Birthday Heart Inventory for Turning 46

 

45 was a good age, but I’m happy to leave that cursed number behind. As I wrote the first draft of this inventory, I was in a shocking sense of well-being. A lot of the time, there’s a magic in the resignation and hardship of 2020 that translates to calm. Other times, I have to go back to bed and play Merge Dragons until the panic subsides. This morning I’m somewhere in the middle.

 

Like the world (and so, SO much less than so many people in the world) my heart is trying to heal from so, so much loss and pain. Business suffered, but more importantly, there was fear in every breath. There was grief in every breath too, mourning the very many who had their breath stolen from them by the violence of police, the violence of white terrorism, and the violence of national medical neglect. It’s hard to write about my heart while we’re all in an ongoing, unfathomable trauma.

 

On May 31^st, I watched the Philly riots start, I saw the first police car catch fire in a moment when I didn’t know where several of my friends were. Two friends were pinging me from where they were boxed in by the police near the flames, but some I worried were dead for days. The streets where my friends live were under police and military occupation for weeks. I saw my regular Target getting looted on the national news, and for all the people-over-property, it hurt. I still see people whose bodies and whose ancestors’ bodies have been looted by America for centuries selling good from those weeks on the sidewalk, and that part makes me glad.

 

This year my heart learned that you can reject someone and feel abandoned by them at the same time. Some of my family members seem to have been swept into the slimy Russian internet sea forever. I’m trying partial estrangement with my mom and some extended family because I just couldn’t make room in my psyche for all of the gaslighting. The loss is real, painful, and the culmination of lifelong political abandonment. Even though I’ll be 46 tomorrow, I’m still a little kid who wants to scream WHY WON’T YOU JUST TAKE MY SIDE?! I’m realizing to a deeper and deeper degree that you can’t both fight white supremacy and keep all of the familial amenities it provides.

 

The mental and emotional space I gained by blocking Mom’s facebook made room for so much new community connection. Whether it’s marching, stopping by the daily 8:46 vigil in my neighborhood, or offering support to liberal friends stranded in more hostile places, the community of the Movements feels like true love. It feels like what my life means.

 

I’m still mourning the loss of John Lewis. Though he’ll be a source of advice in my head forever, I miss sharing the planet with him. I can feel the warmth and generosity of his handshake when I met him in September of 2016, and that’s a big part of what keeps me going. What keeps me, most days, hopeful.

 

To counteract the bitterness, hurt, and self-recrimination of this hard hard year, I chose MERCY as my word for this new birthday year. Mercy is more badass even than lovingkindness because it asks me to recognize the power I have and asks me to wield that power with benevolence and discernment. That’s a pretty tall order, but I’ve got a year to work on it.

 

 

 

Poetic License Horoscope for June 8-14

Gemini: This week, in ways large and small, be like Mayor Muriel Bowser. With Washington D.C. under military occupation, she still found a way to make Black Lives Matter Plaza happen right in front of the White House. Your installations may not be as big or as resourced, but you can be a monument to justice, peace, beauty, and strength every day. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Cancer: It’s not that we birdwatchers (What? Stars can be birdwatchers!) hate leashless dogs! It’s message that their owners are sending: “Your bodily autonomy, your freedom, your safety, the birds’ homes, none of these things matter much as this animal I live vicariously through, this hapless, jumping thing that poops outside because I can’t.” Cancer, you’re the opposite of these folks: careful, deliberate, kind in the right direction, as you face the open wild or just the neighborhood woods.

Leo: The stars support your quest to curate your feeds, to weed out the racists or those who hate science or those who would stand on capitol steps with guns to fight for the right to murder us all with their breath. You know what’s on the other side of the silo, why wouldn’t you? Start thinking of estrangement as social divestment—some people just don’t deserve you.

Virgo: “How often have we heard you say that everything is futile, that nothing comes of all your labors?  Yet like amorphous buds, you endeavors sprout in all directions. You see everything as formless and you forget that this is a sign of life.” Hilma Af Klint. You’ve planted 1,500 morning glory seeds, but feel free to plant more. It’s all coming up, we promise.

Libra: The pieces of the portrait you’ve been working on so LONG are falling into place. Soon, you’ll see those kind eyes again, that shining, lucid heart. Spread out your love on the table like one hundred glitter gel pens and exclaim, exclaim, EXCLAIM about the sparkles. I can’t wait to see the whole of the angel’s magic face.

