Fragile by Sting

If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow’s rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime’s argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are

Who is this person I’ve chosen to be?  Certainly not who I said I was every year until I started getting lazy.  Why did I get complacent?  Why did I run away from the truth of who I am?  Oh, it’s easy to just stop.  The work required to maintain my truth was sometimes exhausting.  At some point, it became meaningless. 

Now I wonder what exactly it will take in order for me to become inspired to be… More.  To care about my work.  And to know what exactly my Work is anymore.   Am I still a teacher?  If I am, then what is it I’m supposed to be teaching?  Where is my spirituality?  Where did that big huge ball of Love go?  And why on earth am I so goddamned tired and unimpressed with the world anymore?  What can I do to wake myself back up?  I feel like I’m walking around in this kind of cloud of uncertainty, not really powerless, but jeez, I just don’t want to raise a finger to do anything about anything unless it’s necessary. 

When did my spirituality and my sense of direction become unnecessary?

There is nothing I really want.  I have everything I have ever wanted:  A good job with benefits that I don’t necessarily hate that makes me the kind of money that, in conjunction with my fabulous husband’s paycheck, pays the bills and the mortgage and still allows us some extra to throw at the wind.  I have a child to help raise, one that is enough like me to feel like mine, who loves me and needs me and whom I love deeply .  I have a really great little car that runs pretty much like a top and gets great gas mileage.  We have plenty of food in the house.  We have good holidays, we have fun with each other, and we are happy as a family. 

Spiritually, I am lacking.  I need something.  I want my heart to open up again and push all this crap out of the way.  I cannot seem to move out of this place, dammit.  Just … uurgh.

I read, I listen to the music that has always moved me, I look around me at the things I have always felt were sacred to some extent, and I wait for the things I need to appear.  I get universal messages that make complete sense and yet do nothing to move me from this place.  I am unimpressed with the world, really.  That’s what it keeps coming down to.  I am just unimpressed.  What do I do with that?

This job I go to every day does nothing to feed my aching spirit.  It is interesting and sometimes it is fun, but mostly I am bored and I want to do something else.  I thought I could teach somehow in the realm of my job, but nothing has come to fruition with that, either.  I enjoy precepting, to a degree, but there has to be something more than that. Something that can awaken me, move me, make me enjoy it more.  Am I qualified to do something else?  Is what I know enough?

I wonder if I had money would I still keep working?  Like if I won the lottery or had a giant windfall of money somehow, would I keep doing what I do, or would I find something else to occupy my time?  If I had the money, and all my debts freed up, and time to do what I wanted, what would it be?

No idea.  Nothing calls to me.  No, really.  Nothing.  Wow.  How pathetic am I?

She brought me here, you know.  I don’t mean just in the sense of Gave Birth.  I mean, she Willed me here.  Told Dad she knew she was supposed to have another baby.  Told me I was supposed to be her Teacher.  Ever since she told me that the first time, I’ve fought it.  Parts of me liked it, of course, this sense of importance to my mother’s spiritual needs.  The rest of me was freaked out by it.

When I was 21 or 22, leaning over a ledge with a friend, drunk and in love with the world, I pondered the nature of my being aloud.  I said I was sent here to learn to love.  Everything that followed was a testament to that declaration; all my relationships were destined to teach me about love.  My ultimate understanding of what love was supposed to be was designed on what I observed about my parents’ love affair with one another.  My father has never been with another woman, in 55 years.  He is deeply dedicated to seeing her safe and warm and respected.  My mother provides for, keeps a beautiful home for, and raised four incredibly different and headstrong daughters for this man she fell in love with as a teenager.  A teenager very much the age of my stepdaughter.  This love story has fed my heart my whole life.  It’s what I’ve always wanted, and it’s what I finally found.

All the places I’ve explored in my life my mother has followed, sometimes off in the distance, watching me… sometimes fully-engaged with me.  I’ve always felt so connected in this way. 

