January 1, 2016...

…and I haven’t written for a while.  So I will satisfy a nagging guilt at my failure to produce for you and start to satisfy a New Year’s resolution: write more often for BooksInq.

I haven’t written for a while because I had so little to say.  Life has me in a phase where things change every day, me, who pride myself on continuity, living where I grew up, with family and friends around, never quietly grounded but better and more stable than now, it seems at times.  And at 55 I’m too old and weary sometimes to deal with the changes.  

I am sure we all feel that way sometimes.  Too old, too worn out.  But what is the alternative?  To quit?  And then what?  Stagger through the streets or just off one self?  Worse than old is the pain and grey, which come, and bring nothing.   And sometimes the hanging in is so very hard.

It got especially bad when everything I did brought some attendant thoughts or feelings with it and I had to deal with those.  So it’s not just a matter of running a errand to the store; it’s a matter of attempting to accomplish each of the many small tasks that lead up to that errand when each of those little tasks have many thoughts and feelings, and coping with every one of those little thoughts and feelings takes so much time, like an iceberg, when sometimes life is just about buying gas for the car.  

Life said something bitterly shocking too.  This is the life I have, this is who I am, regardless of who I thought I would be.  All I have to do is move within it, discerning God’s Will, taking Joy in the fact that this is all something we don’t know, but a necessary step on our way to eternal life.  (Even though this may be the crappy part of the ride.  For some of us and for some reason.  That we don’t know.)  And I am made to do that as I am now.  Created in God’s Image,  Just a damn different image than I thought.  But the shocking truth of who that person is, the shattering of my illusions about me, took time too this year.

All this was experienced while I tried to constantly move ahead with life, somehow keep with the mundane and try to survive, no matter what the state of confusion or clarity.  Being a spouse and a parent to four, and friends and responsibilities, trying to run my law firm, starting a new clinic for those less fortunate, writing when I can, walking the dogs and living, but publicly too; just Google me if you want to know more.

My coping skills are changing too.  What worked for me as a male doesn’t and can’t work as a female.  It’s having a thousand things flying at you, and in the grayness sometimes, without being able to fend them off; the old swords and shields are broken or can’t be used; the new ones not discovered or if discovered not trusted yet…can I count on a smile and weakness and humility to carry me when I never learned how to use them in many years of guyness?    

And then the advice of others, the voices real and imagined; all of it lacking somehow, or judgmental, or both, but all of the voices constantly, unremittingly, heard.

So in experiencing all that, I collapsed.  It was about September or October,  although I probably was starting to collapse in August.  I stopped blogging, not because I had nothing to say but because I couldn’t say any of it.  And the usual sources seemed so bland, so normal in their turmoil, so timid in their conclusions.  None of it helped all that much to make it through the day.

But even a collapse for me meant I had to move, too many things to do out there.  I started trying just to move like a turtle almost, trying to minimize what I saw and absorbed from the outside world, shut down the openness, try to just withdraw.  But certain things demanded attention, and even though I tried to walk away I can’t.

I finished the year learning something I learned a long time ago when I drank too much too often.  The world isn’t changing for me just because I think it should, and just because sometimes I sit staring at the wall or the field or the dogs for hours, because the pain really is too much to cope with, to get up and walk away from.  So this year, I will try to remember that lesson.  I will try to let the little things control themselves, the work get done, and the voices be still.  I will try to perform first the task of cutting, of simplifying, of refusing to allow me to be carried away by me.

Happy New Year To All!