me, still. 

 

I squint as I look towards the sun, “the daylight hurts my eyes,” I quietly share.  She places her hand across my heart and gently answers, “It probably always will.”     

 

 

The moment arrives when you realize it is passing before you and your reach is too short to grab or stop it; to interfere anyway in its outcome.

 

The sounds of life fade into a muffled blur as you watch the expressions around you of …every notable thought, emotional space.

 

You try to capture in your soul a snapshot; a picture of that which is good; salvageable; real

 

You are touching, but cannot feel.  Reaching, but cannot have.  Loving, but can no longer know love.

 

There is light, yet, it is cold.  There is no pain, yet…the soul is lonely.

 

And a sound shrieks alerting all who could not see before of the death eating you alive, that you are…flatlining. 

 

Passing from one living to another; one understanding…perspective…to something altogether unfamiliar; other

 

An unpolluted awareness.  The arrival into a conscienceness that I silenced and forbade.  The demise of an entire set of thinkings and understandings which before I was terrified to mislay.

 

Now…we are all here, as the shrieking fades.  We are left to the truths bouncing off sterile walls; like them or not…they are ours.  They are mine.  

 

Flatlining.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not very long ago, I danced often with the idea; knowing; thinking that somehow everything in my life was hung on the same chord by a God who intently held the end of that line.  Who sent, for His reasons in His time… things, people, events, understandings… my way.

 

I sat again with my counselor, dabbing soggy regret and angst from my cheeks with Kleenex.  “I think…”  “I think if I am really honest that I am angry at the church,”  “… and angry at God.”

 

“What is this notion…”   fell from my mouth mingled together with choky tears, “of grace?”  “ Does it mean that my family and my life have fallen out of its/His path?”  “ Does it mean that the children born in or dying in Zambia or other third world countries of aids, starvation and disease are somehow exempt from the notion of it?”  Grace…

 

“And I have narrated a thousand times the words that now stab through my own chest like daggers of ice…” “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

 

Now, that I find myself on the other side of that I… what is the implication of this notion for me?  For my daughters?  For we who stand on the other side of some sign, or circumstance or set of choices that leave us…isolated; without the warm fuzzy blankets of a safe family, home, religion or whatever validates our hierarchy?   Are they…we, any less in the line of this… notion of grace, now that our worlds have been turned belly up and realism and survival are the attitudes of the day?  And who are the determiners of where that line is, what it looks like, and how it is translated. 

 

I used to believe that I knew.  It was as if I felt God palpably looking down at me on any given moment.  As if I heard him whispering to me always…” you are chosen.”    Now, I am challenged to look past the minute significance of my own existence and wonder how and why it would only be applicable… to me.

 

I have felt the internal sting from the silent gazes peering at me from the safe places.  I have felt the rub of how the contrast of my pain and misfortunes have made others feel cozy and “blessed.”  I have been a participant in the dogmatic translation of that…which I realize my limited intelligence had no business speaking to with any level of authority or guarantee. This notion…

 

He shrugged his shoulders, and admitted to having no answer.  And that; the honesty of not knowing all the answers; the genuineness of being humans incapable of fully comprehending and construing the divine.  Though no more settling; that I could live with…felt in some way itself to be…a notion of grace.