Turtle

I haven't posted here in a month. Truth be told, I haven't even been reading blogs lately, much less blogging. I realized last week while chatting with a friend that I've been "turtling"--pulling my head and limbs into safety, shielding myself from the world, because apparently the world has gone insane. I'm trying to get through without going batshit crazy, and apparently that has lately meant cutting off most of the interactive online world. Blogger, Facebook, all that: I've been MIA and struggling to even care.

The country where I grew up blew up into civil war (again) just days after my parents flew out. While one side (the side we support, remarkably) has technically won, the violence goes on. At this point I rely on the news my parents give me. Most of the news centers get it wrong, anyhow. Contrary to popular opinion, it is NOT a religious conflict, among other pieces of disinformation.

The reality of politics and legislation in this state and region and nation has shot my blood pressure through the roof. It's all or nothing for me: either I tuck my head down and shut my mouth, or I'm ranting. I need to find a career counselor. I've never had a back-up plan for an alternate career: now I may not have a choice. I need to be prepared.

I hate politics. I hate most politicians. I hate the greed and corruption and rampant corporate capitalism that has washed over us all and isn't even pretending to care about 98% of the population any longer.

I wish I could just pull into my shell indefinitely.

Gag Order

I have so many friends having a hard time right now. Sometimes I feel guilty for being so happy.

You know how that is?

I mean, I've been down--really, truly, horribly down--quite a few times in my life. Good God, two years ago I was still crawling out of the Depths. They were there for me then and since. Goodness knows DraftQueen became my best friend out of those times. I wouldn't have met her if it hadn't been for blogging through the pain.

Most of my life has involved depression to one extent or another. I'm not entirely free of it now, though not nearly to the extent of What Was. I still have plenty of challenges and discouragement, especially on the political and career fronts. I mean, good lord. MTL has seen me raging around the living room ranting about all the anti-woman and anti-union and anti-teacher SHIT that is going on in this sad, sad country right now. More than once.

(Thank God that while we don't see eye-to-eye in all political areas, we do match up for the most part on those ones. Otherwise heads might roll. I've been THAT heated about it all, peoples. IT'S EVEN SHOWN UP ON MY FACEBOOK WALL. That's saying something, considering my conflict-avoidance tendencies.)

Anywho. Where was I? Oh right. I've been there.

However, despite those challenges, I can honestly say that I am happier than I have been in...well, decades. Since before kindergarten, I'd venture.

Meanwhile, many of my friends and loved ones are facing crisis after crisis. Health. Jobs. Family. Relationships. Depression verging on and tipping over into despair. Even war.

Sometimes, I just feel guilty. I don't know what to say, other than I love you and I understand and I'm so sorry. I wish I could gather them up for hugs, offer them tea and sympathy, but almost none of them live in physical proximity.

And when I want to gush about my own happiness, my wedding plans, my adoration of the man with whom I will spend the rest of my life...Well. I try to hold back, at least. Even then, I wonder if I'm saying too much. Should I just shut up?

I wish I could fix it.

Stupid broken world.

Afraid

A blogger friend of mine (not a close one, but still) just lost her husband in a horrible and completely unexpected way. He was in the hospital for several days before they finally turned off life support and let him go. She is left, stunned and bewildered, with two very young children and a life turned upside down and inside out.

I found myself unable to reach out to her, unable to comment, unable to join the ranks of bloggers asking for prayer and support and love for our internet friend. When the news finally broke that he was, indeed, gone, the most I could do was leave a short and rather lame comment saying that I was saddened beyond words and sent my love for her and hers.

I couldn't even pray about it.

I'm not linking her blog here, because I have no intention to use her tragedy as the focus of this post, as it is essentially a self-centered (and selfish?) one. This tragedy SHOULD be about her, and instead I find myself utterly incapable of moving beyond the visceral fear it triggered in me. Because this is my nightmare, the ultimate fear of abandonment, one that I never truly had until I opened myself up to the risk that is True Love.

I've lost people here and there--my great-grandmother, my aunt, The Ex's grandparents, several students--and while I have struggled with their deaths, I don't think I've felt the loss like a hole that could not be filled. I don't think too often about what it would be like to lose someone even closer, like a parent or sibling or even a grandparent (as all four of mine are still living, believe it or not). Mostly, when the thought crosses my mind, I feel numb.

Perhaps it's all avoidance.

Here's the confession, however (and I've only told two people this before): there were times during my relationship and marriage to The Ex, when things were at their varying worst, that I fantasized about his death. Not murder, no--just, you know, some sort of accident or disease or something like that. It seemed like a cleaner way to remove a source of conflict and pain.

God, that seems cold put in writing.

It's not something about which I am proud. At all. I consider it a measure of how broken my mind and heart and soul were for so many years. And I'm glad he didn't die, because I think the guilt would be crippling.

But I did have those thoughts, and I never felt much more than the acknowledgment that the change itself would be a wrench, but that otherwise...well, otherwise it would be a relief.

I have never felt, at any rate, that the death of any one person would be shattering to me, even though I know I would grieve.

That is, until about six months ago. MTL and I were talking about his job and the dangers associated with it, and he mentioned the reality of metal poisoning, and how his life may very well have been shortened by the quantities of various metals that have made their way into his system. At those words, I experienced a visceral reaction I've never had before: the utter terror of what it would be like to lose him to Death's inexorable grasp.

I've been unable to fully escape that fear ever since. It's surfaced again at different times: when he mentioned a scare he had years ago over a potential lupus diagnosis; when we've talked about getting old; when the deaths of others bring home the reality that everyone, inevitably, dies.

I didn't tell him about my friend's husband for several days. Not that it is someone he knows, but still--I often mention major events in the lives of my blogger friends. Not this one. The other night, during one of my all-to-recently-frequent teary episodes, I finally told him about the fear, about how I realized that by letting him inside all those walls and that armor, I've opened up my heart to the potential for extraordinary pain. Not only do his words and actions have more power to hurt me than anyone else's; losing him would be a mortal wound.

I feel melodramatic writing this out. I worry that you, reading this, will worry that I have tied my identity up in him and developed some unhealthy relationship, because that's the sort of thing I worry about. You thinking that, I mean. (I'm not good at confessions, really. Too much showing the cracks under the pretty surface.)

Whatever. I'm not saying I would die the next day or do something stupid or anything like that: I'm saying it's a wound that would never, ever heal as long as I did live. And I'm selfish enough to wish that perhaps I could go just a little before he does, or even better--at the same time. Because I'm not so sure he would do very well either. I understand, finally, how it is that sometimes there are those couples where the one passes away not long after the other goes, as though with that death, life simply did not have enough hold any longer.

(I am definitely imagining a time many, many years from now. I'm not sure how to feel about the trend toward longevity on both sides of my family tree, I have to say. Both a blessing and a curse, perhaps.)

I think that's why I struggle so much with this blogger's story: it drives home the reality that the end may be far closer than we ever imagine. And she has to keep going, has to keep living, has to stay there for her children.

The reality is that I didn't truly understand the risks when I decided to love him fully. It's too late to turn back, even if I wanted to.

Which I don't. I suppose that means that I know every moment spent with him is worth the pain of any moments spent without.

When I told him about my fear, MTL was silent for a while, then told me the story of his grandfather's death. When he was fairly old, he became ill with cancer. At the end, even sitting for a while in a chair became exhausting. One night, he woke, turned over in bed, took his wife of many years in his arms and cuddled her close, and then died.

That will be us, MTL told me. And in the meantime, if we live each day fearing death, we won't really live.

And then he took me in his arms and cuddled me close, and I cried.