So here I am, watching my mother as she is starting this treatment for Lymphoma, knowing what it is, knowing what it will do… and she is so full of hope, waiting for me to mentor her through this thing I have NO IDEA about.  How do I do that?  I’ve spent the last four years deep in medical stuff, far away from the Magic that has always gotten me through my rough spots, through my growth from Student to Mentor.  My girlfriend asked me to “do a spell over” a scarf with her for mom, as a kind of healing blanket.  I realized I didn’t remember how.  I had to look it up.  Really?  I practiced it for so long, then got away for only four years only to completely forget how to do something so simple as a prayer of protection over a scarf?  What kind of spiritual mentor is THAT?

In the shower today I had this epiphany of sorts.  All the holes in the bucket lined up perfectly, and it all came pouring into my head:  If this is what I was brought here for, this mentorship, then I shall jump into it with both feet and stop being a big scardy-cat.  I never knew about anything else I ever learned until I experienced it, so why shouldn’t I be able to use my studies to help me through this experience?  Draw on what I know, on what I know she believes and what I believe, and jump right on in.  Ride the coaster. 

I suppose the immediate two weeks following diagnosis was shock, and trying to understand the diagnosis itself.  Now I understand my role in this; I can start to remember that this is who I am, who I’ve always been, and embrace it with my whole heart.

God, I love it when the clouds break.

Do what? When in distress, I take myself to my books, to my poetry, to my artwork, to those things that hold sacred meaning to me, that give me guidance.  I know if I stay with them long enough, my eyes will open to something they have required and perhaps a breakthrough occurs.

I go to my cards, find the one that wants me today:  Spirit Canoe.  The words that strike at me I write on the board.  I stare at the words: “ Point your prow in the direction of Spiritual Wisdom…Go relentlessly into the farthest reaches of your heart and soul.” 

Relentless.  There’s that word again, the word from the world of lymphoma advocacy. 

I think to myself… I cannot change what is.  I cannot make the chemo not make her feel like crap.  I cannot be there every day, nor would she want me there.  I can, in simplest terms, be present for her, give her what she needs if I can give it to her. 

She told me –has told me many times over the years- that I am her mentor.  My own mother’s mentor.  What responsibility, to be this kind of guide.  She honors me by saying such things, and I run from it like a frightened child.  I AM a frightened child.

My brain spins itself into a frenzy, of course.  I worry.  I always worry. 

I pick up The Gift by Hafiz, and touch the edges of the page… open and find what is meant for me to hear tonite: 

Now

That

All your worry

Has proved such an

Unlucrative

Business,

Why

Not

Find a better

Job.

Perfect, of course.  And I close my eyes and think on it. Quiet, house.  Shhhh….Let me think.  More than that, let me NOT think for just a minute. 

My spirituality is lacking.  Now is the time I should be able to break through and be for my family a guide.  We all have such different views.  And I can understand them all.  But I cannot seem to find my own anchor, the thing that has the deepest meaning, the most personally sacred. 

I open my eyes to see the Rumi collection entitled Hidden Music.  Somewhere, there… the next thing.  And so it is:

One day your heart

will take you to your lover.

One day your soul

will carry you to the Beloved.

Don’t get lost in your pain,

know that one day

your pain will become your cure.

My heart, make friends with grief

and if you do, what luck!

Embrace it for your grief is the call

the Beloved answers.

I must delve deep, swim hard, fight for air and sun.  My lesson… my grief over a perceived loss.  She is still here physically, and she will always be here spiritually.  She will always be in my heart, on my mind, and a part of Who I Am.

Whoever that is.

I will dance again. I will sing more. I will write more. I will take more time for myself. I will get massages again. And I will do my yoga!

I will hold on loosely, and love with all my heart.

My checkbook will be happier, and my bills will be easier to manage.

I won’t mind getting up for work next year. I’ll find a little joy in my job.

I’ll spend more time with my father, just us time. I’ll get the city called about my back porch so dad can build it while he still has the head to do so.

I will be less sarcastic and judgemental, and spend more time being silent instead of being hateful or snarky. I will say one nice thing about myself every day and remember how it feels to fall in love with myself.

I am thankful for my life, and thankful for all the assholes that paved the way for my happiness. Specifically… I am thankful for my asshole rapist boyfriend from high school for and my second husband, both men who completely changed my world at different times in my life. If it weren’t for you two boys, I wouldn’t be the woman I am today, have the life I have today, nor be as happy as I am today.

So…. to summarize 2010: Thank god for assholes, and bring on the good stuff!