Church was a mixed bag. I wasn’t emotional, mostly because I took a caffeine pill at 0600 to fight institutionalized jet lag. I thought I would be, but it just wasn’t that kind of service. I was so involved in all the music that I really couldn’t think of anything else but remembering to count. This is because in rehearsal, I completely forgot where I was on a piece I knew cold. Everything went perfectly after that, mostly because it was a better wake-up call than the caffeine. Leslie #1 held my hand during the reading of the names, and part of the worship service was telling something funny about one of your saints. Leslie #1 told a story about her grandmother, so I responded in kind.

My grandmother was the most unintentionally funny woman alive. She was famous in my mind for these over-the-top malapropisms, like saying she was going to “lay on the couch with an African.” This from a woman who was extremely prejudiced and clearly meant “afghan.” After I came out, I wasn’t that close to any member of my extended family, although this is changing now that Nate and I are in the same city… but hearing about Leslie #1’s grandmother triggered memories of my mother’s mother in kind.

(I actually did tell my grandmother I was gay, and she didn’t get it. She said that there was a brother and sister in town like that… but she said that they were sleeping together and I thought “this is hopeless” and moved on. It was much akin to the time I valiantly tried to teach her how to double click. I didn’t think there was anyone I couldn’t teach to use a computer until that moment. She was, however, dedicated. She wrote down everything I said on a steno pad even though she didn’t understand it.)

On one of the chimes during the reading of the names, Sam accidentally played a major second on the organ, and it was gorgeous. I wish she’d done them all that way… because I think grief is a major second in and of itself. It is love and pain in one breath.

But then, Matt preached on the election and I completely lost interest. It wasn’t that he was advocating for either party, it was just a 180º from everything else being said and it seemed out of place. Therefore, it took me out of the service as well. My mind started wandering toward shopping and lunch.

In essence, it just wasn’t the sermon I expected or needed to hear.

I left the church and went to Chuy’s for lunch, and then came home fully expecting to preach what I needed to hear, but I didn’t. I got in bed and couldn’t get up, the delayed reaction of adrenaline letdown from singing and just not wanting to deal with All Saints’ Day… too close, too personal, and exhausting.

Today I got an e-mail from my recruiter about a job in McClean (That’s McClain, dear). It’s right up my alley in terms of instructional design, and I know I’ll apply, but I don’t know if I’ll take it. I mean, I probably will if it’s offered, but I’ve got my mind stayed on the idea of going to school and making that my full-time job instead…. taking back the year and a half I lost when I was young. Everything remains to be seen, but I am already enrolled at University of Houston and wouldn’t have to worry about transferring hours. I know I can take classes online because I set up the WebCT server back in the day. It’s called something else now, but the software is similar… updated, but with the same core functionality. I know so much about digital pedagogy from the professor’s perspective, and yet, I’ve never been a student. I’ve designed courses, but never taken one.

The course I’d be designing in NoVA is how to use Salesforce. Don’t laugh. DON’T. Shut it.

I am assuming that all of my students will be able to double click, and that is all I have learned to count on in these matters. At every instructional design job I’ve ever had, the class ranged from “can barely use a mouse” to “knows enough to be extremely dangerous when I’m not looking.” It’s like teaching kindergarten- some of the students are learning the alphabet, and some are already reading and get bored easily. Between the two, I think I’d almost rather teach kindergarten. Adults do not do well with authority, especially when the instructor is thirty years younger. Although now there’s not many people in the workforce that are 30 years older than me anymore….. there’s just asshats who try to tell me how to do my job when I’ve had exactly the same ideas and they’ve been frowned upon by that establishment so I just look like an idiot who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. They’re not asshats because of their ideas… they’re asshats because of their delivery… especially as a woman in technology. If I had a dollar for every time someone said, “honey, you don’t do it that way” I could’ve already retired…. and gone back to school twice with tuition paid in full.

I haven’t given up the idea of going to Howard for my last hours in undergrad as well, but after taking my 50 bucks, they haven’t called since. But if I really wanted to go to an actual classroom, there’s plenty of options- UMD, George Mason, etc. I could also go to Georgetown or American if I got a job there. I doubt I would get in on grades alone. I was a writer all through school, so I tended to look out the window a lot…. working internally, letting the tapes run until they were finished….. most of them sermons I needed to hear.

I was sad to learn upon telling people that there was now a Chuy’s open in Rockville, MD that there’s four relatively close to me, in Woodbridge, Sterling, Springfield, and Fairfax, VA. I have been depriving myself of creamy jalapeño the entire time I’ve lived in DC. What is this crack-smoking foolishness? You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take the Texas out of the girl. I was actually in Fairfax the other day, even wearing my “Juan Solo” t-shirt. I expected better of myself.

The only excuse is that I don’t have friends on that side of the river who would volunteer these things- mostly because they think of it as “too far.” Let’s clear this up right now. I would have driven ALL DAY to get to a Chuy’s. All. Day. Perhaps the flip side is that it isn’t as special anymore- the t-shirts being an exclusive Texas souvenir. But with the loss of Austin Grill, it’s nice to have something to replace it… or actually, something even better. There used to be an Austin Grill in Alexandria, and perhaps there still is, but the one in Silver Spring is closed. I personally think they jumped the shark when they stopped selling Amy’s Mexican Vanilla ice cream, because that’s basically the only reason I went there…. and in talking to Texpats, that was their favorite thing about it, too. The rest was mostly $20 peasant food I can make way better at home…. and yet, don’t.

However, I cannot reproduce to perfection Chuy’s beans or rice. Neither can I perfect the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom sauce, which is similar to creamy jalapeño and baked into enchiladas. I am also a big fan of the “Lunchie Dot,” a small frozen lime margarita with a dot of strawberry frozen margarita on top.

I can also count on one hand the number of times I’ve crossed the Potomac, so having a Chuy’s on this side is fantastic. It’s not that VA is too far- it’s a mindset. I live in Maryland. VA, for all practical intents and purposes, does not exist… and it’s ok, because Virginians have the same mentality in reverse. It would never occur to them to go to Rockville for dinner.

I think that’s less about the distance and more about the traffic. My theory on DC traffic is that it is screwed up for two major reasons. The first is that there is not one singular area where people work and then travel to the suburbs, but many. Therefore, “lighter contraflow traffic” is almost always in your head. The second is that with so much turnover, I believe that that only between a half and two thirds of drivers know where they’re going at any given moment. Google and Apple Maps have made that better, but not for people who insist they have a map in their head and won’t use a GPS. When I do cross the river, I go at off times so that the traffic doesn’t bother me- the exception being when I was going to my cousin’s house for dinner during rush hour. Google Maps’ answer to that was to route me through the city, which was probably better than fighting the traffic on the Beltway and GW Parkway, but annoying because the speed limit in the city is mostly 25mph, and you have to watch out for pedestrians who refuse to obey the lights.

Pedestrians seem to be oblivious or entitled…. or tourists, which are both.

There’s also a lot of construction going on, so it is not guaranteed that you won’t drive into a clusterfuck at 11:00 pm or 11:00 AM. I heard on NPR that they’re thinking of building a high wire gondola that goes from NoVA to Georgetown, but it’s going to take at least three years to even get consent for the project. Anything to get more cars off the road is a good idea, and I wish it could be greenlighted faster than that.

