from blyth 2

When COVID hit I was so fortunate to own a single family home that had a little backyard and a nice front porch. That first summer, clinging to a job I had planned to leave before the economy tanked, my anger at the professional situation I was in got beaten into the dirt and yielded tomatos, peppers, peas, corn, squash, and giant sunflowers. Leaving fresh produce on other peoples front porches became my love language.

At one point a photographer friend did a series of socially distanced photos of people on their porches. My ex spouse and I participated, decided we would be true to ourselves and appeared in our bathrobes. We got married over zoom on that same porch a few months later.

Trouble arrived onto that same porch too. First the empty bottles, later I find the tin foil. Trauma come home to roost, and taking up space so publicly. I think so often of how my mother stridently hushed me when I fought with her, so that the sin became not just my rebellion but also my voice. I am not afraid of having screaming fights on the front porch with you. I am not afraid of screaming cops off that porch when they come.

Eventually I force you out the house. I will not die with you or for you. I move all your furniture out of my house, alone, late at night, sweating and swearing and fully present in my body.

Almost exactly three years later I finally get to sell the house. First a dumpster stands in the driveway, me tossing half the contents of the house off the side of the front porch through the whole first night, just like when I moved you. Two days I am standing on the front porch watching the moving van leave. It is a privilege to leave. We are both lucky to be alive.

from blyth 1

 Let us agree for now: or write about a breaking heart: or about a blessing

 

Let us agree for now that time does not heal all wounds. That time is a brute force, to be respected, but not venerated, and it does not treat all of us equally.

That there was a time in my life when my grief made sense to others, and seemed an appropriate reaction in that moment. That time has passed, but my grief has not.

That time keeps marching on is a threat, not a reassurance.

The trajectory of growth I built for myself coming out of a scarred childhood carries me still. I have managed not to stagnate. I did find my next home and my next job and scrape together a new existence out of the rotted remains of my old life.

So I live now in a new place with new people who have no idea what I have walked through, and therefore can’t hold it against me, but also can’t hold it with me. My whole body is still existing in the moment years ago when I first understood that I would lose everything. There is so little of me alive in the moment that everyone else calls “right now.”

Time looking backward is too dense to view clearly, the losses pile up and over one another and none can be separated from the rest. When I look forward, sometimes I feel fearless, because I have proved I can live through the worst things. But many times I feel nothing. I feel sure that the major plot lines of my life are all behind me.

 

ok so i am racking up the hard NOs these days. no i will not get a colposcopy. no i will not settle for a doctor who does not listen to me. no i will not go seeking new friends or partners. it is not too many hard NOs but for someone raised without the ability to ever say no, it feels like a lot. 

no i will not provide self-soothing physical touch. 

because i don't want to cry? because i don't want to deal with the emotional deluge? because softness is a lie? because safety is a lie? so why make myself feel soft or safe? 

deadnaming myself a hundred times a day, especially when lecturing myself. it's clear my internal harangue is a production of my mother, and just as unyielding.

do i think i have to be equally unyielding in order to recover from her?

i'm pretty clear that this is my healing era, that this is my opportunity to clear my head and heart, that i moved across the country for the chance to be in a fresh environment and away from all my triggers, places, people, events. 

i'm also pretty clear that bad medical care, the wrong psych meds, bad therapy will not help. i don't feel i need to reject my instincts around when to say no to those things. 

perhaps like everything else this is all up to me and there will be no support or resources. perhaps like everything else i am left with only the resources of my body, my brain, and what i can provide for myself. this would make sense. perhaps there is no therapy that would help that i can access.