Scorpio: There’s a riot in your belly and that’s perfectly okay. According to alchemists, “vitriol” is an acronym for “Visita Inerriora Terrae Rectifcando Invenies Occultum Lapidum.” That means “By visiting the center of earth, you will find the Philosopher’s Stone.” Get a stick and poke around at the fires inside you, see what shapes appear in the flames.

Sagittarius: My neighbor buys flowers for herself every Sunday. She says that when she did this at the beginning of quarantine, back when we were all just hoarding Purell, the people in line at the co-op got annoyed with her, but it’s not their business what she finds necessary to her survival. No matter what letters there are to write, how many marches on your protest dance card, what weeping is forced upon you, set an alarm to got get yourself something beautiful. The stars are so glad you exist.

  Capricorn: The stars are sorry to both you and Rory Gilmore that we can’t do a thing about the whole humidity thing. Instead, we suggest watching the movie Adult World, set in our hometown of Syracuse, NY. That way, you can cool off watching a whole bunch of snow in our old neighborhood! Plus, you’ll get to see John Cusack go to Recess Coffee! That’s something, right?

Aquarius: Good work will come soon enough, we promise. For now, take to your bed like John and Yoko. Hold meetings, Be-Ins, singalongs, or cuddle parties, or all these at once. Invite the comforter to facilitate. Ask every pillow her opinion, and if it’s okay that you hug her. Count your audience of sleep masks, scandalous night-books, fancy lotions. Be very, VERY thorough.

Pisces: Thank the planets that are leaving your orbit, or just decisively swipe left. You don’t need a reason, just blow them away like dandelion fluff. You can build altars to them out of candles and spangles. Glitter bomb the places in your body and heart where long- or new-lost friends reside. It’s okay if you’re feeling scared and alone. The stars are with you, no matter what.

Aries: This week in the stars’ neighborhood, a group of six young people planned a protest in 48 hours. They hoped about fifty people would come, but it turned out to be over a thousand. Every step and turn of our “Whose streets? Our streets!” route was decorated with sacred names and cases of water. This was a miracle and also a privilege: Downtown, my friends were still facing violent police and the National Guard. Build everything you can, Aries, and don’t take a bit of it for granted.

Taurus: The stars are profoundly sorry that we forgot you the other week! Here’s what’s in your Apology Basket: Milk to wash away teargas. Spangles for all of your placards. Friends with ears that listen. One flower for every emotion in your heart, at any given minute. Scattered and prolific petals. Bearable heat. Every smell of candle you love. A reminder to drink enough water. The promise that we still know you’re a prism.

Beneath the Fear Is Love

this leaf-rubbing is on the back of a voter registration form. He named it "Ms. Jane in Autumn" because the colors reminded him of me. It's the one piece of his artwork that I didn't give back. 

I don’t mind saying that I am a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy champion. After eighty-bajillion years of therapy, I can argue down almost any distorted negative thought that depression and anxiety send my way. (I often think our political system could use a course in CBT. ALSO, all of our other systems.) But there’s one negative idea I just can’t get away from: The conviction that I will never again find love.

I understand that I have no way of knowing. I would never tell a friend they were too ugly, too fat, too old to be loved, but this is what my brain thinks, particularly when it comes to my (main) attraction to masculine-presenting people. I don’t even believe in those standards, but they are so, so hard to refute. It’s sort of the core of my belief system that everyone deserves love, and I know it gets found in a million different ways by everyone, including by me.

There’s no real reason to assume that the romantic part of life is over for me, but in some ways, it would feel like a relief to let it go. Mostly, I go along buoyed by gratitude, goal-setting, and Prozac, but the yearning, well, lets go ahead and call it loneliness, is still there, stubborn and ardent as life. Sometimes, a flash, a mini-panic that SOMETHING IS MISSING AND I’LL NEVER FIND IT.

The last time I really-and-truly fell for someone in a (briefly) requited way was in fall of 2016. It’s startling to realize that that was THREE ENTIRE YEARS AGO. In my brain and heart, it feels like not very much time has passed at all. The love is thorough, the pain is fresh, and it makes me SO MAD AT MYSELF. I would never stand over a grief-struck friend and yell GET OVER IT ALREADY but that’s exactly what I feel like doing to myself.