We are, however, going into winter, and the traffic is less heavy naturally because there are more people hunkered down and unwilling to leave the warmth and safety of their homes- as it should be. When I didn’t have a car, walking from the Metro to my office during the big snowstorm was taxing, so I didn’t have any energy for anything else but getting home. I got a full workout even in that quarter mile, because I was walking in snow up to my knees… and because it was cold, it took even longer for the snow to melt down into a manageable level. Even shin-deep snow isn’t that great. I spent most of the winter looking like Gerald Ford.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything, though. Houston doesn’t get snow at all, except for perhaps a few sprinkles on off years. Hard to make snow angels and have snowball fights in the rain.

I have also found that I am very outdoorsy when it’s not a hundred degrees in the shade… the exception to that being when I first moved back to Houston from Portland and my vitamin D level was six. I sat out in the sun for hours, refilling my water bottle and just getting it handled.

But the take-home message is that DC is fantastic despite all its infrastructure problems, and though I love Portland and wouldn’t have wanted the chance of meeting Dana to pass me by, and Houston because of the close connections I have there, the biggest regret I have in life is moving away from it in the first place.

Dana and I used to pretend that we were in the same room when Wallace Acton played Hamlet at the Shakespeare theater in 2001/2 (can’t remember) and that we just missed each other… but perhaps it isn’t pretend. We could have been. It was a Sunday matinee, and she wouldn’t have had to drive in traffic crossing the river.

This Sunday is the celebration of All Saints Day, so every hymn tonight was what you sing when someone dies (except weirdly, Sine Nomine). I made it through just fine, which I define as “my throat closed up so bad I couldn’t sing anymore.” Tears rolled down my face at Abide with Me. I was amazed that I got through God Be in My Head by John Rutter, because it’s the piece that generally makes me turn toward the smallest, most childlike version of myself… the one that just misses her mommy. I asked Leslie #1 to sit with me and just be my person. I know myself well enough that I will need her. Church has the power to absolutely undo me, because it is where I see the divine dance before my eyes. She immediately said yes, and with love in her eyes, said, how are you doing?

I said, well, if I’m flat fucking honest, I got dressed today. She started to tear up and said it was the same way for her when her mother died, and congratulated me on making it to choir. I was telling her that the lost future leads me to the intense, shooting pains of grief. Of course, there is always a dull ache, but at least daily, there’s a pang so intense that I cannot concentrate on anything else. For that moment, I completely fall apart. Sometimes it shows outwardly and sometimes I cover it up… actually, that can’t be true. It’s amazing how good I think I am at covering it up. I try to compartmentalize, and spillage occurs.

Measures from The Rutter Requiem run through my mind, Pam Taylor rocking me to sleep with Lux aeterna. She was the other soprano soloist when Diane conducted a community choir in Portland specifically for that work. I did the Pie Jesu, and though I don’t often remember my own work, I do picture my mom crying all the way through the recording. I will also never forget handing Karen Miller my phone and telling her to call my mom during my dress rehearsal, because I wanted her to hear just me with the full orchestra. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more rock star than that moment. I wish I still had the recording for my SoundCloud account, but it’s a video, and I don’t think I could watch it…. or even should. Before I got up to sing, Diane told the entire room that watching me sing that solo was like watching her little girl grow up before her eyes. In the moment, it was everything, and now I choke on those words, both because I have such a different perspective on being “her little girl,” and because Susan launched an RPG into my heart when she said that Diane didn’t mean it. I now believe it… just another instance of show mode that I was foolish enough to swallow. So in thinking of that memory, I am glad that my actual mom was listening… and when she said it was fantastic, I could take those words to the bank and cash them.

My mom had her own church job, so she wasn’t able to be there for either performance when I did The Lord is My Shepherd with Grace and Joseph. I don’t think she’s ever gotten to hear me live because of it… or because it’s hard to listen to someone performing and play for them at the same time. So, I would say that she HAS heard me, and I had her complete divided attention. 😛

She has heard me preach live, though, and if I had to pick one, that’d be it.

She was so proud of me and the serious work I took on to get a voice like this. It did not come easily to me. I had a lot of bad habits from being a trumpet player, and it took me years to overcome them and really soar over the mountains. It’s gone now, but I wrote about this very thing, it feeling like flying over the mountains when my high notes float off, and Wil Wheaton left me a comment saying “that’s how I feel about nailing an acting audition.”

As an aside, when Wil came to Powell’s Books for a reading of Just a Geek, I met him afterwards and told him I was Leslie from Clever Title Goes Here. He autographed my book with Dear Leslie, Clever Inscription Goes Here. Love, Wil. With the thousands of bloggers he runs with, I doubt he’d remember me, but knowing that Wil was at one time a Fanagan is one of my favorite facts in life.

That was supposed to be an aside, but I think that’s where we’ll close and pick it back up tomorrow. I am a bit overwhelmed with memories right now, because I’m listening to a Rutter playlist on Spotify. I may need to listen to Finnish dinosaur metal again. So nice to have music that pulls my anger out and away, but the lyrics are actually about milk and cookies and homework and shit. I thought I’d just give them a listen to see what it was all about, and it’s turned out to be cleansing in a way I didn’t know I needed.

MERRY CHRISTMAS…… angrily.

1. I needed to go to the mall for one thing (hiking boots, because snow isn’t far away) and a haircut. On the way there, I remembered a Facebook post I’d seen from my friend Stacey about a Finnish metal band for kids called Hevisaurus and decided to look them up on Spotify. So I’m driving down the road not knowing what the hell I’m listening to in terms of lyrics, just trying to match pitch and phonics. I found a song I really dug and put it on repeat. When I got to the parking garage, I learned that I screamed “Merry Christmas” for four miles…… angrily.

2. I am under no illusion that I will do serious hiking in said boots, I just wanted extra tread to keep from breaking my ass this winter. I was scandalized to find out that the Spiderman hiking boots at Payless only come up to size 4. I love that movie so much, especially because Jim Norton has a bit part. If you know me in real life, might I suggest either not clicking on that link or at the very least, having a drink first? And because I know he searches for his name in every post, James, you’re in that one. If I don’t get ordained, you know my ecclesiastical council found it.

 

3. Before Pri Diddy left, she gave me one of her college sweatshirts, and I have been wearing it basically non-stop since. If I can’t give her a hug, everyone thinking I went to Tech is the next best thing. The icing on that cake is that it fits snugly, so it’s extra warm. All my other hoodies are at least two sizes too big, allowing cold wind to blow up my back….. perhaps instead of using profanity, now I’ll switch to saying “Merry Christmas” in Suomi….. angrily.

I was going to buy a copy of ‘The Power of Positive Thinking,’ and then I thought: what the hell good would that do?

– Ronnie Shakes

All of the weight I struggled to gain before the concussion is gone. I have not stopped eating, but apparently the weight of grief is enough. My body feels heavier as I move against the current, and yet, it is all in my mind. Though I know that scientifically, this cannot be possible, it seems as if the forces of the universe said to each other, I don’t think she knows what grief is. Divorce and losing a close friend just feel like it. Perhaps we should show her real loss to put things in perspective.

My response to that so far has been screw you guys. I’m goin’ home.

Things are looking up, because even if they aren’t, I have to believe it. I’ve gotten involved in choir and youth group again. I’ve tried to create action to beget inertia, and because of deep loss, I tire quickly. Perhaps I’ll just get a job at a store for a while. Autonomic responses are everything, and the “lather, rinse, repeat” approach might be what I need.

