Loud-mouthed liberal feminist. Anarchist knitter. Tequila-drinking artsy-smartsy fat chick. Bluesy folk-rock singer-songwriter. Rebel with too many causes. Quirky eclectic pagan poet. Paradoxical intuitive smartass. Sarcastic brainiac insomniac. You know, for starters.

6.22.2009

Sunshine and darkness and time passing.

Okay. This week? We're going on a diet. All of us. But this is a diet of a different kind. We're going to regulate the habit of unhappiness. We will make the conscious decision to make the most of what we have and pine for nothing. No undefinable need or vague despair. Enough!!! If you don't like it, FIX IT. If you can't fix it, PLAN B it. If you like it and want more, RESPECT IT. Clean straight lines of living.
- The Mayer, via Twitter


I have been unhappy a lot lately. No matter how many blessings I have tried to consciously celebrate over the past six months or so, I just couldn't shake the doom and gloom that has hung over my head since my grandmother passed away in December. I couldn't ever seem to catch my breath and find the calm, still center of myself, the part that is solid as bedrock regardless of the shaking of the world around me. I'm not used to that happening very often...I tend to - even when I'm standing in the midst of a shitstorm - be able to handle it from that place of groundedness, so that even if life is crap, I still feel okay, like it will pass, like I can handle it and things will eventually get better. I got very scared this time around that I'd lost that light at the end of the tunnel, that tiny glimmer of optimism that somehow manages to survive in the cynicism and sarcasm that is my standard operating procedure even in the best of times. I worried that I was losing hope.

That's only happened to me once before, and it was a warning sign that I needed a huge shift in my life, that something essential was missing, that the core of my life wasn't right. That was the day I dropped out of college, jettisoned my plans to become an engineer, and embarked on the journey to become the weirdo pagan hippie freako musician I am these days. It scared me a lot to think that maybe I was standing on the cusp of another horribly painful transition like that. I like change, but ripping apart my expectations of myself, not to mention my concept of who I am and how I define my own self-worth? Yeah, I could do without something quite that big just now.

(Sometimes, when I type something like this up, I feel incredibly dark and twisty and obnoxious. I recognize how melodramatic and over-the-top it sounds, even while also feeling it's honesty and truth. Can I simultaneously take myself really seriously *and* laugh at my own pomposity?)

Anyway. Last weekend was the Summer Solstice (here in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway), and through a series of unexpected events, I wound up at loose ends. Two days of unplanned, empty, sprawling free time with nobody around (roomie was gone the whole weekend). Just me and myself and 48 hours of sunshine and blue sky. The longest day of the year, and incidentally one of those big ol' holidays us crazy pagans go nuts over.

I won't bore you with the gory details of what all I did with my free time (suffice to say it was awesome and I enjoyed the hell out of it), but during the whole time, there was an undercurrent of reflection and rumination about what exactly was making me unhappy. Some of it, I found, was shit I can't change or control; all I can do there is try to bear with it and breathe deeply and endure. Some of it was shit I choose not to change or control; dealing with this was a matter of examining my choices and deciding to change them, or to make peace with them. Some of it was shit that is absolutely within my ability to shift, but that I haven't...and here's where the work was for me. Why have I been pouting about this stuff, when all along I had the power to embrace it or reshape it or drop it like a fucking hot potato?

Well, you know, I'm human. Sometimes it all gets to be too much, and the system breaks down. While my life experience has taught me that I am lucky enough to live a life where there's nothing that I can't endure, overcome, or walk away from...some of that is easier said than done. Sometimes I don't handle it well, and I lose my center, and I flounder around like a fish out of water. Or a human being out of her depth and at her wit's end. And, sometimes, I have avoided looking at things I'm afraid of, and hampered my own forward progress.

This morning, I read The Mayer's tweets above, and nodded so emphatically I knocked an earbud right out of my ear. Yes! This is where I am. It took the longest, sunshiniest, most gorgeous day, plus hours of connecting with my gawky teenage nasturtiums and my tiny baby basils and my toddling thyme sproutlings and all the other beautiful greenbloods I've invited to live with me....to remind me of how happy I can be. I doubt I'm done with the darkness, but I have had a break, and something has changed. If only a little....still a little.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tari, you are profane. I commented about that on BFB some time ago. at which time I admonished you to clean up you language. Nothing is worse that an obdurate low-class woman. So, I want you to get your act together, show some respect, and stop swearing like a street girl. I'm going to be watching, so keep yourself clean. And lose weight.

Tari said...

Hey, douchebag? Fuck off. I don't care what you want, as regards my language or otherwise. Watch all you like, motherfucker, because all you will see is a fatass, low-class woman cursing every fucking other word. Enjoy the show, bitch!

Anonymous said...

That's only happened to me once before, and it was a warning sign that I needed a huge shift in my life, that something essential was missing, that the core of my life wasn't right.

Well, that resonates strongly enough with me to make me go 'oh fuck'. I don't know whether that's because it accurately describes why I've been feeling so fucking hopeless lately -- by 'hopeless' I mean I'm a cynical, pessimistic, occasionally bitter fuck anyway, but lately it's just been like "...and shit really doesn't ever get any better," and that's new with me and pretty ugly. That I'm missing something which I need in a serious way would go far to explain it, especially since I've been wondering about that lately anyway.

But that's all beside the point; the point is, even if what you say there about yourself isn't as also accurate about me as it feels like it is, then at the very least your post was in the right place at the right time to get me thinking more about what I might need to change in order to feel like it's worth being alive at all again. I can't help but appreciate that, so thanks!

My spleen has this postscript to add: "Obdurate low-class woman"? What kind of worthless God damned asshole even thinks shit like that?

-- Aaron (aaron@acephalo.us)