We met at my old, dear library afterschool program job—he was the cutest security guard. He’d take frequent shifts in the children’s department and draw or play Legos with me and the kids. One day, we painted galaxies, I forget why. Okay, so neither of us was being particularly amazing at our jobs in those moments, but the kids made more art that school year than I’ve ever facilitated before or since. So that’s something.

One Friday, we played Monopoly—I forget why, usually I banned it because it stresses the kids out and who wants to play a game about rent, anyway? But that early-evening, it was like we were all counting money and being play-tough in a bubble of peace. His knee was touching mine under the table and it was maybe the deepest sense of belonging I’ve ever felt—like he and I and the students and the library and the city and the WHOLE world were a family for a few minutes.

On the day after Daylight Savings Time ended, we were supposed to have a Pokémon walk but he had to cancel.  He texted, though, that he really did like me back and we decided to plan a date. It all felt so settled and hopeful: I would canvass my ass off, Hillary would win, and then we’d snuggle. (That is maybe the saddest sentence I’ve ever typed in a lifetime of sad sentences.)

The day after Hillary lost, I walked into the library, where the podium for our kid-election was still decorated with red, white, and blue stars, and started sobbing. He was summoned from upstairs to come and comfort me. Holy Jesus, that hug. That love, that man, that end-of-the-world day.

Our date was that Friday—I remember that it was Veteran’s Day because he was off from the library and could come visit me on the Rosemont campus, the bookstore being one of my three jobs at the time. (Oh bookstore, another lost love.) As soon as I took his hand though, he changed his mind, or maybe he’d come to let me down easy? Either way, he did nothing wrong, it was just dating, just life. We spent a few hours chatting, shivering, and half-cuddling under a beautiful yellow tree, bright with cold sun. Nobody did anything wrong, just a shift that couldn’t be unshifted.

Logically, (ha) there was no need for a broken heart. A bad match isn’t personal, I know, I know. But after the election, I needed a win so much, TOO MUCH. (It wasn’t really registering yet how important Kamala Harris’s win would be to me.) I needed the pre-election hope to somehow come back, and I needed that hope to be him. Now that I type it, that’s a lot to have put on one human being, and on myself as well.

Now, whenever a cute guy starts to seem even a little possible, I’m petrified. I’m like a spooked horse who wants to kick down every barn wall and escape to a meadow of infinite Gilmore Girls episodes.  The littlest hope from a blushing handsome face makes my unhelpful brain want to convince me that IT WILL ALL COME CRASHING DOWN, that love or even just a little spark of attraction with somehow make it 2016 again, with the panics and the sobbing and the rage-driving and the Thanksgiving ruining.

By some miracle, I’ve made a happy, angry, protest-filled life in the past three years, but it feels like the slightest loss of control, the smallest step towards vulnerability, would take it all way. When I was little, I used to wish so hard for anyone (besides, so amazingly, my mom and my three closest friends) to protest with, and now, though the world is so full of suffering and fear, I, by some crazy grace,  have a version of the life I’ve always wanted, connected to ALL of my fellow humans in a way I would have never thought possible, with every march, every sign, every letter to congress. For the last three years, my love has been the whole world, which is wonderful but not conductive to snuggles. Still, I don’t want risk anything taking that connection away.

As I wrote this out, I could feel my heart loosening a little, letting out a little of that vast reservoir of love I had in fall of 2016. I’m grateful to have reached the point of honoring that love. I would like him, the beauty and trauma and tragedy and silliness of loving him, not to take up so much space in my heart, but he does. Maybe I’m a little bit trapped in the amber of that week because it was so important, because he was so important. That’s good. Maybe I’ll just love him as long as I need to, which is probably forever, and then maybe I’ll love someone else. Maybe even that someone else’s someone else too, who knows?

Maybe time isn’t frozen in my heart. Maybe it’s just going at its own pace. Speaking of time, this took forever to type because I’ve been texting two cuties on Bumble, so it’ll probably be okay.

Theme and Heart Inventory for Age 44

Before I go into what an amazing, magical, transformative year this has been, I kinda need to rip off a band-aid. I’m sad that romantic love is missing. I forget about it most of the time, reveling in my singleness, content to have the world and all of its movements as partners. I’m often relieved to feel removed from the roller coaster of attraction—it makes serotonin levels drop! That’s science! But this week I have to admit that I like and miss snuggles, I miss men, and I still have no idea how to get to romantic love.

