My Rediscovery of Me

[written over two days, in pen and in pencil in my notebook. it's choppy and long. I would smooth it out, but I'm not up for it. especially because the first time I typed this all up, and edited it and tweaked it plenty, it all disappeared when I hit publish.]

I need to get this out of me. This aching out of me. This emptiness out of me. This pressing, continual hopelessness out of me.

I keep having to redefine my strength, renegotiate my happiness, refine my desires and my intentions.

Lately, my desire has been to exist, to just exist. (Unlocked, by the way.) I can’t really trust myself to expect more. I’ve been too sad for more.

Sad.

I’m owning up to that now. Accepting it, or attempting to.

As I was walking to the subway today, I realized that part of the sadness was because this year is coming to an end. This year of upheaval and heartbreak and love and understanding and coming to. Continuing burdens, developing intimacies. I am sad not only because of the changes I’ve experienced (so many!) this year or the things (so many!) that were discovered this year but because the year itself is concluding. I’m sad to lose 2011 — for all the growing it demanded — but I am thankful it is ending.

Put aside the health issues of the past 12 months — the renal biopsy, the chronic kidney disease diagnosis, the nephrologist visits, the string of sore throats, the abnormal pap, the colposcopy, the four root canals in two weeks, the allergy discoveries, the weight loss, the paying off of $3,000+ in medical bills and receiving a bill today [really, just now] for $1,671.30 — and there’s still a year of saying final goodbyes (to Sara, my 14-year-old cat, to Bailey and to Maggie, the cocker spaniels) and saying maybe-I’ll-see-you-soons (to Wichita, to my Little Sister, to my friends and poets and a great job with amazing coworkers).

There’s loss upon loss and longing.

But simultaneous beauty. As I’ve told Sia and Nic in the past day, I am really sad right now but I’m also amazingly happy. I’m forever aware of how blessed and privileged I am and I know that wonder and love are bountiful (in my life and in life generally).

I haven’t lost sight of that. And I know that’s a testament to the peace-in-chaos clarity that came for me with 2011.

I’m thinking a lot about barriers. There’s distance — even more! — between my family and me. There’s (what feels like) perpetual alonedeom.

There’s New York.

I love being here. It’s a place that suits me and it allows me to follow so many of my interests. It’s stimulating and challenging and I’m surrounded by people I adore and admire. The women I know here especially — the black women in particular — are fucking amazing. They push me to be better and their proximity to me and to my current life is a great gift from the universe.

But New York can feel isolating, to me. It makes me feel that even with the other 9 million people who live nearby, I am here alone. I feel this way even with loved ones nearby. Every time a first gaze is averted or a smile is unreturned, it affects me. It will continue to, even with all the times the smiles are reciprocated and the gazes held.

It’s also exhausting. I’m exhausted. I work a lot and sleep a lot (to make up for the working a lot). I then get frustrated that I do nothing but work and sleep and I schedule too much. I push myself, hard, trying to force a balance on my life. I enjoy my life. But then I’m more exhausted. And more frustrated. And then I complain. I’ve complained a lot lately, pretty much to anyone who’d listen. My standard response to “Hey, how’ve you been?” lately is something like “Ugh, so sick of ____/so tired of ____.”

I fall in step with habits I’d worked to walk away from.

And then I am angry with myself for reverting to a former me — and then I get mad at myself for getting mad at me because that’s an old habit from a former self.

And then nothing makes sense but I remain alone, sad and angry.

And then I see the moon. Or I read a poem. Well, same thing. The point is: there’s plenty keeping me afloat. But the warring tugs are tiring.

I am so fucking tired. Of exhaustion, firstly.

The burdens (some likely imagined or overblown) grow and grow and I adjust my weight to carry them. My knees are starting to buckle, though, and I’m starting to lose sight of the point.

I’m thinking even more about purpose. I’m thinking about love and about giving within means. But, honestly, I’m mostly thinking about sleep. And that doesn’t feel like home to me.

Naji is being so adorable right now.