The hard part is not knowing what I need, knowing that there’s not a damn thing in the world that’ll help. My mother and I, for all practical intents and purposes, were not extremely close for a lot of my life. When she wasn’t concerned about me, she was still enmeshed in what I believe was at times dysthymic behavior. I am not a psychiatrist, so I cannot make that leap all by myself, and I won’t. I can just tell you what I observed. Many people would have noticed this right after she and my father divorced, but the plain truth is that it surfaced long before.

I think that beginning her life over and starting her career again as a teacher, along with getting remarried, helped immensely. But at the same time, her raincloud multiplied mine. I was often reticent to just buy a damn umbrella. I could not live with someone else in depression, so I didn’t. I have carried an enormous amount of guilt for many years at the way I only visited sporadically, leaving Lindsay to make sure that they were daily fed and dressed. I could never decide if it was self-care or selfishness. I forgive myself because I was only 17 at the time, but if I had my life to do over knowing what I know now, it would have been a much different outcome. I would have engaged in that fight instead of running away from it.

I wish I had been brave enough to say out loud, I think you might be depressed and you should call a doctor. I said it internally all the time, biting my lip. But my mother, like many women of her time, did not believe in going to a psychiatrist because that meant you were crazy. She could have had a much more full life had her smiles been more genuine instead of a brave face against adversity.

If you couldn’t just tell she was depressed, it’s because she went to great lengths to hide it. Because of her views on mental illness, I again felt alienated. One of the reasons she was so proud of me is that I’d done something she could not, which was admit all my flaws and failures and seek treatment… but I don’t think she saw it that way until I gave her my URL. She never read Clever Title Goes Here, unless someone else e-mailed her the link and she just never told me. But I’ve always been up front about needing medication to keep my brain chemicals stable, and how even then, it is a constant uphill battle. I have been stable on the same protocol since my diagnosis was changed from unipolar to bipolar, but in the unipolar days, I went through med change after change, never feeling right enough. Perhaps that went into her decision-making as well. I was getting medication, and it didn’t really help, so why put the effort into seeking her own treatment?

I am glad that during the last three years, she got to see that medication did indeed help, but it wasn’t until I got psychological (as opposed to psychiatric) treatment that I really began to blossom. I have no doubt that this latest onslaught is just a response to deep grief, and that my medication being altered in any way would only make me feel more numbed out as opposed to being effective… and it’s hard to tell the difference. Am I resolving pain, or avoiding it?

Avoiding pain has been a theme of both our lives, both going to extraordinary lengths to hide it… as evidenced by my mother sitting with me in the psych ward at Methodist absolutely not knowing what to do, but knowing that if it would make me better, she would have slit her own wrists. That’s just the kind of mom she was- absolutely no sense of self-preservation where Lindsay and I were concerned. She lived my father’s axiom of “if I have it, and you need it, it’s yours.” He said it out loud, but my mother didn’t. She just carried it out, in all things, really, but especially hearing the distress call of her children. She loved me more than herself, and in a lot of ways, I blew it. I could see her pouring from an empty cup and never suggested ways to fill it.

She would never say that about me, and it is no less true. However, in thinking about recent days, I cannot mistake the part for the whole. We generally spent long hours on the phone, mostly because once my mother started talking about teaching, it was impossible to extricate yourself. She also had this habit (a very funny one) of believing that since I worked in technology, if it plugged into the wall, I knew how to fix it. She once asked me to fix her cable box while I was living in Portland, and I told her to hold it up to the phone.

She also loved ritual. Every time a new iPhone came out, she’d call me and say, I wish you were here so we could go and sit to wait for it like we did when I visited you. It’s kind of our thing, isn’t it? It was the same at Christmas, where she liked things to be done the same way every year, because it was our thing.

Part of the reason grief (in all its many forms) is so difficult is not that the person is lost to you- it’s also the piece of you that belonged to them. If I thought I’d lost both my right and left hands, now I’m walking without legs.

I try not to go into that space of giving up positive thinking, because I want to create beauty out of pain… spirit, as David Ashley White says, moving over chaos.

However, I can only try so hard. All I can really do is remember. That comes autonomically as well. I can only hope that as time goes by, it is negative on the inhale, positive on the exhale. Letting it go one breath at a time.

I will never be able to let go of my mother’s death, but not to try is more devastating than creating a new world around me. I see her sadness at me coming to Houston and not sticking around very long before I was off on another new adventure. I can’t ease her pain, but I am trying to soothe myself that great things will come of wanderlust, because I’ve found a place to set down real roots… calling forth shoots of green as the winter eases.

Today is All Saints Day, the holiday on the Christian calendar where we remember everyone we’ve lost in the past year. There’s nowhere I’d rather be than in the cemetery where my mother is buried, bringing her decorations and eating sugar skulls. I probably would have brought gaudy Dia de los Muertos knick-knacks knowing my mother’s propensity for her house to look like every holiday threw up. I also would have bought everything at Dollar Tree, her personal favorite…. provided they had the things that just screamed “MOM HAS TO HAVE THESE!”

Alas, I am not in Houston, and realistically, neither is she.

But she does belong to the night sky. My sister’s friends bought a star in my mother’s name, and while it cannot possibly be the same stardust of which she is made, at least it looks like her. My version of my mother has always been a star. This just makes it official.

This is because I’ve now had almost as many years of living away from Texas as I have living close to her. Staring up at the night sky was a way of reaching out… no doubt reinforced by Somewhere Out There in An American Tail. I can still hear it in Lindsay’s three-year-old voice as we cruised toward Playa del Carmen. It was Talent Show night, and she brought the house down… along with my heart going to pieces every time I’ve thought about that memory since. The only comforting thing is knowing that there are about three hundred other people who ALSO cry remembering that voice… because unlike the mice in the movie, Lindsay could stay on pitch. She was perfect, as evidenced by the fact that I was crying, Mom was crying, dad was crying, and perfect strangers were a complete mess. I have no doubt that babies were conceived that night, hoping to get a version of her. It made my ovaries explode, and I was only nine (well, almost).

Every day my sister gets more precious to me, the person who keeps me grounded when I look at the stars and want to stay there.

At least now, I don’t have to pay for a hotel.

I didn’t get to meet Bond. Spending time with my family ran over, because originally they thought it was best for me to leave before getting the kids in bed, and the kids were squirrelly all evening. Bedtime was the last thing on their minds. I never should have suggested Friday night in the first place, knowing that what time I was free could have been different than I originally thought. By the time I got to the bar, she’d already left with no reply to the message I’d sent. I’d wasted her time, and for that, I was extraordinarily sorry. But the longer I sat there alone with my own drink (I still wanted to celebrate, even by myself), the more I realized that I wasn’t ready for this and perhaps it was for the best.

It wasn’t establishing a friendship that bothered me. It was thinking back over my life and realizing that perhaps an empath meeting intel wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. I worry about the tiniest things, much less a friend traipsing all over the Middle East trying to catch human traffickers. And, of course, it occurred to me that on loan from the British, she’d have to go back to London eventually if it became a thing down the road. Because I don’t just see what’s right in front of me, I vision years ahead… to my detriment most of the time, but it’s just the way I’m wired. I’m like the kid in MIBIII that can see every possible outcome of a situation and weigh it.

I know me. I would be a mess, and there’s no use in hiding that fact from her or anyone else. I don’t know that I would be okay living on the breadcrumbs about her life that she can actually divulge. I don’t know that she would be okay knowing that writing is my life, wondering if the secrets she shared would end up here (they wouldn’t, but still). To think about all that even in the few conversations we’ve had resulted in a future that did not happen… and it is amazing how okay I am with that.

I have to ask myself if I set myself up for failure, pushing her away before she could push me. I overpromised and underdelivered, but not on purpose. Just thinking in retrospect. Dragging her into my life would be as equally hard as just being in hers.

I did not seek Bond out. It was a Tinder match in which I didn’t know exactly who I was talking to until later in the conversation.

However, I did show up. That, at the very least, has to be something in my world. I did consider the possibility of opening up, but the things I have to open up about are heavy to the point of debilitation. I need to set off my own mother lion before I set off anyone else’s… yet another thing that encourages weariness on my part to engage. I don’t want to go from protected to closed, which I define as not recognizing safe space… and yet, even the thought of safe space has become foreign in light of thinking I had it and as it turns out, not so much.

Did I get the outcome I wanted? No. But I definitely got the outcome for which I prepared. I took the path of least resistance, which was sitting and having a drink, then getting up to go home and read.

My IQ wanted to meet another smart person. My EQ left me focusing on all the things that could happen, instead of what actually might. I need to pay more attention when I do it. Self-preservation is good. Starving myself of human interaction is not. 

I was three, maybe four when I learned the art of a joke. Perhaps I’d just heard the lyrics wrong, or perhaps I was just trying to get the laugh. I’ve slept since then. Anyway, my mom taught the children’s choir a song, and this is how I remembered it:

Zacchaeus was a wee little man,
and a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree
For the Lord he wanted to see.

And when the Savior passed that way
He looked up and said, ‘Zacchaeus,
You come down! Mama’s MAD!’

In Hebrew, Zacchaeus means “pure” or “innocent.” These are two things that are rarely associated with tax collectors. In Jesus’ day, they were generally hated by the Jews because they were seen as working for the Roman Empire, which spilled Jewish blood on the streets when Rome didn’t get what they thought they deserved. Traitor doesn’t even begin to cover it in Jewish eyes, but they were justified in their emotions. It was either pay or die. I don’t think the Romans had jails for tax evasion. They were… unnecessary.

That is why this story carries such shock. Jesus asks Zacchaeus to come down because he intended to stay at his house. In modern day, this is perhaps as shocking as Pope Francis inviting Donald Trump for tea. Or, at least, it seemed that way to onlookers. Jesus saw something in Zacchaeus’ heart that no one else did, or perhaps would have even attempted. This story is much less about surface issues and more about the willingness to look at someone’s heart rather than their rough exterior. The Jews in the crowd had the collective gasp of not believing that Jesus would stay at the house of such a sinner, and Zacchaeus ended up dedicating his life to furthering Christ’s work in the world.

In effect, what you see is not what you get, especially if you are unwilling to look.

Zacchaeus stood in his house and told Jesus that he would give half of his wealth to the poor, and repay anyone he had wronged four times as much. I would try to tie this to a modern day example, but in this case, I believe Zacchaeus has no equal. The poor and the disenfranchised would never have seen that much money, nothing but shock registering on their faces as they received such a gift.

The story I believe is that Zacchaeus took a job from the Romans, and through Jesus, realized what he was doing to his own people. He was not a Roman at heart, and in that moment, he had the AHA! realization that he was supporting a government in which he could not believe. The Roman Empire had made him rich, but it hadn’t made him fulfilled.

It took Jesus to guide him through the process, but the Gospel does not record what Jesus said to Zacchaeus directly. It records the “evil tax collector’s” response. Jesus’ personality has never dictated a high and mighty approach, but one of soft power. If I had to take a guess, it went something like this… You are never going to get what you want in terms of fulfillment without taking a long look at yourself. What do you want, Zacchaeus? Do you agree with the way that the Romans are slaughtering your own people? Is that your story? Remember, you are writing it. No matter what Jesus said, after the conversation Zacchaeus lived up to his name. He became so pure of heart, it was later written that Zacchaeus became a Disciple, replacing Judas after the Ascension.

I have to believe that the first action to create inertia was the want so great it became a need to talk to Jesus. What did it take to get him to climb up the tree in the first place?

My guess is that he knew he was short, and it had nothing to do with height. I have no doubt that Zacchaeus was raised with the belief that wealth showed favor with God, an idea that persists today, and Jesus’ message fucked up his program… Strong words to illustrate an even stronger conversion. Jesus’ message was inverted to everything he’d ever heard. It broke his heart open to think that he’d gotten it all wrong. In his ever-analytical mind, God gave him things because he loved him… when in reality, it would show more favor to God to take that wealth and pay it forward.

In terms of equal airtime, other theologians believe that Zacchaeus and Jesus did not have a private conversation. They never made it to the house before Zacchaeus started proclaiming his willingness to give; he was just trying to appease the crowd of Jews in front of him… that he is not so much turning over a new leaf, but lifting up an old one. Falling back on an old tape that says “save face.” His actions in public were not an indicator of future behavior, but what he said in the moment to avoid getting his ass kicked… and not because he was undeserving.

In hearing this story, you can call forth classic images of conversion and redemption, or you can write Zacchaeus off as troubled and confused when the people from which he had to collect money were standing there in the midst of trying to make a life choice.

I have a feeling it depends on you. What you put into the story with your own life choices directly effects what you will take from it.

Here is what I see:

I see the Christ accepting the marginalized on both sides of the equation, advocating for “the least of them” AND willing to stay in someone’s house that was universally despised. Jesus is coloring outside the lines on both sides of the (SpongeBob SquarePants) book. Our invitation is to join him.

Surely you have family, friends, acquaintances that fit the mold of falling beyond your margins, or perhaps are cemented in your preconceived notions. Instead of trying to disccern how to treat either, you avoid. It’s just easier that way.

But it’s not fulfilling.

Fulfillment is removing the boundary altogether, seeing past what you thought you believed into what is happening presently. The essence of who you are is not tied up in one moment or one mistake. People can and do change, but often not at your insistence. On their own.

The best we can do as partners, friends, family… even just as members of the same human race is to ask people where they want to go and what you can do to help them get there… because no one truly changes when others see their flaws. They change when they see their own. It is not our job to create change for other people, but to facilitate alleviating their needs when expressed.

In order for true change to occur, you need to ask yourself what it will take to get you to climb the tree in the first place.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

I am so proud to announce that I passed my ITIL exam. As I said on Facebook, I just went from good to invaluable in IT interviews, because ITIL is now all the rage for help desks, and even people who work on the back end (heehee- that joke will never get old)… particularly in places like universities, which is my ultimate goal. It would not suck to get a job in a place with tuition waivers. That will mean my money can go toward the important things, like college sweatshirts.

There’s no one I want to call more than my mom. However, in the classical version of Christianity, she already knows. It’s not scientific, but a comforting thought nonetheless. This has been a garbage dump of a month, and to have something to brag about is completely invaluable. As a geek with no college degree, I have a certificate that says I know my shit, as opposed to having to prove it in interviews which I may or may not get depending on how companies view not having a Bachelor’s. Most companies are okay with it. Some are not. It’s time to blow a little money on celebrating. Not much, just enough to make dinner memorable. I need a dirty Martini. NEED. Although my version of a Martini is different than Eggsy’s, I feel like I should include this quote:

With gin of course. Stirred for 10 seconds while glancing at an unopened bottle of vermouth.