One of my birthday adventures this week was to acknowledge and start moving past a long-fluttering crush. I did everything in the being-a-grownup-about-being-rejected handbook, and the guy was perfectly nice about it, but I was surprised at how SAD I felt when I found out he didn’t like me back. Crying in the night about a guy felt weirdly healthy, though, like something in me was grateful that it had been heard.

In spite of all my fat liberation, in spite of all my ALL kinds of liberation, this morning found me wondering if he wasn’t attracted to me because of the weight I’ve gained in the last couple of years. In weak, night-crying moments, I wonder if I’ve taken myself out of the guy-running forever, or if maybe I never was in it. Objectively, I think I’m beautiful. I don’t see a single reason why anyone would NOT want to snuggle me, but I also want to acknowledge that anti-fat prejudice might be part of it. I still believe my Aunt Connie, who told me when I was young that fat is jerk repellent, but I’m not sure I can call anybody a jerk for being susceptible to societal norms of beauty. Also I have no idea why this particular guy wasn’t into me, and in clearer-headed moments I’m a big believer in “just not a match.”

Whether I weigh 310 or 250, or even if I can’t figure out a way to stop gaining weight, I think it’s important to acknowledge that I literally dream about boyfriends almost every night. The circumstances and guys in the dreams are always different, but the feeling is always the same—a secure attachment, unlike anything I’ve ever felt with a guy partner in waking life. I think Jung might say (What? You weren’t wondering AT ALL what Jung might say?!) that this is part of my psyche’s integration, that the dreams are about falling in love with my animus, with my own power. While that ALSO seems accurate, sometime a dreamboat is just a dreamboat.

Though inconvenient, I think this longing is a sign of heath. I can feel myself getting enough space from Amy to make room for new love, and this is the first time since 2016 that I’ve let somebody fire up the good ol’ imagination machine that is my heart. That’s good. Also good? That this isn’t 2016.

Speaking of finding space from Amy, the transition from bookstore life has been one of the most fruitful and impactful parts of the year. Though I’ll never not be devastated that the patriarchy took our Rosemont store away, and I’ll never not be horrified that one of my next bookstore bosses turned out to be a men’s rights activist, I’m so grateful that life insisted on pushing me out of the nest. I’m happy that I was freed by fate and my own stubborn will (and big mouth) to go all in on my tutoring business.

My tutoring work is the crown jewel of this year and, I hope, of many years to come. I’ll never stop being delighted that I can transform a suffering, anxious, tearful child into an excited learner touching her heart and singing out “Credit!” for every small accomplishment. I love the student who greets me with “BOOKS!? BOOKS!?” every time and who requested more enrichment work even though it would mean more homework time later. I love the taciturn grandmom who was moved to give me a hug when her struggling granddaughter transformed into a “pleasure to have in class.” I love that the kids get a few minutes of practicing Spanish as a reward if they’re awesome—they are ALWAYS awesome. I love our elaborate handshakes, our mini-yoga routines. I love every high-five so, so much. I can’t believe this is a job.

Week before last, my fourth-grade student, whom I’ve been with for two and a half years, had a birthday on tutoring day. His parents surprised him mid-session, turned out the lights, and brought in candled cupcakes. They had him read their cards to him aloud. As we eased into the lesson, interrupting ourselves many times with noisemakers and more cupcakes and singing “Happy birthday to ya!” I felt the deepest and most satisfying sensation: Home. Work. Times tables. Love.

So my word for the year is focus. Focus on the beauty and flow of doing my work. Focus on what I want, change what I need to change, speak up for myself, be a professional. Also, just to remind myself and to make it official:

Familywise, I feel like I’ve done a lot to repair my Thanksgiving-ruining damage of ‘016. (Sorry, SURJ, it’s a bad strategy. Not that I did it as a strategy but still.) In terms of talking politics (or anything) with my family, my mantra has become:

Being right doesn’t mean I can be a jerk.

(I still reject all calls for civility in the public sphere, though!! I’m still pro-anger all the way.)

Probably the best day of age 43 was when my SISTER AND NEPHEW CAME TO A PROTEST WITH ME!!!!! We happened to be up in Oswego the weekend when everybody was protesting family separation, and to my GREAT joy, they agreed to join us. My nephew knew what to put on his sign right away: “Superman was an immigrant too.”

