Posts Tagged "confronting pain"

Have yet to fig­ure out the descent from these moun­tains I have climbed. Two but­ter­flies, burnt orange in shade, dance fran­ti­cally around me, only an inch away from each other. Bells in the dis­tance, buoys nav­i­gate the way, and the fog horn blows on this clear sun-filled day. There are no whales to be seen down below. No seals doing som­er­saults. No deer hop­ping their way through the golden sum­mer bushes. I turn off my music so that I may hear the moun­tain lion prey­ing on me for her morn­ing feast. I fig­ure if she eats me, it was meant to be my day. Beneath my breasts is now a belly which is softer than it was—a cap­sule recy­cling souls who have been here before. The power of this womb. What mean­ing lies ahead for...

How did the hap­pi­est day turn out to be the sad­dest day? How do I go there? How do I tell my story—our story—when I must feel so much pain to tell it com­pletely? Sit­ting still long enough to write about it means acknowl­edg­ing the ache, the low-grade hum of this relent­less grief. It is a hurt I have never known. Yet how do I describe such pain with­out describ­ing the hap­pi­ness? With­out that hap­pi­ness, I would be left with nothing. I moved the girls to Florida, to be closer to my fam­ily. This house is mine, I think. This skin holds my body, but this body does not feel mine. To feel my body, this house, would be to feel real­ity and, this, I am afraid to do. Today, for the first time, I woke up look­ing for Erik next...