I agree with the gin part, but I like my cocktails to be perfect in the classic definition of it. I always want the recipe to be balanced in exactly the way it was meant. Measurements exact, shaken cold until there are ice chips on top. The only exception I will make is extra olive brine.

The first Martini I ever had was given to me by one of the best poets in the country, Scott Chalupa. Of course I am biased because we’ve been friends since Jesus was a boy, but not entirely. If you read his collection, you’d probably agree with me. I didn’t know I loved Martinis until I just wanted to have what he was having, and thus began a long love affair. It’s real and it’s deep.

It’s good that I like Martinis, because I’m meeting Bond for drinks in order to establish a real life friendship. No, seriously. Of course I can’t tell you more than that, because not to protect her is not in my nature. I don’t know what will come of an empath meeting intel, but it would be silly not to try. If you had a chance to meet a real life Bond, wouldn’t you at least show up? I need to look up whether a drink will make my head hurt more. My celebratory drink may have to be a Diet Coke with bitters (don’t knock it til you’ve tried it).

If I am honest with myself, the reason I moved here was to run in circles of high intelligence, because I don’t think of myself as that smart. I think that being around smart people raises your own game. It has certainly served me well in music. Being around singers and trumpet players WAY better than me has shown me the path to Enlightenment.

They keep me honest and humble. What I have found is that since my mother died, I can’t read music for shit. My mind just wanders off and I stop counting, to my detriment and to others, because my voice is big enough that I can throw off everyone in my section. It’s a gift.

I stop following the metronome in my head, the thing that is supposed to guide me. I get back on track by tapping my foot or pulsing my toes, occasionally. Grief is too big not to let my mind wander aimlessly through the desert, my own 40 days and 40 nights.

However, I do have so many things to look forward to in my future. Nailing my exam is just the first step toward greatness, because it may lead to free college and grad school. I just want to make my mother proud, as much as I wish I could have done it while she was alive. This is not to say that she wasn’t already ridiculously proud of me, I just wanted to put the cherry on top of the already huge sundae with a brownie in the middle.

Finally, it happened to me. Things that are wonderful in the face of a garbage dump of a situation. I cannot help but think that this web site is responsible, because the more I process, the more I change. And in this case, change is good, with no reason to be afraid.

I go back to a quote that I read on Buzzfeed (probably the only memorable thing I’ve read there):

My therapist told me that if I could actually see the future, I would have no worries about how to get there. I’d just have to trust her that it was worth it.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

Ezra Pound

Yesterday, I mentioned that when I get over my hesitance about having someone new in my life, I wanted Diana Gabaldon’s version of hot. It led Bryn to comment that she listened to the audio book of Outlander and was now listening to Dragonfly in Amber, in part to understand me better and wanted to go back through my blog to find the references. I asked her if I was right, did she see how the book explained me to me? She did.

Dana and I were connected by the brain and heart infinitely closer than Claire and Frank, which is why my feelings regarding Argo were so scary to both of us… and yet, there was no part of me that could escape them. As I said in an earlier entry, having appropriate boundaries with love was a future that did not happen. It is coming together nicely now after recognizing the disastrous train wreck I was capable of causing. I had to get tired of creating drama where it never should have existed in the first place. However, the type of emotional abuse I endured rendered that capability innate rather than external. I wasn’t causing drama for its own sake, but what had been modeled for me since childhood. I had to destroy those old tapes to move on and be capable of deep discernment for what I wanted later on. I wasn’t capable of moving on while I was in relationship with both of them, as much as I wanted it. Dana put me between a rock and a hard place, unintentionally, but still. She wanted to KNOW what was going on between us, and at the same time, we deserved our own thing.

They both had deep and separate compartments in my head. The way they lived dangerously far away in my mind allowed me to reason that it was fine to love both of them as long as they never crossed over. I was sure that the wrong feelings for Argo would pass, and in their place would become beautiful right ones. I was, in fact, correct. It just didn’t happen on Dana’s timeline. It happened on mine.

Separation, in retrospect, is ridiculous. Life is connected if you’re doing it right. No offense meant to anyone in DC. If there’s anywhere in the world you’ll live where LOTS AND LOTS of people have to live their lives in a disjointed fashion because of the levels of confidentiality involved, it’s here… even me. If I had a government job, it would probably be Secret or Top Secret, because I am most likely to get a job in computer support or working with databases. Worst. Job. Ever? Knowing which Congressmen watch porn at work and not being able to tell you about it.

It’s been the same for me in relationships, erroneously thinking that the only way you get a Top Secret clearance in someone’s heart is to sleep with them. It is not reality, it is compounded abuse talking… or alternatively, being given a Top Secret clearance and being turned on by knowledge, not attraction.

If there’s anything in my life that turns me on, it is learning… no matter what kind, really, but mostly learning how people work. It’s been a long-held false assumption that I didn’t really know someone unless I fell into their arms… and they didn’t really know me, either.

In the past, the more Argo laid her guts on the table, the more it triggered the false assumption. The future holds healthy boundaries in that area, perhaps not with her (not that I’m incapable, but it is unlikely that she’d trust again), but certainly with everyone else I meet.

It is another reason why my protection walls seem to grow thicker every day, not wanting to open myself up to the possibility of hurting anyone the way I hurt her. Forgiving myself has been a long and continuous process, and I’m not finished. I will not be able to move on until I do, because I have to get an internal sense that I am indeed better before I trust myself with anyone’s heart. It was a gut punch to realize that we were connected beyond all measure, but because she wasn’t dialed in to me the same way I was dialed into her, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see her internal references for closeness and though I was open about mine, she didn’t understand them. Because how could she? Nothing I was saying made logical sense, because it wasn’t logical. It was emotional, which is often in diametric opposition. I couldn’t explain why things were the way they were, I just knew it was true.

But, as I told Argo directly, words and actions couldn’t line up. Apart from different orientations, I was in a committed relationship and that would have had to take precedence over orientation, anyway. For reasons I will not disclose, I had a skewed sense of commitment with Dana, too. Just because I wanted to be close to someone else didn’t mean that I didn’t feel commitment to her in spades, and that she would understand that better than anyone else because of her own internal references.

I wanted both women to understand that those feelings were real, but there was no reason to act on them. They were emotions that needed to be recognized and left alone, because in no way did I want Argo to unintentionally cross a boundary and she definitely wouldn’t if she was aware. I wanted her to be sensitive to the fact that she was capable of it so it wouldn’t ever happen, because in those days, I had a very strong sense that we would have a relationship in real life and that those emotions might change drastically after meeting on the ground, or they might not. I wouldn’t always be my writer personality with her, and who knows if my on the ground personality would have reached out to hers in the same way? Who knows if I would have felt differently once pictures became real? Maybe they would have deepened, maybe the things that were being written would have seemed annoying to actually hear. Her writing tone is blunt, no bullshit. In person, I don’t know if I would have been appreciative or if I would have recoiled at her “in your face” approach. But then again, maybe in person that would have been muted. WHO KNOWS?

What I did know is that Outlander undid me, for evil and for awesome. The more Claire struggled with her feelings for both men, the more I wanted her to stay in that place and talk about it. Seeing her married to both men at different times and places helped in my distress, because it forced me to look at what was bullshit and what wasn’t.

My conclusion is that the way Argo opened me up was like putting a racing engine in a Corolla. My brain power jumped exponentially, because I was thinking about bigger things than the minutiae of my own life. She believed in me more than I did or ever thought I deserved. Trust me that any award I ever win for writing has her fingerprint on the plaque.