It felt so, SO good to share my political self with my family, without having to feel like I was a threat or like I was making a demand. It felt extremely important to show my nephew the difference between Thanksgiving-ruining anger and political anger—I would hate for him to be afraid of his own anger just because mine is scary. I feel so, so lucky to have stood on that Oswego street corner chanting “This is what democracy looks like!” And being proud and angry and sad and wonderful.

My dad asked me last weekend how I stay so optimistic (Well, 90% optimistic, 10% apocalyptic.) about politics. I told him what has become the guiding principal of my life—when you’re on the ground, doing the work, it’s hard NOT to believe. Seeing the varied and beautiful faces of The People, reading their signs, the collective magic of yelling for justice feels good to me, it’s what I was born for. I was born to fight, and I’m learning how to use my fury and power well.

Happy year, self! Good job! Credit! 

Birthday Heart Inventory: Thanks 42!

Surprisingly, 42 was one of my happiest years yet. Last year around this time, I wrote about depression as a weed killer and this year, my garden is thriving, both literally and figuratively. There’s a lot of pain in my heart and so much battle still ahead, but my goal of cultivating a life has been met and exceeded.

Mental Health: Like for a lot of women, particularly trauma survivors, the 2016 election season was wildly triggering. In my case, those triggers got me to an amazing place: Women Organized Against Rape. Not only did my (FREE!) therapist there stem the tide of sobbing and panicking to a manageable level, she has also steered me towards a calmer, warmer, more productive, and loving self—she is truly a brain artist. It’s hard work to focus on the trauma part of life every Monday, and it usually results in at least a day of catharsis hangover, but it’s 100% worth it. This year is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling truly worthy of love, especially my own.

Love: Every day I feel the gorgeous, generous, and powerful love of friends, family, and cats, but I could copy and paste the longing for romantic love that I’ve written nearly every year. Though I’ve finally attained the goal of self-containment to a level that seems magical, I dream about boyfriends nearly every night. I try to take loneliness as a sign of health, my heart telling me that it’s ready to open up again.

            This is a good place to confess that there are a couple of guys I haven’t gotten over. I still wish I could hear from them, even though I know they aren’t the right ones. I keep their nice notes and artwork in the Box of Things to Be Worked Out by Unseen Forces. They don’t read this, I don’t think, but I’ll tell them anyway:

Dear _______ and ________,

Thank you for being in my life, for loving me the best you could, for the snuggles, the music, the kindness. Thank you for your face, your kindness, your humor, your support. I’m sorry for the ways that I hurt you. You’ll always be a sparkly gem in my heart because you changed me for the better. I’ll always a little bit belong to you, and I hope that you remember the best parts.

Love, Jane

(With that, I hope I made a little room for some snuggle-able treasures to come aboard.)

Work: I love my tutoring work so, so much. Getting to work with kids one-on-one, getting to know their families, using my teaching skills organically and flexibly, I CAN’T BELIEVE I made it here from where I was three years ago. Even on my lost-est days, a tutoring session brings me back to myself, frees me to live in love and in the present.

            I have one more semester of grad school (I HATE being back in grad school!) and then my teacher certification will be permanent. I hope to build up to a full-time tutoring business—I LOVE being my own boss, and the joy of going to the bank to deposit cash has not diminished since my waitress years.

            Creative coaching is going beyond-well: Coachees tend to transform into friends who guide my creativity just as much as I cheerlead theirs.

Art: At an organizing meeting last November, I introduced myself as a “street artist” for the first time, and that title really does ring true. I love being able to share my work with the neighborhood, watching how well the paintings I staple to phone poles get curated—some of the pieces have been up for more than a year! It’s a way to give and get love every time I take a walk, and fulfills what I think are the deepest purposes of art: to give, to love, to connect. Sometimes a neighbor even thanks me, and it’s the warmest, most fulfilling, most enriching feeling.

Activism: Remember when we thought it was sometimes not an election year? Transitioning from activism being a once-once-in-a-while pursuit to being a Daily Action feels healthy and sane. I’m so inspired by those who stay engaged and also by the way that we’ve committed to self-care as part of the resistance.

Plus, it’s always a good time to remind myself that this happened:

Grief: Although the Rapist-in-Chief causes the most horror in my heart and worldwide, it’s the misogyny of the 2016 Democratic primary that has caused me the most personal day-to-day grief, including making me wonder if I can ever date a man again. I’m working on a separate post about the ongoing soul-rash that is The Bern, so I won’t spend any more of my birthday typing about him.

