It’s been some time since the last blog, and the poetry has been slower to come too as life transitions to a new step. Eighty or so baking summer days have passed, and in those hottest weeks, the heat set the soul alight, boiling the blood to high-pressure steam, driving the engine of my body ever forward. In the name of personal progress, I began incinerating the finite tank of fuel each day, often borrowing against the next, emptying the reserves and taking loans on their imaginary collateral.
July was propelled by the pressure to find the next slip and, with fatigued, trembling fingers, hitch the lines to its cleats. A discouraging and time-consuming scouting mission pinned me with anxiety, pressing either palm against the crush of two equal and opposite fears – the transitory nature of dropping anchor in yet another temporary location and the relative restriction of docking somewhere more permanent. After a full year of exploration, every nest began to look like a new cage. This illusion was at odds with the deep exhaustion of constant change, my brain and bones begging for a soft place to land.
The end of the month required a decision, a step, and so I chose what felt right, which while seemingly simple was arguably difficult to discern. In the numbing rush of movement, and the panning echo of numerous well-intended [we cheerfully assume] opinions framed from each individual’s perspective of what a happy life looks like, my own voice was clipped and distorted.
Ultimately, in a historically rare moment of trusting myself, I chose a place that blends quiet and convenience, nature and community, with a yard to delight my steadfast fuzzy companion and terms that offer stability in balance with flexibility. I chose a place that simply felt good to be, where I could equalize peace and purpose. I chose my voice, hoarse but insistent, cutting through the echoes, growing from a whisper to a shout and asking, “but what do I want?”
The week after my decision was a blur of packing, cleaning and preparing to move, albeit a relatively short distance. Paperwork and a few car loads in the overlapping final day landed me supine on a goose-down linen couch, eyes unfocused on the whirling ceiling fan, repeatedly answering the frantic mind asking, “Now what?” with simply, “This.”
After the move the burnout period was profound, extended. Once my body and mind felt safe enough to rest, the fumes I’d been running on petered out, the blood cooled, the pressure subsided and I skidded to a sudden stop. Unpacking was therefore slow and emotionally charged; relics of another life that had been in boxes since I packed up my old house saw light for the first time in a year, unopened previously as the next move was only ever mere weeks away. It felt similar to going through the cherished belongings of a loved one who had passed away – an exercise in acceptance with no shortage of grieving the person I used to be, the steps I climbed to get here.
Some items found their way to the trash, others to donation bins, and the rest found their homes in the first rooms I dared to call home since their packing. I made a point of leaving nothing packed this time, of celebrating the act of clearing space and nesting. The blending of the former with the new felt like stirring old stones with new cement, preparing to pour a new, balanced foundation, stronger for having removed what weakened the first. [See “Like Pouring Concrete in the Rain”]
For the one year anti-versary of my divorce, I bought myself a guitar to improve my songwriting toolbox. Not knowing how to play yet myself to test it out, the most brillant, vibrant saleswoman played a bittersweet melody for me and witnessed my rarest public show of emotion – equally bittersweet tears. With a firm hug, and an insistence in the symbolism of my hands putting it in its case for the first time, she wished me happiness and I carried home a new treasure I am still only beginning to explore.
I later hosted a dinner party/pseudo-housewarming, replete with new chef friends filling my kitchen with delicious smells and raucous laughter, another serenading us on my guitar [I’ve named it Rosalie], and a cycle of karaoke songs where every performance was celebrated.
This was a humbling experience in several ways. For one, how fortunate I am to be surrounded by such kindness and warmth. On the other hand, I love to sing and pride myself in my voice, but for my first performance I literally choked – not to the judgement of anyone, another point of humbling gratitude, but surprising to me in a way that kicked off deep self-reflection on feelings that had been locked away for 20+ years.
In the moment, I chose to do a second performance in attempted redemption, which was less strangled than the first but still nowhere near full capacity and capability. In the days after, I came to realize that the experience was a physiological reaction mirroring remembered abuse – a blended Neapolitan of emotional, physical and sexual – experienced when I used to sing on stage as a much younger person.
Before I might have torn apart every aspect of those eight or so minutes and gone silent for weeks, feeling discouraged like I’d taken several steps back, like I was an imposter, delusional for believing I could do it. Before I might not have gotten up to sing in front of new friends at all.
I chose instead to see this realization as an object found with a bare foot, an obstacle made of hateful words and violent actions, a combination of careless and malicious, left on my stairs of self-realization by equally careless and/or malicious people who harmed me and called it love. I chose instead to drive every night through the city and out to the farmland beyond, timed with the sunset, windows down and singing my heart out to anyone who might hear it without giving myself a letter grade or getting quiet when another open window stopped at a light beside me.
I remembered that the stairs are mine. I chose to throw the garbage over the railing and step up.
Last Sunday was a sunset worth remembering, this time singing along to a shared playlist from a boat on the water, surrounded by laughter, more new friends, egrets, bats, vivid neon horizons, and immense satisfaction at this particular step in the climb.
The arrival of autumn means the sunset is about to be during deeply suboptimal driving hours – but I will keep singing.
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