In that way, part of my heart will always belong to her, but not in any way that is tainted with darkness. To have our shining, silvery chord run dull in spots is unbecoming of my true emotions where she is concerned. I want our music to always play in a major key. The moment I realized it was a metaphorical Piccardy third ringing in a cathedral, it was so immense and powerful.

I cannot begin to know how she feels or even consider it, because to wonder is to often go in the wrong direction… to think she has feelings that bear no similarity to what is tangible. There are very few things I know I don’t want, and that is one of them.

Rumination is toxic, and prayer is powerful. In prayer, I ask for her every good thing, and for mine. Since she is an atheist, I lean on these words all the time: I’m starting to count on you being my pinch hitter.

Consider it done.

Yesterday, I did a really stupid thing. I got into someone’s car without looking, and she had wood piled up that stuck out between the driver and passenger seats. It banged into the space just under my occipital bone, and after four or five hours of all the symptoms of brain injury, I decided that to fall asleep before having a CT scan would have been the second stupid thing… and as Florence Capp said, “the next best thing to doing something smart is not doing something stupid.” However, I didn’t do the smartest thing- I drove myself to the ER. I made it both there and home by being extraordinarily careful, but I’m going to say for the record that I should have gotten someone to drive me. That’s because as my brain started to swell larger, I thought, “this is bad on so many levels.” I could have called said friend, but she lives in Fairfax, VA- not exactly conducive to getting to me and I didn’t want to put her out. On second thought, I should’ve.

When I Googled “Silver Spring ER,” the closest was 25 minutes away. I didn’t go to Urgent Care because I wasn’t sure they’d have a CT scanner and I’d have to be transferred, anyway, and I WAS intelligent enough to realize THAT.

It was not without certain… problems. They wanted to do a urine screen to make sure I wasn’t pregnant before they did the scan, and they seriously made me carry the locked container around until the sample was about to spoil. Then, three hours later, I realized that my semi-permanent earrings were a bitch to remove, and I got all of them out eventually save one, which my attendant taped. Why I didn’t just let him tape all of them, I do not know. What can I say? Not the sharpest knife in the drawer with my condition and the time of morning. Probably because the attendant was Muslim and I wanted to be respectful and not make him touch me more than he had to. Perhaps liberal Muslim men do not have a restriction on touching women they don’t know, but I didn’t think of that, either.

Speaking of my earrings, I gushed inside when a gaggle of teenage girls said they were cool at Chipotle, unprovoked. They specifically sought me out to compliment me. Being thought of as cool by teenagers is not a life goal, but traditionally them thinking any adults have something good going on seems rare. I mean, I passed 30 long ago, which generally renders me worthy of an eyeroll, or at the very least, invisibility.

I definitely felt uncool carrying around a cup of piss at three in the morning.

The only good part of the experience was finding a ton of change in my backpack, enough for all the Diet Cokes I could drink, which ended up being two, but I should have bought more, because they were cheaper than going to the store. 😛

When I finally got the results, the doctor assured me that I did not have a bleed, but the headache and muscle stiffness was going to get a lot worse before it got better, which I have found to be true. She then handed me three prescriptions; one was for percocet, one was for robaxin, and one was for Motrin 600. I didn’t fill the Motrin because I had a thousand ibuprofen at home and I can count.

Even with all that, my head and neck still ache, the first time that even lying down hurts, because I’m putting pressure on my head. I should check whether the percocet naturally is a 12-hour dose, or whether it’s an extended release, because if it isn’t, I can at least cut them in half and get a fresh injection of relief every six.

It doesn’t specifically say “XR,” but the last thing I want is to accidentally kill myself, which would be a third stupid thing in less than that many days.

It feels like a cruel world when I have so much other emotional shit to deal with, but at least the medication makes it where I don’t care about anything, much less something specific.
With my mother falling and dying, I didn’t want to think that I was overreacting, so I waited about four hours to see if it was a thing before I went in. Perhaps that was a mistake, or perhaps it was common sense. I Googled brain injury first and took some Tylenol, but I made sure to tell the triage nurse I’d taken it. The acetaminophen wore off about the time I actually got the CT, but the sponge pillow on the table helped.

I also learned that I’ve gained weight, but not in a bad way. The last time I had it checked, I was 118. Now I’m a buck twenty and some change. I don’t want to go much higher than that because I’m so short, but at least I am getting to a healthy size instead of feeling scrawny. For people who are anxious and depressed, it is often just as hard to gain weight as it is to lose it. Where I really struggle is muscle mass, because I don’t have enough motivation to work out… therefore, I am constantly winded and feel like weak sauce.

There’s a great podcast called “Podrunner” that I want to start again because it’s cooler- a superior introduction to working out because it starts at “couch to 5k.” I have been a casual runner since I was 18, which I remember with clarity because I started to bulk up for skiing and nearly jumped out of my skin with pain the first time I locked in my boots because I didn’t know I had shin splints. If there’s anything that would get me motivated into running, it would be the promise of a ski trip at the end. I love to ski, mostly because I’m such a klutz that I was surprised at how good I am at it. The first time, I went from greens to blues in less than a week.

I still haven’t tried a black diamond, and it is not a goal, because I enjoy skiing without being afraid of it and I’d like to continue that trend. Coming down the mountain with speed is thrill enough. I don’t want to take the lift up to a black diamond and be utterly afraid to come down, like climbing the ladder to the highest diving board and looking down at the water before you jump. I always end up diving, though, because I am not good with ladders and coming up is less scary than trying to climb back down. It would probably be the same with skiing, because I’ve never noticed a lift that carries people downward. There is no going back, only through.

If that isn’t a metaphor for life, I’m really not sure what would be. My grief is acute because even though my mom couldn’t help with the medical part, she would be a superstar in terms of listening or coming up and driving me around. I can’t believe she just retired last school year and she didn’t even get a chance to really settle in and enjoy it. On the flip side, the last time we talked, she was extraordinarily bored… not that the solution to ennui is death (N is for Neville, who died of ennui), but it must be fascinating to “watch me on TV.” I am nothing if not a constant source of amusement. Last night, I forgot she was dead and told the doctor and the triage nurse that if I was pregnant, I’d have to call my mom with an “I’ve had an immaculate conception” speech, because I promise you, that is the only logical conclusion one could make from my monk-like existence.

You would think that I’d miss that kind of intimacy by now, and you would be wrong. Between the medication that I’m taking and my utter lack of drive to put myself out there as available, I have no need. I put myself out there to meet people in the area and have had good success in finding friends, but there’s been no one that has lit up my insides. The memory of it is enough. I simply have a fear of flying… but when I get over it, I want Diana Gabaldon hot, which is scorching in temperature even on the page, much less watching it on screen.

Because I take it back. Wanting sex, for me, has never come from the drive itself, but from the drive to know someone. There’s no one I want to know THAT WELL.

But there will be, eventually. It wouldn’t be fair to any potential anything to drag them into my freak show of a life right now. You’ll just have to wait for the blog entry. I know I  do.

Matt (my own pastor) started off today with a paragraph from Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, about the sudden death of her husband. Tears started to fall as he described the circumstances of the husband’s death, and I lost my snot when he got to “I couldn’t give away his shoes, because I couldn’t shake the feeling that he might need them.” I howled inside at “grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes.” He was reflecting on the psalm, which now I forget, but basically it talked about railing at God, and grief didn’t have to be about death… It could be about divorce, or a friend saying they didn’t want to be your friend anymore… I just kept crying, harder and harder, words gutting me like an ax, deeper with each blow. He was dissecting my world, and holding the diseased organs in front of me. I couldn’t just grit my teeth and keep it together. I was sitting in the back, alone, and my head hit my knees as I crouched in pain.

There was a reason I was crouched over. I did not want anyone to see me. I did not want to be touched, I did not want to be consoled, I wanted to be invisible.

We do not get everything that we want. The anxiety of being seen grieving in public was so great that I would have walked out if I hadn’t had an obligation to stay. It was not the grieving itself that undid me. Had it just been a couple of tears running down my face, I doubt I would have taken much notice. It was being seen at this level, where I couldn’t breathe, I had gone into the Oprah “ugly cry,” and there was no Kleenex. I didn’t want to be him:

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, `God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’

I did not want to draw attention to myself, as if grief were a show I needed to put on to tell everyone just how hurt I was… that no one was hurting as much as me… that there was indeed a notion of competitive suffering, and I looked to the outside world like I was truly “winning.”

I wanted to be him:

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, `God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

Because Jesus’ whole point in the parable is this:

‘I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Bridget, one of my fellow sopranos, saw me crumpled into myself and came over just to hold me, rock me back and forth until I could get air into my lungs. I had to remind myself that it gave her something to see hurt and respond, and in order to live in community, I would have done the exact same thing had it been someone else’s mother and not mine. Otherwise, I would have buried myself with shame that I let myself emote.

That being said, what I know to be true is that sometimes people need to be left alone to self-soothe, to be able to draw on their own strength.

It came to me later that I’d already been doing that for weeks, without letting anyone in… the exception being Thursday at choir practice, but I knew that I’d be emotional ahead of time and I didn’t have any fucks to give. Those that didn’t know my mother just died could think I was mentally unstable because I was. I don’t know of any person in deep grief who isn’t; particularly those who have lost someone suddenly and are struck dumb by the ordinary circumstances under which it happened. As Didion points out, Sept. 11th dawned bright and sunny, and even though I only saw a patch of blue sky through my blinds that morning, I knew she was right.

After church was over, Bridget and I were walking up the stairs to the choir room to put our music away and get our stuff. I said, “I sometimes preach from my web site, and what jumped out at me today is that grieving people are both the Pharisee and the tax collector at the same time… because what do grieving people do in public? Try to act like they’re fine.” Grieving people, in order to hide how much they hurt, laugh a little too loudly or make the jokes themselves to cover up the wounded animal that lurks within. Often this is for the same reasoning I had- that grieving in public is calling attention to themselves for the wrong reasons.

What saved me today was knowing I was emoting for the right ones. My grief was genuine, deep and pure to the point of exhaustion. It was an ordinary Sunday, and I was caught off-guard, not knowing that I was going to hear such a message directed at my own heart, unprepared to have my heart sliced to that degree and have every feeling I’d tried to keep inside pour onto my shirt and pants.

Gloria mentioned that my mother had died during her pastoral prayer, and all of the people around me had the light bulb go on as to why I was crying all the way through that particular sermon. It’s possible it was just for me. I mean, I know Matt. We’ve met. It’s possible he’s a “Fanagan.” But it’s not likely. Occam’s Razor is that it was what I needed to hear in the place I needed to hear it, without regard for my own time.

I was the tax collector who didn’t want to be a Pharisee, and yet, sometimes we all need to throw caution to the wind and be open with our prayers, because otherwise, we can only guess if God is listening. To be vulnerable in a place where people can hear it is to be sure.

When Joan Didion was open in her grief with her sister-in-law, the response was strong and immediate- that we cannot catch the light by chasing it into the sunset, only by walking back through the darkness to find the dawn.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

It has officially been four weeks since my mother died, and three weeks since her funeral. I count it like a personal Lectionary, like the way today is 23 weeks after Pentecost. Because her death occurred on a Sunday, I always will. Sundays are about rest and reflection, and I cannot believe that there will ever be a Sunday again in which part of the reflection doesn’t include how beautiful church was and how I wish she’d been with me to see it… whether I am just going to church, or whether I was responsible for creating the experience.

There are so many firsts when your mother dies. This week it’s been the first period of my whole life that I didn’t have a mother to complain to, or when I lived in Texas, to bring me chocolate stashed in her purse. It seems like a small thing, but trust me when I say that small things are writ large. Besides, isn’t a period the most universal mother/daughter experience of which you can think? Are You There God? It’s Me, Leslie.

I have never done anything normally, and my period is no different. I got my first one when I was in the hospital for identifiable symptoms and no clear diagnosis… and I thought I was bleeding out the other end as a result. I was ten, maybe 11, so of course that’s how medicine worked. My mother had taught me about the birds and the bees long ago, but that information did not occur to me in the middle of being hospitalized for something else. I thought it was all connected. To my mother’s credit, she did not laugh. She just bought me my first package of Always and taught me how to use it.

It was a hallmark for me- the first problem in which I did not immediately run to my dad, the fixer of all things. This is because he wasn’t there, and she was. My dad, even then, was interested in medicine and had she not been with me, I probably would have told him first… because this wasn’t a woman thing to me. It was a symptom… of what, I did not know… but surely it wasn’t universal.

It was.

However, I’d just had a battery of tests, so if it hadn’t been for my mother, I would probably think to this day that meningismus and menarche were related. I mean, obviously everyone bleeds out of their hooha after a spinal tap, right? Right? #crickets

I am picturing Dr. Anthony spitting her coffee onto her keyboard at this point.

That image made me laugh, and anything that makes me laugh right now is invaluable. It is my reflex to laugh in the face of enormous pain.

Now I just have to buy my own Mr. Goodbars.

I wish I had more to say today, but I just don’t. I’m going to try and pull out feelings, but mostly today I’ve been asleep. I am not ignoring the fact that I don’t have a job, but I am also not ignoring that it’s nice not to have one in the midst of recovering from the worst thing that has ever happened in my world… and my world was broken before. My mother dying is just the latest thing that’s happened. In fact, my landlady and my adopted family speak of it, and not in hushed tones (blessedly), but straight to my face. They believe I have endured so much, and this is just the shitty icing on the burnt cake.

Let’s review, shall we?

Dana and I broke up in Feb. 2015, after having broken up in 2013 for approximately an hour and a half… not knowing why I couldn’t make it stick, but I couldn’t, so that the denouement was painful and slow until it was traumatic. It seems cruel to have asked her to pick up her life and move with me to Houston and then break up with her, but she had enough of her own money that she could have done whatever she wanted. I did not feel like I was making her stay anywhere, or that I would have left her out in the cold had she had none of her own resources. In fact, if I’d been the one with the large sum of money, I would have given it to her, because my heart was broken but my brain wasn’t… Just because I couldn’t continue to be married to her didn’t mean that all my friendship neurons disappeared. To me, being friends and being married were just different commitments, and I did not want to break both… at first.

I broke up with her because she had once again, broken my confidentiality with something I specifically told her to keep quiet… a repeating pattern in my own life with Argo, because Argo thought I couldn’t keep my trap shut and simultaneously said to make sure Dana read everything so she’d know that Argo wasn’t at fault for anything… that those “in love with her mind” feelings were mine to deal with and were not reciprocated, which was how I felt about the matter. I was never deluded into thinking that they were until Dana called my attention to it (repeatedly), and because she was someone I trusted implicitly, I later thought she might be right (she was, in fact, not). Those “in love with her mind” feelings WERE my shit to deal with and I did, quite successfully, once I was out of the tug-of-war Dana thought they were having (and were, in fact, not).

