Someday summer

Someday summer will come, and I will be cured of the relentless urge to re-mate, because all of the world will be mating then, and I will live vicariously through her many manifestations. 

Summer will come and the days will stretch long and hot and sweet.  I will buy or grow, and then cook: summer squash with basil and peppers, corn and oregano and greens.  I will eat it all by my lonesome, or I will share it with another human, and it will be delicious.  I will smile up at the sun, sitting out on the patio of my new home in East San Jose.

Someday summer will come and hopefully I won’t be as thick as I was before, but neither will I be so thin as I am now, where everyone who sees me comments on my changed face and shape.  I am sick with grief, and it is the dead of Winter, but the dead of Winter shall also pass.

Summer will come, and the all the women I desire now will possibly pass too, and the grief at losing my life mate will pass, but more slowly, or in nuances, somehow.  There is one woman in particular I like today, or rather am compelled by, and if she could stick around, in a good way that heals both of us, I would wish for that.  But whether she does or does not, I can hope and suppose that when summer finally gets her azz over here, there will be Analuz DeLeon and funny, quirky Mikha.  Mikha and I, in the summer or even in the dead of a dying Winter, can make fart jokes and laugh hysterically.  By this summer she will be six, and I will be forty.  I think that’s a good ratio.  And hopefully she will have not correctly learned how to pronounce my familial title, and will still scream “Marrina!” and greet me with a flying tackle. 

There will be (hope of hopes) beautiful centered Jen Johnson and brilliant Ben and adorable Becca, with Scott rumbling in the background.  Friend of my heart and unofficial, amazing, godkids.  There will (my G-ddess willing) be sweet, sweet Josie, the mothership, now with Tadeo and Joaquin too, and perhaps by the time summer has come around, I will be out of this crazy funky freaky space enough to have spent some serious chunks of time with them, and to know them, and for them to know my silly Tia face, if not by heart, then at least quite, quite well. 

And in the summer I think I will still have a lovely family and nieces, and call my Mom often, and pet the fat, purring, hopefully-reasonably-healthy Leopard until she drools.  And the body of sweet Georgia Brown will either have been brought to my new home, or left in this old garden of fatal grief, and either way it will be OK.  This summer, I hope that I will still work with that fierce tender red fox Stasia McGehee, and the days will pass far more quickly than they do now, in a haze of weeding and sweeping, and laughter – not like they used to, exactly, but not like they drag this Winter, either.  And we will be dancing-working-everything friends, like we were, and are, but with more happiness involved. 

And my beloved Perfessor Cindy will possibly still love me via Facebook and perhaps we’ll have gone for another intensely connective outing.  Who knows.

I can hope that by summer, I will be this strong, but much healthier, and this smart, but much happier, and that I will have taken even some teeny tiny slice of this crazy, debilitating, drooling grief, and turned it to my advantage.  Maybe I will be in a choir, or a band, a relationship, or a new school program for a brand-new degree in fabulousness.  Maybe I will just work and read and drink wine like I do now.  But I would like to be able to mention home, future, or partnership without the tears sneaking in and shredding me.

Hopefully I will have learned something, grown somewhat; I could imagine a day of basil stir fry and laughter when I look back on this pulverized, powerless winter and it feels far, far away.

And some day, in the heat of summer or thereafter, I may take walk with the woman who once was my mate, my wife without need of vows, my partner in love and in home, and ask her what happened, and how she left, and why.  And she may not be able to explain, because some things are beyond the explanation.  And I will accept that, since the lack of acceptance, is, perhaps, a small part of what caused the need for explanations in the first place.

Today of Christmas 2012 feels endless, obsessive; sick, and bad and doomed.  But whatever else I may or may not be, I am indeed an ecologist, and I know that someday, someday, SOME DAY, the summer will also come. 

Animal survival

I am operating on the animal plane, a female coyote, instinctive.

My life mate has gone, is gone, is sick, will not come home.  She broke the den, she left the nest, she hurts but will not return.  I dream of death at night, and my sleep is shattered.

I move my bed for the safety of the heart.  Sleep outside on the patio until the rains come, and then downstairs on the living room floor, pillowed with blankets, awkward.  Upstairs, the expensive queen sized nest sits, betrayed, scentless.

It is freezing cold but I feel it little.

I have lost the joy of eating and my breasts are small and my pants hang.  I am driven to re-mate and I circle relentlessly, sniffing, looking.  I am driven to find a new den, and I push and push and scout until I finally buy a new home to hole up in.  I wait for the current owners to leave, tail curled around my paws, panting.

My new Winter mate is tall, and smells like my tribe from her mouth to her cunt.  At first she moves recklessly, relentlessly lovely in my broken nest, making coffee and lighting a fire in my fireplace, laughing a deep gravelly laugh.  I am drawn towards wholeness, and towards her.  But in a month, she says to stop taking her t-shirts to sleep in, that she does not want to be claimed by me, and I am broken down, again.  She dons lilac-scented lotion and refuses my kisses, and I am furious, and confused.

My pack worries.  They whine and lick my face, bring me choice tidbits.  A prominent member, sick with grief?  No, no good, this is not good.  They circle on sweet paws, hemming me in, endless, comfort, community.

But thin and lean, it’s good to be this lean – I am light on the hunt for yet another mate and my muscles for moving my belongings stand out against my ribs.  Wintertime coyote trots endlessly through the frozen air.  The new den will be ready soon!

My mother has come, and I can relax.  She is small, curved and restless, a comfortable graying energetic queen dog.  We go out to eat and I eat and eat.  We come home to sleep and I sleep, through the night, into the morning, the den is being guarded, I am safe.  My new nest is finally ready so the alpha queen and I go to the paint store and discuss shades of off-white.  She and the painter laugh at my desire to have white ceiling, white baseboards and white walls, too.  The den must be clean, open, uncompromised.  It must have integrity and wholeness.

The Winter solstice is in two days and it’s cold enough to snap a finger bone.  I starve and trot and circle, I move and paint and make do.  I continue.  I carry on.  I survive with this animal instinct.

Tonight's ad (among many):

A small moment of relief for having stayed quit through these crazy storms.

Now:
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SF Bay Area

FREE quit smoking support!  "Return to smoke free" CD by Jay Tinsman, pack of nicorette, homeopathic quit-smoking remedy, and "smoke free" herbal support supplements.  Note:  these last three items have been opened and partially used.

My smartphone app says I'm 1 year, 43 weeks, and 5 days smoke free, and that by not smoking 6719 cigarettes, I have saved $3628.

I actually did not use any of this stuff when I finally quit for good, I went cold-turkey.  So if it's not here when you arrive, know that YOU CAN DO IT ANYWAY!  Good luck, GO GO GO!

Address:  711 Prospect Row, San Mateo.

Pay it forward!
______________________________________________________

Packing

I don't know where I am going but I have started packing to get there.  Box by box, I hope to sort through the detritus of our life together, and also of my LBB (Life Before Bun).  If there's something I think I might not need, I put it on the curb in a paper bag, and place a Free ad on the Internet, describing the giveaway, and saying "pay it forward".  I feel strongly that this is the right thing to be doing right now.  Cold wine, Latin music, empty boxes.  We choose what we want, but then try to go on with what we are given.  Later, late night / early morning, I will go sleep outside, away from Our Bed, and the dew will fall on my face until it's time to get up and begin again.

Here are some things that we did:

We made homemade Christmas presents together, with a different theme, every year.  I’ve lost the bright orange rice-sock we made to heat and put on the neck for relaxation.  Maybe she took it when she left?

We lit Hannuka candles every night of the holiday, I printed out the prayers for her to read in halting Heeblish.  She chose the color of the candles and I let my voice ring out to the blessing of light.

We sat on the couch and sang Joni Mitchell songs.  It was only once but I will always remember it.  

We had long talks about remembered kinds of candy and food and gum from our childhoods and then I went and bought a plethora of Hubba Bubba for us to share.

We went to Therapy. 

We cried.

We slept in the same bed many or most nights for about three years.  She ran hot (her friends called her oven-head) so I could just put one toe or finger on her and eventually I’d be warm all over.  I can’t bear to sleep in our bed now so I've made myself a nest outside.  When it rains I camp on the living room floor or go to the house of a friend.

We shared care of my beloved cat-son, from 5 years before until the day that he died.  We strategized how to get him to eat when he grew so, so thin, and she helped me dig the hole on the horrible horrible day of his burial.  

We fought about sex.  We had it, and did not.  We tried to find ways around the disparity in our desires.

We called each other Bun to such a level that it was locally famous.  Many of my friends also called her Bun.  An acquaintance once wrote on Facebook: “Your partner, I believe her name is Bun…”  Also many derivatives of Bun, you can only imagine.

She was sad.  She was so sad, so often.  I would come down the stairs to find her staring at her iPad, curled up on the couch in the middle of the day.  I tried to hold her, help her.  I guess I failed.  Maybe she just needed me to HEAR her.  I pushed her to get help.  I thought it helped.  

We joked about my remaining cat and enjoyed her as best we could.  She riffed on my names for said cat, cackling: “Choochi!  Choochi-mama!  Mama-lama-choochi paws!” 

We lived together.

She worked, hard, and adventured, harder.  I supported her every way I knew how. I trusted her - to be far away, around strange women, tracking down the gods of the wilderness.  I trusted her to be faithful to me.  She bought maps and special equipment, trained in the backyard and other places.  I did my best to clear out a swath in our world for her to pursue her dreams in.  I stood tall against anyone who might stand in her way, including myself.  Including her.

We visited my parents and her parents, her brother and my brother, my nieces and her nephews.  I called her father "Dad" and she called my grandmother "Abuela."  We told each other that we were each other's family.

We appreciated each other’s looks, with every variation of “you are cute”, “you are so cute”, “WHY ARE YOU SO CUTE OMG I CAN'T STAND IT”  And yet at the same time, and in some weird way, I wonder if either of us felt deeply seen on the physical level.  I remember her making muscles for me, saying: “How’s this?  Am I strong?”  and I wonder if I ever gave her what she needed.

I must have never given her what she needed because she is gone.  I’m alone in the house of Joni Mitchell and Hubba Bubba, of the one lonely leftover female cat, and the nest pitched outside, far away from the dangerously lonely, betrayed bed.  I am alone in the former House of Bun, trying to muster my own laughter, my own cute, my own warmth in the cold of the night.

I don’t know, I may never know, how it is that I incurred this loss.

How to bear the unbearable

Find out something that burns you like acid.

Rage and cry and wrestle with understanding.

Receive no clarity.

Go to the beach and cry out to the stars.

Call Josie.

Drink wine and take a hot bath.

Cry out to the night.

Fetch the Leopard so you are not the only mammal in the bed.

Sleep for three hours.

Wake up and wrestle with understanding.  Be tortured by the thoughts.

Call Jen.

Look ugly.  Be awkward.  Lack grace.

Rage and cry and struggle.

In this unlovely way, somehow, the sun will eventually rise.

Warning, this post is graphic

Hard, hard dreams last night.

Piera was kissing someone in bed next to me.  Then I flew around (that part was good).  Then I was at an opera theater trying to get away from the bad guys.  They had gotten one lady already - they would slowly disfigure her hands, one finger at a time.  They would cut it off, wait for it to heal and for her to resume her life and then start cutting at the next one.  She was sobbing as she showed me her gory swollen excoriated hands, and cried out "they won't give me a drain" - they wouldn't install a drain in the wound, so it ended up closing while unhealed.  Then the wound would swell and the pus and infection would explode it back open.

I cried again today.  Somewhere along the line (like, in teenage years) it became almost impossible for me to cry alone, so every time I achieve it is worth noting.  Somehow I need to be held and seen by someone else to feel safe enough to cry.  Scared of my own grief, I guess.

My Mom pointed out that I am the lady at the opera.  I see Piera tomorrow, to learn just how much kissing of someone else is going on, and how and why she walked out so suddenly.  I guess it feels like another finger is being cut off.  I'm sorry if that sounds dramatic and weird.  This is just a description of where the wild things are as I see them.  So all I can do is try to open a drain in the wound, and let it ooze into the pillow with my tears and snot and funny looking crying face.

