Woke up early this morning and realized yet another loss in a line of many this year . . . my website. It had been hacked into more than once several months ago. After a few attempts to fix the problems the web designer concluded that I needed a new platform. That was to happen in late August. I talked with him last night, (curiously another Dan H.), and I decided to let it go. Web designer Dan H. has a full time gig that is keeping him really busy, and as a result hasn’t had the space to be as responsive as I’ve needed. He admitted he had dropped the ball . . . I like the guy and it’s not enough. He’s just not what I need or want in a business partner.
I have a history of hanging in there with people beyond reason. I have done so by over-functioning when they under-function--exhausting for me, and a miss-guided use of my energies. Instead of doing my own work here on earth I have spent a lot of my life tracking people down, reminding them to do what they said they were going to do, and . . . doing their work, taking on their responsibilities. I’m over it professionally and as well, in personal relationships. I am interested in building a current reality populated by people and things that really show up for me, and make sense for my life. I know I’ll have to deal with my habituation of thinking of everybody and everything before myself, and conforming to what it is they need and want . . . And I’ll do it. For me change begins with clarity first, and moves into action. Meanwhile, on this road to the future I am desiring, I’m finding myself surrounded by loss . . .
Loss. It’s the theme of my 2009. The year began with my broken wrist that snapped more than bones in my life. The bones in my body have knit back together and healed . . . I can’t say the same about my Dan H.-NOT web-designer. The crack on the ice was a metaphorical match igniting a deep pocket of unresolved biological and behavioral patterning lying under the surface of his skin that came hurtling out at me in a climactic halt as I lay in our bed disoriented, and drugged. The care and trust between us was arrested in very much the same way my life was suddenly arrested while stretched out on the ice. My life went into stasis. The broken wrist, the broken trust began to weave a cord of a new color and texture into the fabric of my life . . . change and loss.
The irony of the beauty surrounding me on the day I fell on the ice still lives in me as something almost mystical. While cradling my distorted right wrist I could feel the thick sludge of pain moving through me. It was as if my blood had turned into a gel while my nervous system was firing off hot sparks of panic like the end of a broken power line flailing about inside me as it does in a wild stormy wind. While a storm was waging inside, all around me was this ice castle stillness with big magical crystalline flakes all fluffy white, falling down on my face. At the time I had no idea that only hours later I would live into a similar irony, a fissure ripping the fabric of our relationship . . . beauty and brokenness . . . the terrible and the tender . . .
From that day the losses have grown. Witnessing the pain of our relational situation was just too much for a beloved friend, she needed to step away. I have and do feel her loss continually. The general state of the economy changed employment and we have lost the savings put away for that rainy day that has lasted for a year. Since last November both Dan and I have lost a good deal of momentum in work and business life. Contracts and painting sales have simply gone away, evaporated like the morning dew in the summer sun. Add to that, another good friend of mine has recently moved away, and the entire constellation in the suite where I have my studio has changed. All this is deep loss for me. I now live in the downstairs of our home, and wake up alone. Now the website? Just one more domino in a long line crashing to the ground as I’ve made the long journey around the sun, so far, a year marked my losses, lots and lots of losses.
It’s just got to be very human to consider loss as a negative thing in our lives. At least, in America that is . . . More is better, tons is best, and loss--bad news. That’s how we have looked at things here in the USA, and we are living with the obvious consequences of our actions based on those beliefs. I’m living the losses on a deeply personal as well as communal level, it’s all around me, in me, in the air I breath and the steps I take. It’s just the way it is right now, and my best efforts don’t seem to be making much of a difference, like my little rudder isn’t going to move the Titanic just yet . . . and, maybe not before a fatal hole is dug into the side. It doesn’t have to play out that way, and it’s all I CAN see right now.
This sounds grim. I notice my tendency to want to make this picture a little prettier and it’s not. It is what it is, right now, grim. Sure, there is a lot to acknowledge on the lighter side, and I don’t want to ‘sugar-coat’ what the overwhelming theme in my life is right now--loss. I want to look at loss straight in the face and allow myself to be led and learn from this teacher. I am committed to embracing this life experience, it only makes sense to do so. When loss shows up, there’s something for me to learn. It showed up again. . . the loss of the website. Dan H. the web designer is out of capacity and cannot follow through on what he promised . . . Eerie . . . Dan H., my partner is out of capacity and cannot follow through on what he promised . . .
My Dan H. is coming home late tonight from the last of, up to now, booked work in 09. I’m watching as my energy starts to get excited, and I need to reel myself in. He’s not coming home to me, to his wife, partner, lover. He’s coming home to his life where he lives near me, in tandem with me, kinda, sorta. He’ll give me some time tomorrow before he heads over the mountains to help his friend move. It’s Halloween tomorrow and I’ll be alone. Not tragic, and yet, I’ll be alone. I’ll be without the partner I thought I’d have at this time in my life to do something with, something fun and Halloween-like. I’ll be alone, just like I will be late tonight when I hear our front door open and he walks upstairs to where he lives a life without me in the way we promised each other on September 22, 2002.
I remember Emma Thompson’s face in “Love Actually” when her emotionally unfaithful husband comes home from a business trip. He apologized and the affair ended it, but the schism remained. He comes home and she responds to her excited children and says, “Yes, Daddy’s” . . . and here the word falls like silently cold drizzle on an even colder day. . . . “home.” Dan comes home, well he comes here, and then he’ll be off again to be with people who matter to him. He comes home, but not to me, not really. I’m feeling sad about this and all the loss. It feels very important for me to be with this sadness, without the sugar . . . and, I have tears swimming in my eyes . . .
That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .
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