The fact that Argo told me to tell Dana everything didn’t stick in my mind. The notion that I’d hurt Argo on purpose because she told me I did stuck like glue. The fact that she did not put any constraints on “tell her everything” was lost on me, and if I’d put more thought into it than I did, I would have realized that saying “tell her everything” did not render past confirmation of confidentiality null and void… nor did I realize that when she said “this goes no further than here,” that meant Dana, too. Because, as I have learned since, it’s ok to have friends apart from your partner, to share secrets that deserve honesty, but always respect. I didn’t know that then, because I’d never had a friend like that before.

It wasn’t about isolating me from Dana, it was about our relationship being separate from my marriage, and that wasn’t a bad thing. Dana and I didn’t always have to come as a package deal, and the fact that I thought we did was in itself inherently in my worst interest… not with Argo… with all my friends.

It stripped me of my ability to see myself as a complete entity unto myself, lost without my other half. That’s probably the biggest reason I haven’t dated anyone since. I don’t want to give up my independence, and want to make sure that I have healthy coping mechanisms for continuing to be self-sufficient in a relationship as well as I do without one. Because there are no more package deals. The two-for-one special isn’t always going…

So it was a nasty breakup and World War Me with Argo as we’ve gone through so many extreme highs and lows, both willing to forgive an enormous amount of shit right up until we couldn’t anymore. Neither of us should be willing to stay no matter how bad it gets, hoping against hope that it will get better when we’ve seen no evidence of it. The things she’s said to me run through my mind constantly in a good way, memories as opposed to creating a future, because the future does not render past laughs invalid.

I keep a small flame of hope alive that one day there will be this great redemption story, because to not is to think contrary to who I am. There is always redemption, even in the middle of disaster. I don’t think that way because of how she feels, but because I am a Christian, and I would be really bad at my faith if I didn’t see resurrection in all things, and I refuse to walk around in Good Friday. I want to be one of the Easter people in what is seemingly a Good Friday world.

In my own mind, it is Holy Saturday, a constant vigil for everything I’ve lost because I don’t know that the resurrection is even a thing, as the Disciples didn’t, either. I have one advantage over them knowing that resurrections do indeed happen all the time, but in this case, I cannot search for what it might be because I am not through crying and tearing my clothes over the many Good Fridays that have happened in a relatively short amount of time.

I just have to remember that they didn’t happen to me. I participated in the end of my relationships with both Dana and Argo, and my mother didn’t die because I didn’t love her enough. It happened of its own accord. In this case, it isn’t about me, and to think so is to encourage ego to get in the way. I am not the center of the universe.

However, I am responsible for my tiny part.

Speaking of which, on Sunday I am singing “ballsetto,” because we’re doing an anthem that requires tenors we don’t have. I think I’m going to go up to the church and work on the part, because I was doing ok with a strong tenor next to me at choir and when he wasn’t singing with me, I couldn’t immediately find where I was supposed to be (we do have tenors, they’re just not going to be there on Sunday). When you’re used to reading the top line, reading the third one down gets tricky at page turns, and in this particular piece, the accompaniment is no help. I’m hoping that by doing the work on Saturday, I might even be able to look up at the conductor once in a while.

I just wish I had a horrible cold, because it makes my low Fs come out so nicely.

Maybe I should go to a cigar bar tomorrow night. Nothing turns a soprano into a tenor faster than a Macanudo.

It’s also casual Sunday, which means we’re not wearing robes. I wish I still had my WTFWJD? T-shirt.

Because at this point, that’s really all I have to say.

I went to choir tonight because I needed music and friends, in that order. Ingrid and Leslie #1 are closest to me, and we cracked each other up the entire time…. Well, not the entire time. I made it all the way to 8:50 before I cried so hard that I was shaking uncontrollably, and Leslie (who lost her mother when her mother was only 52) and Ingrid just wrapped their arms around me and held me close until the piece was over.

Everything just collapsed inside me, because I’d sung that piece before at Epiphany with Joseph Painter, and between losing him as a voice teacher and losing my mother as my accompanist (a truly special relationship in addition to just being my mom), I was a total mess. There were about ten full seconds that I thought I was going to go into a full-blown panic attack and I didn’t have any Klonopin in my backpack and I hadn’t taken it earlier… but at the same time, I do not regret it in the slightest. If I had, it would not have been the same choir practice, one in which I needed to sob uncontrollably at God working through music, #prayingontherests (See what I did there? I thought it was clever, too). Sam, the interim choir director now that Nae has left, just lost her mother last year, and we talked for about 30 minutes afterward. I told her about the intense feelings I had about my grief not being for the past, but for the lost future. We all think we have more time, but again, “here today, gone tomorrow” is a thing- in Toby Ziegler’s voice every time.

Sam and Leslie #1 were both Leo McGarry- “I’ve been in this hole before, and I know the way out.”

I needed to go to choir because I found this blog entry from 2003:

I know I am not alone when I say that at 13, I mentally, physically, and spiritually lost touch with my mother. Though I would like to say that it was all due to normal teenage angst, it was actually a mutual blessing and releasing process. She had made it clear through thought, word, and deed that she did not want to raise a lesbian daughter. I made it clear that should she treat me as if lesbian were my only adjective, I was going to need more than she could give.

It was not without incident. I could see the pain behind my mother’s eyes as she watched my clean, pure mother-love transfer away to the woman who would guide me through adolescence. I could sense that she felt powerless to stop it- and at times, wanted to reach across the divide. It was in those moments that I felt equally impotent, unable in my 13-year-old mind to divide loyalties and regain ground that had been lost.

It was a time of deep, impenetrable fog, and the piano was our only lighthouse. Hearing her fingers fly over the keys would rescue me, if only for a moment, from the dark weather moving across my mind. Occasionally, I would sit next to her, turning the pages in her music when she was involved in a difficult passage. It was the closest that we could come to being in communion with each other.

Last year, after living in Washington, DC for several months, I went back to Houston and visited with my mother. Though the conversation was light and easy, it was as if we were two friends… simply “ladies who lunch.” Then she suggested she show me the music she had planned for her church choir on Sunday. I sat down next to her, intent on doing “my job.”

As she started to play, I could feel a lump starting to invade my throat, and my eyes welled in a familiar stinging sensation. The connection that we had felt all those years ago had returned, bringing with it a different kind of peace, one that transcended both of our past transgressions.

No, our relationship would not, could not be the same as it was… but new emotions were starting to wash over me. We were now free to make a new covenant, mindful of the road on which we had walked… but diverging sharply into unfamiliar territory.

From 2003 to 2016, we had a very different relationship than the one we had when I was a teen, because as a teen, you just don’t get the concept that your mother is irreplaceable and to try as hard as you can to love her despite your differences. I also have a different perspective on what I have done, what I have left undone, and what wasn’t my fault. The only thing that’s left is regretting that our relationship didn’t continue to move past my teenage years and all the processing power it took out of me, because I allowed myself to spend so much more time thinking about her, because as a kid I didn’t want to be close to anyone who didn’t want to be close to me. I am probably wrong that she didn’t want to be close to me, and it is more accurate that she didn’t know how. When you are so conflicted about the ideas of sin and nature, how is it possible to bridge that gap?

Time.

And it ran out.