There were all the other women, and then there was Piera.  (I said it like that when I was with her, so we can know it's true.)  This relationship, unlike all the others, was built on mutual compatibilities, shared experiences, trust, and a whole lot of like.  I've loved a lot of women, but liked and trusted far fewer, oddly.  And Piera was the first person who I felt saw me as me, the real me, and loved that me, and would stay and stay, and stay.

And I was wrong.

Nothing to do now but try to cry, and wait as well as I can for tomorrow.

I don't want this post to end on a falsa happy note, because today is a truly tough day.  But it is worth noting that in this dream, as well as one I had the day after I found out what had happened with Piera, I flew.  In both of these flying dreams, navigation was the question.  In both of them I had a navigation apparatus that I ignored/didn't know how to use/didn't work, and in both of them I was able to steer around properly and land safely when and where and how I wanted.  Both landings were on a beach.  HMMMM!

Tears

So tears came for me tonight, great gutted wrenching howls that probably terrorized the whole neighborhood.  I don't want to say too much about it, just that it was sacred, and scary, and I lived through it by myself, without calling out for help.

Househunting on the cheap in the Bay Area

Things I like: 

• Quiet streets
• Yellow houses
• Yellow kitchens, also white, or blue.
• Laminate or hardwood floors
• Yellow (or white or blue), sunny kitchens with hardwood floors (duh!)
• Tile floors also
• Big, bare yards (blank slate!)
• Big windows
• Open spaces
• No neighbors!  Or few of them, and quiet - like I have now.
• A place for the Leopard to roll around in the sun and show her chubby pink belly to the sky
• A short, predictable commute to work.  1/2 hour, just long enough to eat breakfast and assemble my mental armor.
• Green houses.
• Pink houses.
• A place where I may consider transferring the decomposing body of sweet sacred Georgia Brown.
• A place where I feel safe OR a place cheap enough that I reserve some money for a big fence and an alarm.  But preferably the first.
• A place where I can lie with no shirt on in the clean sunny dirt (see above).
• Having a vegetable garden.
• Not having to freak out about locking up my bicycle in maximum-security solitary confinement.
• Blue houses (a nice blue, or blue and white.  Not the depressing, dull, poverty-grey-blue.)

Things I do not like:

• Grout.
• Having to move at all.
• Having to weigh my safety vs. my privacy vs. hours in the car every day vs. sunlight.
• Grey houses, or brown, or a weird, deranged pastel that is mostly dirt.
• Carpet, especially if/when it is old and disgusting.
• Neighbors with pitbulls.
• Neighbors with un-neutered, uncared-for pets of any kind.
• Being single (so far.  To be fair it has only been three weeks).
• Knowing I will probably get out-maneuvered by counter-offers or cash investors even if it's a property I *don't* love.
• Sitting in traffic for the hours I will end up doing if I get a place I can afford (one hour each way every day).  Achy back, no food, polluting my sweet sweet world.
• Jumping awake in the middle of the night wondering if someone is breaking in (not looking forward!)
• Seeing people on meth or other drugs twitching near the house I'm looking at.
• Condos where there is someone above you, below you, and to either side.
• Small, concrete patios with no sun.
• HOA dues of $300 at least.
• Places that smell or feel like urine, smoke, or anger and hopelessness.
• Looking at my current home with an eye to what’s mine, what’s hers, and what has to go.
• All this, really.  

I am grateful, of course.  Not of course, like it's a given.  I am grateful, simply, punto y final.  I have my health (no cancer!), safety, a clean, safe home while I figure out what is next.  None of that is to be discounted and plenty of women do not have any of those.  And please, say a prayer for those who do not.  (Goddess protect them, those who do not.)

But I still have my own unique experience which is that I. Hate. This.  I did not want it, and I do not like it.  I had built the life I longed for, my co-builder jumped ship, and now I need to cast about and look for the next shore.  (I don't care if that is a mixed metaphor, it works for me).  I can do it, and I will, but I don't have to like it, and I don't.  Now.  On to see the next listing.  

Question night.

On some level I don’t believe it, can’t believe it, don’t even want to write about it and take that one step closer to admitting that it is true.

I watch the door, thinking she will walk through it, expect to see her truck filling up half of our carport, I can’t come to terms that Piera won’t be at her post on the couch, in our bed, in my life.

Who walks away like this?  Who leaves their toothbrush and their shoes, their bicycles and their protein powder, their alarm clock and their facial cream?  Who steps neatly out of a life that two people built, together?

I don’t know.  And that’s a big part of the question for which right now, there may not be an answer.  Really? (the question goes) – the answer, is obviously, yes.  Yes, or I wouldn’t have been on the biopsy table alone, wouldn’t have spent these nights in tears, wouldn’t even be writing this, right now.  So if really, yes, and it seems like so, then how?  When did it start?  How much of our love was real?  Where was the lie?  What was the mechanics of you walking away, of the toothbrush left in sink and the lonely pillow by the bed?  When did the rot begin and how much of what we built was to last?  Any of it?  None?  Some untrustworthy middle ground in between?

And once through the how and the why and the which was a lie, then who?  You?  How can I trust again, knowing I was so placidly, incredibly, wrong?  Who have I lived with all these years, where is she now, what does that leave me with for a future?  You?  The one I could finally trust, at long last different, done right, in addition to plenty of love, a whole lot of like, you?  YOU?  

On some level I don’t believe it, can’t believe it, life without my Bun, how could this possibly be true?

Pixie Cut

In some cultures cutting off your hair is a way to separate yourself from grief or loss.  Or maybe I made that up but I think my Mom said it to me once, and it has always made sense in a visceral way.  Piera used to cut my hair, long sweet morning (well, my morning, anyway) sessions with just my pajama pants on, sitting on the plastic chair in the sunny fenced back yard, big ole towel ‘round my neck, chatting away.  “Look up?”  “Now, look to the side.”  Over time she got really good at it and we bought her some special scissors.  As months morphed to years and dozens of haircuts, I sometimes felt bad – a hairstylist, in addition to the millions of other ways she supported me and kept me whole?  But those haircut times were always so sweet.  The rest of the day after a haircut she would evaluate me with a coolly professional eye.  “Damn, I did a good job.”  And she almost always did.  On the few occasions that she was busy and I went to a salon, she would be accusatory, jealous, even!  And they rarely made me look as good as she did.

Heart-burnt tree.
Joseph D. Grant County Park, San Jose.

So I got my haircut today (of course), found a place on Yelp and went in and asked for a Pixie cut in honor of my friend the Perfessor and the rarity of a blue moon.  The lady took her time, but there was no warm backyard chair or big bath towel, no appraising Piera eyes, no cat to flop around on the ground, no wind to blow away my fluff.  No Pixie cut either, and the clouds have covered the rare blue moon – just a short, short, short trim, the better to chase away grief with, I guess.  Curls shorn, I feel lost, cut off from one more connection, as I sit alone in the empty house tonight.  

In which I do not have cancer...

Today I got “The Call” but plenty of other women didn’t, or they did, but didn’t hear what they desperately wanted to hear.  And so in one sense my path split off from my sisters – the umpire swung his hands and hollered “safe!”  But I have seen the ugly underbelly, and I know that I am not truly safe.  Nor are you, or you, or you or you or you.  There is a kinship, still, and my bruises have not yet faded.   I won’t forget these days of sisterhood, bound by the breast, the needle and our curious vulnerability.  But I am glad, so relieved, such a deep unwinding, that going forward I have heartbreak, but I am not, right now, facing cancer.  

After I got The Call and staggered through the rest of my day, I asked if anyone wanted to go to dinner and my new friend Patti Berryhill said yes because she has to celebrate a new job and so we went.  Her boyfriend Steve was there and we all talked about how I don’t have cancer but do have a divorce (next time I’ll just get officially married, then, since a breakup like this is a divorce whether you got to have a big party with presents or not) and how she is going to make $6600 more a year with more vacation days but have a longer commute and it was nice to fold my troubles into the larger fabric of life.

Patti’s boyfriend is a musician so after dinner we wandered over to the Fox Theater where they have the Wednesday night Redwood City Blues Jam and went in.  Patti is very sweet and introduced me to all her friends, but mostly I sat and watched the musicians, which I love to do.  I love how they grimace and twitch and sway, hunch over, splay out, I love how the music comes through them so strongly that they could. care. less.  what they look like or if they are cool or sexy in any given moment.  And so for those moments, I didn’t think of anything but that, transported by those, themselves transported by music.

I will become someone different.  I don’t know who she will be, what she will like to do.  What hours will she keep?  When will she come home and what will home look like?  It’s not a huge concern of mine right now, but I am definitely kind of curious.  Right now it’s wine o’clock, as it has been for so many hours lately (oops).  I am cancer-free, to the best of my knowledge, and that’s all I need to know.

Sky, Edgewood County Park.
Photo by m. sachs martin (I can't make the accent on my laptop).

Kin

Here in biopsy never-never land, I feel certain kinships with all the other women who must be going through this (I feel kinship with everyone who has dealt with divorce, too, but We Aren’t Thinking About That Right Now).

It’s unnerving to know how many other women right now are driving, or writing, or working, or sleeping with their sweet, soft sacred breast gouged up and bruised by the biopsy needle.  Make no mistake about it, this is not a “feminine” process in the stereotypical pink fuzzy sense of the word.  It’s hard and gasping and bloody, it shoves and stabs and requires all your musculature to brace up on that table.  And how many women have how many left or right breasts aching quiescent or oozing blood under their polo or t-shirt or blazer as I write this?

And how many women are in the agony of hurry up and wait?  How many went through the undignified, unofficial support group in the Kaiser basement, us strangers in our gowns like kids outside the principal’s office, trading strategy and comfort while the radiologist called us in one by one and delivered either a pardon… or a detention to the next procedure?  How many are checking Facebook and email when we all know the news will come by phone, but it is restless and relentless, this need to know, to see, are we there yet, will I live?  News, is there news, any news yet?  Did anybody say something?  Can anybody help?

Deer behind barbed wire.
Edgewood County Park, San Mateo.  Yes, it's symbolism, ok?

And yes I know there’s a good chance it’s not cancer and even if it is there are many good options and choices.  I know that.  But with a bruised body and mind I can just sit, helpless and numb, while I wait, with my sisters, a legion of wonderers, an army of bruises, a worldwide wave of held breath until that phone call finally comes.

Wildness, redux

So maybe this is not just my quit-smoking blog, but my get-through-hard-times-generally blog.  And Where the Wild Things Are might refer to the wildness of grief and obsession as well as the lovely critters I see while hiking.

Sunny hillside with tarweed, Mount Diablo State Park.

A lot has changed since I last posted, but I am still quit of smoking.  It's a good thing, because I am awaiting biopsy results on a lump in my breast.

Sweet Georgia Brown is gone.  He died April 4th, 2012.

The other main thing that has changed is that Piera is gone, was gone, specifically, 7 days before this cancer scare.  And that is so large and wild of a hurt that I can't yet really post about it, especially not sitting here in this home that we shared until just a blink of an eye ago.

I was thinking about writing today, and the sentences in my mind were sort of scintillating and witty.  I had little jokes lined up about titty bling and frankenchi-chi.  But home in this House of Grief, no longer a House of Bun, I feel grimmer.

Women are coming out from everywhere to support me.  The Realtor, my clients, colleagues - something about what I am going through makes them want to share their experience, support, and strength.

My friends and family are carrying me through.  I am trying to skate lightly along the ugly underbelly of life and still hike and eat and care for my Leopard (who had major surgery on Wednesday - it's been that kind of week).

I don't want these times to rear up and grab me.  I don't, either, think I will come through unchanged.  Too much has happened for me to know how to pray in words, but I did kneel down and kiss the ground when I heard coyotes sing tonight.

Is there a prayer of your heart?  What does it say?

A year and a half passed, and then...