just because…
musical musings
…in my tentative steps back into the blogosphere, or even trying to catch up, I found myself going “back” in order to catch up with everyone in chronological order because so much has happened in what felt like a short span of time. Time being relative I suppose, given our ever connected world and just the ever moving forward nature of life in general.
However, it is the heartbreak and determination of a few of you that has kept me from posting. Not intentionally but rather because as I was catching up with your lives, I found myself drawn into a comparison and the ongoing conversation around love. Not just love on one’s self but the journey of everyone seeking what it is they believe they want, what they need, what that looks like and what can they live with, live without. Frankly, the whole gamut. The thing is, love is complicated, messy, and no, you can’t discount chemistry and not just the sexual chemistry but that subtle chemistry that makes spending time with someone else, if even in silence as you share breathing space, fulfilling. Love isn’t timed or even convenient, it happens when one least expects it and rarely when one goes looking for it. But, when it happens it is a gift.
I wouldn’t wish the current sadness and true heartbreak that Ms. M is currently experiencing on anyone. It’s extraordinarily painful and suffocating, even if it is expected. Yet she makes me proud when she shares her vulnerabilities, her quirks and the maddening realities of how she copes or doesn’t for everyone to see. Similarly, Lady Anne and the ongoing journey with Tony and the “what if” detour of Fox has me even more rooted in the Team Tony camp not because he isn’t a total douche but because Anne clearly loves him and has to decide if how he loves, because he does love, is enough. For now.
IHAA has been silent for a while and I worry for him. He knows this and I hope that he can see that the kids are resilient, his heart and his happiness is much more important than that of Divo, with or without Nava. Nava was the catalyst for waking up and knowing without a doubt that deep love is possible, if even if the timing isn’t right.
I ramble on because for all of my time away, the changes that are constant in my career and company right now, the ongoing work in marriage counseling and my own counseling, I know that the rare moments I get. For me. Are moments I need to make the most of.
I’ve been a fan of Ed Sheeran since before he was as popular as he is now and I’ve been lucky to see him play in really small, intimate venues here on the West Coast. I don’t know if it’s his every day persona and his very laid back manner. Nonetheless, his work resonates on so many levels at various times in my life.
I heard this for the first time on Monday and it hasn’t been far from my mind. And yes, I do think of him.
We awoke as usual and yet something seemed off and yet I couldn’t quite place what it was. I lay in bed, enjoying the morning sounds of our house as the sun rose, the deep breathing of our four-legged kiddos and the snoring of our youngest human as he had come into our room in the middle of night with his sleeping bag and made himself comfortable on the floor near the fan. Dh was struggling to shake off the sleepiness of a restful, deep sleep. Sounds that permeate life if you will. Huh, just another day…until I realized it isn’t. Wasn’t.
Today is the last day my oldest woke up in our home, until she returns in November. Where did the last 18-years and 3.5 months go!? Tomorrow we will wake up across the country, pick-up our rental car and make our way to the college she ultimately chose this past spring. The last day she woke up in the only home she’s ever known…I’ve been so busy between work, life, organizing everything required to move a young adult across the country for school let alone the additional work of finding specialists to continue her treatment program that she’s been working through these last 2.5-years that I didn’t begin to realize the day was here until, well, today.
It’s a surreal feeling, that’s for sure, one that I can’t fully articulate because I’m still in full on program manager mode but in the silent moments, when I allow myself a breathe or two, thoughts begin to flood my core of her, past, present and immediate future. Like every parent, yes I’m proud of her and hope she is as thoughtful and kind in the future as she has been up until now. We also know that the real world is the real world and how one copes, adapts and reacts is really untested until that defining moment occurs. In light of all that she’s had to work through in the last few years and continues to work through, my hope for her is that she loves with all of her heart, dreams with freedom, laughs and cries when she wants to, and finds happiness with who she is in her own skin and from there, she finds her tribe, what sustains her in whatever career choice she makes because it’s her choice, not anyone else’s.
The sheer emotions of this significant event hasn’t hit me yet. Yet being the operative word. As I know that when I wake up next week, in our home and she isn’t there, I’ll grieve, if even for a moment, that the sounds of the morning that anchored me in my house won’t ever be the same.
It was a stretch of time in which we weren’t communicating much at all. Life and our real-life obligations being the priorities that they need to be. Yet, I missed the sound of his voice, the daily conversations whether irl or virtually. It’s as if he knows me because one day, there was a voicemail…
One that left me giggling and blushing in my office. It was that mischievous voice, asking me if I’d heard of an Australian kiss and would I like one? *sigh* if he only knew…
Which then made me recall the first time I heard this song, by none other than the famous local band, Heart, when I was in middle school. Whilst my classmates were all a twitter about their current crushes and how they were the one (because we all know at 13) I remember thinking there is no such thing. No such as thing as the one, let alone at 13 but a Magic Man? Ha!. It is a belief I held to my core for another thirty-four years. I was wrong.
working late and the local classic station seems to be reading my mood(s) and pulling at memories…
*giggle*
20 June 2015
just as it says in the title. this was an earworm he had sent me when he had me on his mind. he always seemed to know when I needed to hear from him. If even in a moment and a youtube link sent a long while ago…~IsMe
I truly wish I posted in a linear manner, much like Lady M of Woman Invisible, for then there would have been at least a half a dozen or several hundred posts, that would provide context as it relates to counseling. Marriage counseling specifically. That said, anyone who has followed for the better part of the last 18-months may recall that dh and I have been working through counseling since early 2014. Some weeks it’s good, which means the sessions are incredibly difficult and intense and hard. Some weeks it’s hard, which means we get stuck or hit and impasse. We each walk out in status quo mode, nothing backward but no steps forward. No emotion, just as is. And then there’s the week’s in which we are at a plateau. No, a true stalemate. I’d say we’ve been in this stage for a couple of months now. Maybe even more. Enough so that our counselor, which dh chose all those months ago, insisted on meeting with us individually these last two weeks or so. Today was my turn again. She looked at me and asked me what does it feel like, emotionally and what feelings come up, when dh pushes for some vulnerability on my part. At first I was stymied. I felt as if I’ve answered this same question over and over again with her, with all of us in the room etc. It wasn’t until she restated the question: “When dh begins to ask you to be vulnerable and hear his wants, what does that bring up for you?” Hmm, thinking about it, I finally looked at her before simply stating: “I don’t know. I know that I don’t trust what I am hearing from dh based on the last 11-years prior to starting counseling. I have no reason to feel “safe” to be vulnerable or to speak openly about my emotions or the childhood abuse that has started to flood back in my dreams nightly.”
We spent time talking about many things, she asked more and more questions related to the first 15 years of our relationship versus anything in the present. In her probing, she asked if I listened to music. Um, yes? She laughed and said, no, sorry, what I mean is does music move you? Make you laugh? Cry? Shout? Sing along? Of course. Great. She started doing music association if you will. She started with “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” the Marvin Gaye version. As she played it one more time, she asked me, aside from your kids, who do you picture when you listen to the lyrics?
“Oh”…is all I get out. She looks at me and says “there’s no right or wrong answer, yet.”…and with that, time was up.
yep. that’s right, it’s Saturday – and I’m partaking in corporate civil disobedience. My team has had a week of all-day meetings and trainings that’s left no time for our “day” jobs. And so, we are all online, trying to catch up on work as well hit a deadline the uber executive team presented us with at 8:00pm the night before last. I find myself procrastinating; just wanting to read blogs, listen to music, and catch up on household chores.
but not only do I love my career, I need it…back to the grind
is me is really me 