Friday Report
This is a picture of my house. I took it this morning as I was climbing into my car to drive to work trying to keep the tears inside that had been pushing themselves out since the moment I woke up, and when I went to bed last night for that matter. I thought about writing an amusing in-law post this morning but then I realized that would be a way of covering up what I'm really feeling so I thought I'd just write about the truth. I'm feeling incredibly bleak right now, awful, and my lovely little house seems more like a menacing landscape than any kind of shelter or refuge.
Especially this weekend, crowded in with my aggressively nice and cheerful in-laws, I'm feeling unbelievably separated from many of the other places where I find my refuge -- my dearest friends and my own mind. Anita is in Palestine, the other 'A' is in the midst of her own deluge and not around, my beautiful comadre B. and I have not been able to manage seeing each other in months, in spite of only a bay separating us, my sister is driving her one-woman band and grease truck around the country, my mother is 3000 miles away, as are my oldest friends S. and D. These are people that will take me in, hug me, cry and laugh with me, get drunk with me, and otherwise just understand (without reservation) who I am.
I've also found, and this is more troubling, that I've been feeling increasingly cut off from the other place where I find refuge -- in my own world of imagination and fantasy. And, yeah, I know, I need to let go of longing, practice mindfulness and metta, and otherwise attempt to live in this moment because it is all we've got, blahity, blah, blah, blah. And Buddhist practice, which I love so much, is all well and good. But when it comes down to it, I've always been able to cook up a damn good fantasy to lift me up and out of the pit of aloneness that I feel with these people. And so far I haven't been able to do that. I haven't been able to tap into my inner joy, and that scares me.
So, there's my truthful and bleak Friday Report. Maybe later this weekend I'll return with some funny stories, but right now there aren't any to be found.