Metaphor is safer than reality. I can personify Fear and negotiate with it, write it down into small bits and throw open the windows to let Love pour in once again. Reality is people I don’t know how to talk to. The young man who labelled my home as “comfortable,” when he doesn’t know the first thing about a widowed parent’s life. The dear family member who said my parenting was acting in “pure ignorance.” The strangers and friends who have claimed that I don’t care about vulnerable populations when they know the volunteer work I do in my community. The father who moved away. The father figure slowly choosing lonely death over a populated life. The so-called family who turns me away when I come to town to visit. The friends who insist I am up to no good when I ask questions. The family who won’t return calls for help.
I haven’t let myself voice these grievances. I’ve tried to take Don Miguel Ruiz’s advice, “Don’t take anything personally.” I know he is right. I know that people act according to their own needs, traumas, and fear, not mine. I know I can’t control someone else’s negativity, I can’t save anyone. Nonetheless, I have allowed these slings and arrows to pierce me. Metaphor, Shakespeare…a sea of troubles…the safe poetry of my mind, where things can make sense again. A sunny Sunday morning where I can see Jesus calming the storm. I can feel myself at the edge of that sea, lying on my back in the surf, knowing that the tide will come and go whether I am there or not. The water is crystal clear and the sand smooths under my palms. I often use this imagery at the end of my yoga practice. I miss being in that hot room at the end of an intensely hot session. I miss lying back in savasana when the teacher opens the door and I feel the fresh air pass over me. She would lay a cool towel over each student’s eyes. In those moments I have felt a contentedness that has been a difficult to maintain in widowhood. During months without intimate touch, just the action of receiving a square of cloth, carefully prepared with gently cooling scents, reminded me that I am not alone. It was a small punch to read that that will now be one of the forbidden practices of life. Hugs, handshakes, high fives…we will be treating each other as if WE are the dis-ease. We will be protecting ourselves from others when the dis-ease is within us. We look at our neighbor as the problem when we are the problem. We blame those who will not obey or conform when it is our own self-hatred that weakens us and speeds our bodies’ decay.
My wife died from complications around influenza and bacterial infections. I don’t know if the prescriptions slowed the inevitable or sped it. I don’t know if the ventilator kept her alive or killed her. I don’t know how much self-love she was lacking. I don’t know how much pain and trauma she was carrying. It took me almost a year before I started looking at my own traumas, destructive patterns, and self-medications. It started with guilt. What could I have done differently to not have a dead wife? I knew Mary didn’t like my drinking. She never asked me to stop, but she asked me to get control over it. When I finally stopped, eight months after her death, it took weeks before my mind began to clear. I saw the path forward. I saw the lack of self-love that I was suffering at my own hands. I saw problems in brighter light and found solutions with more ease. Guilt again. What if I had done this work a year earlier? What if I had loved myself and loved Mary better? Could it have been that simple?
Of course, it ain’t simple. While on my guilty little trip of self discovery I fell in love with a woman who had a secret boyfriend. We tried polyamory, secretly, of course. While seeking truth I was building a life in the shadows. The journey is messy. That’s not enough, the journey sucks. I don’t want to write this. I want to go about my day, loving myself and my sons and my girlfriend and everyone in the world and see rainbows everywhere I go. I want to get along with people and hear their stories. Hug them when they need it. I don’t want to be called names when I am sincerely seeking the truth. I don’t want to be the bad guy.
“If you’re not pissing off the punks, then you’re a punk.”
-Ted Nugent
Living out loud will piss someone off. That’s their problem, not mine. I’m trying to see the Light, be the Light, and share the Light. At my best, that’s the Light of Jesus and The Word shining through me, the Light of Truth. At my worst, it’s loud, destructive noises.
Today I’m digging down to find simple kindness and releasing the pain and fear I’ve let into my life.
God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason