First year’s end brings me home

I woke up this morning having dreamed of Jane from PlaneJaner’s Journey.  I emailed her to tell her of my dream and as I was writing tears stung my eyes.  I don’t very often feel teary these days.  Since radiation injured my vagus nerve, I’ve been on a med that blunts butterflies, goosepimples and nerve excitability (neuropathy) in my arms and hands.  It also seems to blunt my emotions (and my sexual response–blush!).  So,  tears for me are not a ready response to Hallmark commercials, chick flicks, and other touching, and sappy stimuli.

So, what’s with the tears today?  As I wrote, and subsequently copied the email to Wendy (see Herding Cats in Hammond), who told me she missed me,  I knew I needed to get back “home.”  And there, serendipitously, was  Jane’s December 28 blog  counseling me to STOP and remember who I always wanted to be.  So who is that?

I can’t say that I’ve always wanted to write — but I’ve written a journal off and on for 40 years.  So, I guess you could say I’ve written to myself.  The “me” that I’ve discovered over the years is a likeable young woman (even though I am now eligible for social security!)  She is very earnest; tries very hard to please, be successful and kind – most of the time.  I find it odd that I list those four qualities in the same sentence, since together  they have caused a slew of my inner and outer conflicts over the years. However, they also represent what makes me likeable.  I like the fact that I am likeable.

Writing in my journal on my blog has been a way of sorting out what’s important.   Years ago I read in Robert Johnson’s She, a popular book from a Jungian perspective, that one of the tasks a woman undertakes as she is in the process of emerging as her true self  is to sort seeds.  A woman sorts all kinds of “seeds” as she moves from childhood through all the phases of womanhood:  dolls, rocks, shells, beans, laundry, papers, toys, groceries, wounds, gifts, photos, alpacas, etc. etc. etc.  Sorting is what I do – and I do it well.

When I lived on Vashon Island, my favorite place to “poke” was Robinson Point – a pebbly beach that offered countless hours of searching, touching, and collecting  bags and bags of polished stones.  That was Saturday afternoons.  Sundays would find me on the wooden deck dumping and sorting the bags by size, or color, or shape.  It didn’t matter.  The beauty was in the sorting, the touching, the seeing, the coolness of the stones.  Those bags are probably still hidden in the eaves of the house.  I thought I’d return and collect them, but I haven’t.  BTW, I know this sounds like a child’s pastime, but I was in my forties when I lived there!

Writing this blog is probably my most intimate and important-to-me pastime.  And I haven’t really written since September?  October?  I’ve posted, but I haven’t allowed myself to spend the time writing.  Life has taken me over with the tasks that seem sometimes so much more important than that which feeds my soul.  I’ve known every day I  avoided opening my dashboard that I was ransoming my soul to the gods of stuff and business, but the activities seemed important to me, to my contribution to the world, to setting right the wrongs and inequities that fellow narrow-minded citizens have perpetrated upon other fellow disenfranchised citizens.  I abhor injustice.  I don’t mind putting my energies toward working for justice.  But this activity comes at a price.  And my tears bear witness to my soul’s deficit. 

Why is everything important to me “a waste of time”?  Here is where my willingness to please and be kind and successful sells me out to what the world counts as important.  I am earnest to a fault in making a go of it in society and the world.  And I earnestly am wasting my life sorting through activities and belongings that I’ve chosen.  They are choking the very breath out of me.  Too much.  Too many.  I’m inundated.

 I wish I didn’t care so much.  I wish I could turn a blind eye and a heartless countenance on the orphaned animals in shelters; or the friends fired or put down because they are or “appear to be” LGBTQetc.; or children who are getting lousy educations because our ignorant governor and legislators have cut education budgets to such a degree that kids are 40 to a class, in classrooms without heat or air conditioning or janitorial services or school supplies; or kids who are being bullied because they are differently abled, or Muslim, or LGBTQ, or geeks, or Hispanic, or black, or white.  How can I look up each morning and say, “Oh, sorry!  I have to blog or my soul will be sore!” ?  Nope, sorry!  I have to email, or phone, or write, or speak, or organize, or type lists, or whatever my skills offer to help rectify these abominations (intentional choice of word here!). Not to mention I have bills to pay, too.

So, I acknowledge the soreness of my soul, my absence at the writing place, my loss of time with my dearest friends, and I say to myself,  “O.K., girl.  You contributed in your small way to the success of DADT; you’ll continue to lobby and write and call and fuss to your ignorant state government in this new legislative session; you’ll help the animals whenever and however you can; and you’ll write your heart out when you can.  And your loving friends will continue to love you even if you don’t blog regularly because they are, in fact, your friends.

When I’m not writing I know I am engaging in the very earnest pursuit of justice, of tikkun olam—healing our world—one heartbeat at a time.  In my tiny way, I am successful in my giving of my energy to these efforts, even if the efforts themselves are not successful (Keith Allred would have been the BEST governor!).   I still struggle with having to please – guess I always will.  After all, I’m my mother’s daughter.  She’s the source of my kindness.

I guess when I ask myself today, December 30, 2010, “Who have I always wanted to be?” I have to answer earnestly, “Me!”  — clear, clean, cluttered, complicated and compassionate me.

So here’s to one year of blogging—the first!  Coming to an end and a beginning.  I can’t imagine next year’s efforts will be any different, or better, or worse.  But I’ll keep on feeding and starving and feeding and starving my poor soul.  Like my first two husbands said, “Won’t you ever be satisfied?”  Only my third and final husband knows the answer to that, but that’s another day’s blog! 

Happy New Year, everyone!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Nancy