(no subject)

For the last couple weeks I've felt crying well up around the edges of things. It never comes when it really should: when there's time and space for me to be sad, when there's something for it to attach to. It would come with a throwaway line in a movie but not at the intense lines. It would come when I'm busy doing something else.

I remember this. My grief has hidden from me this way before. It would wait on the bus, until I was in public and on display, and show itself when I couldn't give it proper space and respect. It would wait in the grocery store.

And then, when I'm alone and home safe, there would be nothing. Hours before bed, I'd had dinner, and when I looked for it, it was nowhere to be found. It's a game of hide and seek until whatever is in me that needs to process this is ready.

I can almost never grieve when I can't write. I can feel my sadness without words, I can hold it and endure it, but I can't make meaning out of it and then move past it. Humans are meaning-makers. In this, it seems, I'm human.

This morning the mud was frozen again, thank goodness, and the pigs could walk on top of it. I fed them pumpkins chopped up with an axe and I fed them grain. I gave the geese and chickens grain and water, and I broke the film of ice on the pig water. While I did this all I thought about trust and the imperfect nature of the world -- which maybe I don't believe in? -- and what we owe each other as humans. I turned up the wood stove a little. I second-guessed myself a lot.

I wrote.

I was made by the world to only allow myself to have emotions when my position was unassailable. If I was hurt I needed a reason that could be argued and won against all comers. If I was happy I hid it so it couldn't be taken from me by someone with a good reason. Spoiler alert, it's never possible to justify feelings in that way. To borrow someone's metaphor it's like trying to justify the weather. Feelings exist. Needs exist, even. We can choose to ignore them or acknowledge them, they exist all the same. We can work a long time at their roots and help them grow in one direction or another but when we cut them down and pour concrete over them they will eventually come up through.

The world still asks me to justify my emotions, every time.

What a tangle of metaphors that is.

They say the way to handle feelings is to hold them, to sit with them, to give them room to live out their whole cycle of germination, growth, flowering. Give them space; when they give you space back is enough time to make decisions. It's such a skill. Skills are gained by grinding low-level encounters for experience and then applying that experience to survive larger encounters.

My grief came out this morning. After I wrote I cried, I was present in my emotions, and when I was done I felt the urge to stand up, tidy the plant stand, and put the seeds of my microgreens in the ground. I felt like maybe things could grow again. Maybe I'm always poison, maybe I'm not, but I've grown things before.

This has no point. I'm sitting here with the cat touching my leg with one outstretched paw. My fingers are achy with cold. The laptop is balanced on one thigh. I wanted to record, in my mental health log, that today I cried and I felt a little freer afterwards. It is done. Time for my own breakfast and maybe to follow up that freedom by planting some seeds.

(no subject)

For the last couple weeks I've felt crying well up around the edges of things. It never comes when it really should: when there's time and space for me to be sad, when there's something for it to attach to. It would come with a throwaway line in a movie but not at the intense lines. It would come when I'm busy doing something else.

I remember this. My grief has hidden from me this way before. It would wait on the bus, until I was in public and on display, and show itself when I couldn't give it proper space and respect. It would wait in the grocery store.

And then, when I'm alone and home safe, there would be nothing. Hours before bed, I'd had dinner, and when I looked for it, it was nowhere to be found. It's a game of hide and seek until whatever is in me that needs to process this is ready.

I can almost never grieve when I can't write. I can feel my sadness without words, I can hold it and endure it, but I can't make meaning out of it and then move past it. Humans are meaning-makers. In this, it seems, I'm human.

This morning the mud was frozen again, thank goodness, and the pigs could walk on top of it. I fed them pumpkins chopped up with an axe and I fed them grain. I gave the geese and chickens grain and water, and I broke the film of ice on the pig water. While I did this all I thought about trust and the imperfect nature of the world -- which maybe I don't believe in? -- and what we owe each other as humans. I turned up the wood stove a little. I second-guessed myself a lot.

I wrote.

I was made by the world to only allow myself to have emotions when my position was unassailable. If I was hurt I needed a reason that could be argued and won against all comers. If I was happy I hid it so it couldn't be taken from me by someone with a good reason. Spoiler alert, it's never possible to justify feelings in that way. To borrow someone's metaphor it's like trying to justify the weather. Feelings exist. Needs exist, even. We can choose to ignore them or acknowledge them, they exist all the same. We can work a long time at their roots and help them grow in one direction or another but when we cut them down and pour concrete over them they will eventually come up through.

The world still asks me to justify my emotions, every time.

What a tangle of metaphors that is.

They say the way to handle feelings is to hold them, to sit with them, to give them room to live out their whole cycle of germination, growth, flowering. Give them space; when they give you space back is enough time to make decisions. It's such a skill. Skills are gained by grinding low-level encounters for experience and then applying that experience to survive larger encounters.

My grief came out this morning. After I wrote I cried, I was present in my emotions, and when I was done I felt the urge to stand up, tidy the plant stand, and put the seeds of my microgreens in the ground. I felt like maybe things could grow again. Maybe I'm always poison, maybe I'm not, but I've grown things before.

This has no point. I'm sitting here with the cat touching my leg with one outstretched paw. My fingers are achy with cold. The laptop is balanced on one thigh. I wanted to record, in my mental health log, that today I cried and I felt a little freer afterwards. It is done. Time for my own breakfast and maybe to follow up that freedom by planting some seeds.