Family:  My family of origin seems to have forgiven me for my Thanksgiving-ruining, welcoming me back like a prodigal daughter. My poetry family is mostly not connected to me anymore, largely a casualty of the misogyny-storm of the primaries. My immediate family is my ex-wife/bff and my two cats, and that’s a really, really nice life.

Spirituality: I’m addicted to Insight Timer, going to yoga weekly, and I’m even getting monthly massages. Sometimes I think I might just float up off the earth.

It’s been, in many ways, a year of luxury, of radical self-care, and I hope I can continue that spirit through age 43 and beyond. Thank you for helping make my life so rich, complex, and loving—wishing you all of the healing and happiness.

Songs of the Week: Two for Profile-Updating

It's the part of the getting-over-it wherein I belt out lots of songs and write a more honest OKCupid profile. There's a fair amount of moping, but I feel my inner Minaj taking care of it.

Thoughts After a Romance (Heart Inventory Continued)

When I wrote my birthday heart inventory, I happened to be in the early part of a relationship, the part where one is expected to be reticent, lighthearted, tentative, (none of those my strong suit even a little) as though one were trying to convince a woodland creature to eat from one’s hand. (Some comedian said that, it isn’t mine but it’s apt.)

So I left some things out.

I’m so glad I decided to let him in, to let myself hope. It was wonderful to think that we might actually be going someplace together. He was supposed to stay over on Saturday and then go to church with me on Sunday. I haven’t attended church with a boyfriend since the summer before eleventh grade, when I knelt beside my unbelievably sweet first boyfriend in the front pew of my Aunt Connie’s church. The idea of sharing a faith with a partner, of harboring a spiritual connection, made me so joyful that I thought I might explode. Sunday was the Water Ceremony at my church, where we were supposed to bring water from our summer and join it with everyone else’s water. I’d asked him if he would want to contribute some water from his pool, where we’d shared some perfect moments, and to my great delight, he said yes.

I keep a one-sentence journal, and Saturday’s entry reads: “I think he really likes me—our date is at 3pm and at 10 am, he’s already put the water in his car to remember to bring it for church.” This news was accompanied by a photo of his morning glories, which are purple like most of mine. Maybe he did really like me.

That morning, I felt so open and festive, like the best possible version of myself. It was, he was, a special occasion. I walked over to the co-op to get flowers to put by the door, and of course they were a rainbow. I felt playful, and loving, and generous, and there were definitely special underpants.

And it was a magical afternoon and evening, full of laughter and what I would’ve called closeness. It doesn’t matter what went wrong in the night, but I will say this: Usually I can sift though any bad match and find what I did wrong, but in this case I am wholeheartedly sure that that guy had won the person lottery, and he severely mishandled his luck.

I still went to church, cried the whole way there and was glad I remembered where they keep the stash of wedding/funeral tissues. One of my favorite friends joined me in the pew and we laughed about the patheticness of my I-had-to-spill-the-special-pool-water-down-the-sink story. She’d forgotten her water so I lent her my drinking bottle while I spilled in some ocean water from the family beach. It was an absolutely meant-to-be breakthrough morning with my friend, who also happens to be a creative coachee.

But home alone, sobbing in front of “Up in the Air,” I had to admit to such loss, such longing. Before I met him, it was mostly possible to ignore a big part of what’s missing in my life, or I’d just been enjoying a nice break from worrying about it: Though my day- to-day life is pleasant and good, I want to fall in love and have a family more deeply than it feels safe to say.

A few months ago, one of my favorite friends in the world had a baby after a long, hard struggle. I was so relieved and happy for her and saw it as proof that even the most enormous and terrifying-to-want dreams can come true. But also I was inconsolable. I cried so hard that I thought my heart would fall out. I felt so much envy and pain and grief and loneliness with each successively more adorable picture: I eventually had to just unsubscribe.

Normally one would just take that to mean, duh, I want a baby, but that honestly seems supercrazy for me to want—I’m sensitive, anxious, single, and (though I know I have  fertile genes) likely too old to try.

And yet.

The wide, vast, chasm of pain that opened up from my friends facebook and from the loss of a guy who just wasn’t right means that I do very dearly, in the most raggedly vulnerable way, want to have my own family.

The guy, while he has qualities of his own, also has two adorable sons. He once texted me a picture of them on a picnic by a pond. And I let myself imagine it—how I might someday meet them, how I might someday heap them all in love. Even without having (thank goodness) met the kids, I knew that the three of them needed me, needed the ocean of love that’s in me, and I let myself hope I could someday give it to them.

