Getting Over It

Getting over it, is what we all must do when we fall in love, have our hearts broken and are forced to move on. Getting over it or the more curt, "Get Over It!" is the mantra of our age. Don't like the president? Get over it! Don't like your job? Get over it. Don't like your boyfriend cheating on you with a twenty year old drug addict in a different city for the duration of your relationship? Get over it.

Getting over it is a process in which one grieves it all out, though. It requires the patience of friends and family, of co-workers and of yourself. The grief itself is a living, breathing animal that lives inside you. Not unlike an alien....Sadly, it is best to just let it burst out of your chest, and let you die. But then again, that's why I love the phoenix. It dies and rises from its own ash.

One of the hardest things I have had to do this year is grieve my failed relationship with Balash. I discovered he was living a double-life. One with me and one with another woman in Vancouver, Canada. He pretended to have a moonlighting job in Denver and every other weekend went to 'work' there. Around February, I knew in my heart that he was being unfaithful to me. He had become disinterested in sex and me in general. He yelled at me constantly, and I often felt ashamed of my 'paranoia', him truly manipulating my inner most fears. In essence, he took nearly a year of my life and made it into a sham. He promised everything to me, and in reality gave nothing. I find writing about it so difficult. I find grieving a moment to moment thing.

He actually wanted to stay with me. I actually spent three months trying to figure out whether I could go on being with him. Could love have actually existed within the constructs of what he built our relationship on? And how am I to blame? I stepped over things that were inconsistant, I ignored the obvious. I wanted Balash. I wish he had really wanted me, too.

Now, there is the hum of men around me; I am single and it shows. They swarm, they are kind, they perk up when I enter a room. Being single and being vulnerable creates the space for men wanting to be men to show up. I just wish I could be more interested. I wish I could just let go of the past and bring in somehing beautiful into my future.

I am taking guitar lessons, salsa lessons, wine tasting. I'm doing environmental work, cleaning up my local parks and beaches, I am looking after my family, I am stepping up at work, taking on more projects. I want to get back to working with adults illiterates, I want to do more to protect the ocean. I want to continue to put my dive gear together, buying one piece after the next. I am writing more, reading more, lending a hand more to whomever may need it.

I guess that's how it goes. Piece by piece, moment to moment you let go, and you let life take care of itself. I realize that this blog entry is totally self-indulgent. I know I am just one more person, with one more broken heart, who lets the weight of the world victimize her...when it really can't. I know I am responsible for my life. I know these things.

But I plan to get over it. I plan to dust the old ashes of what was me from my shoulders. This is just a step.

World Girl

Eulogy for Morticia

Today I journeyed to Olympia to look for the wonderful cat that is/was Morticia. My family left for a vacation yesterday, and told me she had been missing for several days. I said I would go and look for her before I joined them on Tuesday.

I looked today with a bag of kitty treats in my hand shaking and calling out her name the way she loves to have her name spoken. After so many years with an animal, you noticed which voice tones they will respond to and which they won't. I looked not so much thinking she would emerge from the blackberry brambles with a meow on her lips, so much as I was searching for her body. She was/is an old kitty, and she was showing her age. I also looked for signs of a struggle, as my parents live in an area where coyotes roam. It wouldn't be the first time something like that had happened. I would just be surprised if it had happened to her.

Morticia was/is a different sort of kitty. She was independent in a way that wasn't adolescent defiance so much as she was secure in her cat-hood. She was a proud huntress, capable of catching nimble prey. Out of all the cats my parents pretend to own(of course because the cats own them...), she would be the one most likely to survive on her own in the wild. She drank from the lake, prowled the wilder parts of the property and loved attention, but never demanded it.

As I stared out over the field of tall, golden grass in the horse field across from my parent's place, I wondered if she knew what she meant to our family. How much joy, laugher and love that she, a single kitty brought to a house which often sits under a cloud of melancholy, sickness and darkness. Her purr and meows were sprightly in tone. She knew a game when she saw one and would play eagerly willing to fell blows with her sharp claws on any who dared challenge her. She accepted love and attention, but never sought it out. Her independence as a creature was fairly complete.

What I wish is that she has sought some new adventure in her life. That the blackberry brambles had been explored to the point where she was ready to move on into the woods and beyond looking for a new life, a new home and whatever else her heart desired. Perhaps, she had finally transitioned into a wild cat and could see no point returning to her domesticated life.

I write with tears in my eyes. I would have loved to have said goodbye. If she had been human, she would have pshawed me greatly, a look in her eye that would say 'don't you know that life in its circular motion is also never ending'? Memories do not end, but surface when we need them most. There are no real goodbyes in life.

I too long for a new adventure. I too, look not to be defeated in the face of domination, but to rise up again, like the phoenix, breathless for life and the journey it holds. A relationship has ended, when I thought it would not; my father's cancer has returned when I thought it would not; my life is, what I thought it would not be. I am running full speed into 33 years, ever grateful for everyone one of them, and determined not to squander the beautiful moments that are given to me. Who knows? Maybe I'll run into Morticia on a slow boat to China, or meet her at the running of the bulls in Pamplona, or dashing through the jungles of India or Brazil. Anything and everything is still possible.

I am willing to say yes everyday with an open heart, and maybe someday, someone will call my name the way I like to be called and I will answer.

World Girl