I had a long cry about it while on the phone with Nic the other night. I’d cried before — mostly at random moments like when the trees in this enclosure at work started to blow really hard in the wind but, regardless of how hard they blew and how many leaves were freed, they were still trapped on the sides by a building — but the Nic cry was different. It was therapeutic. It signaled to me that I was ready for a different kind of strong. That I could and would reflect soon on how alive I feel, about how raw and open I am, because there comes a moment when you want to stop resisting the urge to “fight back” against what’s happening in your world. I’m there. Hell, I’m miles past. But it’s not a negative thing. It’s just a realization that “this is where I am right now and so this is where I need to be.” I feel that. I feel I need to be experiencing this. I just feel, and I’m excited about that alone.

I’ve been neglectful of some things, though. I’m mindful of that now. I’ve let relationships of all kinds fall too loose. Messages like “where have you been?” and “hey, stranger” are becoming common again. My immersion in creative expression has stalled. These things do hurt me, too. Yet, I haven’t had the energy required or the peace of mind (or even a piece of my mind) to address them. I’ve been struggling to stay up, to exist, to be, to just be. And I haven’t expressed that to the right people or to myself fully.

I’m sorry if my complaining is annoying. I need to let myself be sad, moody and a little upset with things right now. I can see how that could be really annoying. Excuse my construction, please. I’m making room. And I have a few more tears that need a new home.

I’ve been listening to this song at least once a day. Her version is many times better than the original, in my opinion.

I keep thinking about how it’s December, about how it was a year ago thatwhen I found out something might be wrong with my kidneys, about how it was two years ago thatwhen my marriage ended, about how it was 23 years ago when my family moved to this country, about how it was 14 years ago when I last saw my mother in person, about how I hate being cold, about how there’s 97 days until spring, about how my Little Sis called two days ago and how I felt when she said, “I love you; bye,” about how I’m becoming an expert at understanding my capacity to love and for loving, about how I feel about my feelings, about how wonderful cuddling is, about how conversations with Jupiter damn near mirror those with the moon in clarity and in relevance, about how amazing that orgasm was last night, about how I’m beginning to care less about the rules of grammar and how I’m unsure of how I feel about my feeling OK with that, about how serious I am when I say poetry saved my life, about how “I place my ear / on the belly of this moment” is a great line in a poem I just read, about how scared I have been this year, about how alone I have felt this year, about how happy I was this year simultaneously somehow, about how I set a goal to read 40 books this year and I’ve read only 22 so far, about how I’ve helped, about how I’ve prayed, about how I sit.

Him: “What is your favorite color?”

Her: “13.”

Him: “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

I’m “very allergic” to:

• cats
• dogs
• “all type of grass”
• trees (all of them except beech trees)
• household dust
• mold
• mites

Today wasn’t a lot of fun. I woke up with an awful sore throat. Again. [I have throat issues, strep in particular, regularly.]

I also had trouble breathing. [That's not a common occurrence.]

I called in sick to work, which I hated to do because I have a to-do list full of things waiting to be to-done.

[On Twitter, I wrote: "When I say, 'I feel awful,' it sounds like 'I falafel.' And then I giggle and I falafeler." My friend Diego responded: "I tabbouleh understand how you feel." I then said: "It's rather pitaful."]

Anyway, I was in bed until almost 5. Before getting up, I talked to my oldest sister and to Nic on the phone.

I also remembered I forgot my dad’s birthday. I freaked out and called my older brother, who told me that my dad told him last year that he doesn’t like celebrating his birthday on the Western/Christian calendar. Instead, I should call him on the 12th of Muharram, on the Islamic calendar. (That’s next Wednesday.)

I also have so much on my mind. Way too much. But a quote on Jessica’s blog made me smile and helped me to be thankful for my ability to the privilege of being able to cope.

My throat still hurts, but my breathing is fine.

I’m just tired of dealing with health stuff. Yesterday, I had my physical. I got a breast exam, an EKG, a hearing test and a tetanus shot. Blood was drawn to test for a long list of stuff, including creatinine, STD/HIV and an allergy panel. I’ll get those results in a week.

I have my dental appointment Saturday at 11:30. I keep imagining that the dentist is going to see my awful teeth and then decide to give up.

I’m watching Being Erica. One of the characters likes to quote other people’s work frequently. Just now: “We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly” -Sam Keen

Blah, blah, blah. [This is a response to my blathering, not the quote -- which I love.]

And, now, I’m going to lie down.

*Title’s the name of a Jay-Z song I was listening to as I was writing.