So now I’m in a position of being no longer able to ignore a thing I can’t really do anything about. I’m afraid I’ve lost my chance, not with him (he was not the chance) but with my someday family, like we’ve all missed our connection somehow. The idea that it might be to late is a heavy thing to carry around, knowing I may eventually have to just grieve the lost chance.

But the thing is, I let myself believe in the possibility of love, of letting someone in. I let myself go as far as the current of romance could take me, and that was a good and brave choice. And although it is famously lightning-strike foolish, I have to believe that my guy and my family are still out there waiting for me, or maybe the impossible will happen before it’s too late. I have so much love, so much everything to give a family. However they come, whoever they are, let them get here. I miss them so much.

Birthday Heart Inventory: More for Age 41

Probably “more” has been my keyword for all of the years, but now in particular I want to expand, to think a little bigger, to feel like I deserve the hopes and dreams hanging around the notebooks of my extraordinarily blessed everyday life.

Yesterday as I was getting in the car to drive to work, I had the music turned up and this song shuffled on. A grumpy man across the street glowered at me and I gave him the biggest grin and decided it would be my song of the year. I would like to say goodbye permanently to guilt and shame, to my tendency to apologize for my existence, to false good-girl compliance, and embrace being maladjusted, both in the Dr. King sense and in the regular way. So:

Forty was the year of friends. I realized my dream of being best friends with Amy, and while that may not be the move-oniest thing, it is certainly a source of joy and my favorite pleasant work boredom. I’ve gotten closer to my church friends, made poetry part of my life again in a small but significant way, and had the best friend-life since probably middle school. There was a spate where all of my friends lived in other cities and though I still love my far-flung family of pals, I’m glad to have expanded to those who can just barge in or, as my next-door neighbor did this morning, surprise me with spontaneous festiveness.

This was also the year that I truly loved being single, where getting in my own little world has been the best and happiest treat, whether I’m writing, painting, organizing the shelves, or just snoozing on the couch rewatching Gilmore Girls again.

And for making my own little world so pretty, the MVP award definitely goes to my apartment. The story of how I got it is how I want to let life be more often: One Sunday morning I was all grumpy because my divorce apartment was filled with cigarette smoke from the creepy downstairs neighbor. I was so crabby I couldn’t even deal with finding a parking spot at church, so I came up to the prettiest street around to take a walk. I overheard my now-landlord talking about showing the place and I stopped, butted into her conversation, and came up the driveway to see. The walls were painted a hideous pumpkin orange, but she said I could have any color, and she got my robin’s egg blue exactly right.

This is the first place that ever really felt mine, the place I most truly belong. In the mornings, I open the door and let the cool air in, stand there with Frannie and see how many morning glories bloomed. It’s a still and safe place that reminds me of the countryside I grew up in, but with an independent bookstore three doors down.

The apartment became the home of Fun and Games Poetry Class, which was definitely the biggest and happiest accomplishment of the year. That I made money for praising wonderful writers and helping them bring out their best work feels like such an incredible gift. I’ve written them so many thank you notes already, but the curiosity, generosity, and imagination at the heart of my poet pals is a force of nature and I’m honored whenever I’m in their presence.

The same goes for my made-up creative coaching careers. That my friends have trusted me with something as personal and delicate as their creativity, that I get to foster breakthroughs and encourage indulgence and celebrate expression at my own kitchen table is a dream come true, and I would love to see it expand in the coming year.

I’ve already said a lot about the year’s losses, but they need a little paragraph. It still hurts that classroom teaching didn’t work, that I’m not able to work for justice in the way that I wanted to. The harsh, tenacious, beautiful lives of my students still haunts me, will never leave me, and I hope that I can honor them in this new life. As soon as one more clearance comes in the mail, I’ll be back writing poetry with the library kids, so that’s a start. Though the panics of school haven’t left me yet, I know I’m getting stronger.

And okay, I’ve put off writing about him long enough, there’s a guy. It’s too soon to tell what we’ll be to each other but he is a man. He makes plans, he takes me out on real dates, he remains unfazed when the darkest parts of me come out. He lights me up. I don’t want to say more or I’ll jinx it, but it’s nice to be hanging around with someone who makes sense for me—it was a long way to get here.