Month: December 2014

Remembrance

~ storm257 ~ Leave a comment

From 2004 until mid-2007, I walked to work almost daily from my house on SE 38th and Hawthorne to the Portland State University campus. Crossing the Hawthorne Bridge from the east heading into downtown, I felt deep gratitude to live in a place with such beautiful ways to view the river and city. Always alive with activity – cyclists buzzing by, people running or fishing from the esplanade below the bridge, dragon boats skimming along the river – Portland was vibrant even when my own life lacked brightness. I loved that walk, even in the rain and oppressive heat, and I loved the things I could count on seeing everyday.

Returning from work in the evenings, just at the top of the on-ramp, I would take pleasure in one fixture of the bridge, particularly in the month of December. The Man in the Mickey cap, with the white suit, waving to the cars and playing music was a little spot of light for me in times when I could not make my own light. I came to count on seeing him, particularly during the months when the sun set before I left work. He was something like joy for me, in his apparent happiness, sharing his perfect gift with walking, riding and driving commuters just at the point in their day when they, like me, most needed him. He did not make eye contact, no words were exchanged, but he always made me smile and I thanked him with my heart.

I found out just recently that he died in 2012 and that his death was a suicide. I have been thinking about him for several days and trying to put together words to express what he meant to me and what I would do differently if I had had some foresight back when I was just another commuter whose day was brightened by his trumpet music and magical presence. Would I have slipped him a note to thank him? Would I have learned his name and listened to his story, if he had been willing to share? Would I have given him the space in my life to be more than a particularly pleasant part of my daily routine? Perhaps.

What I understand best about hindsight is that it exists to try and make us feel we can be better, treat others and ourselves better. We reflect and recall in order to believe that we have learned from our past failings or oversights. It is a perfect tool that, if used correctly, can help us make better decisions. But it is also entirely subjective and only truly useful if we will it to be so. And hindsight has healing power for each of us individually and can, perhaps secondarily, impact those who were part of the original experience. But there can be an impact and belief in that is essential.

Magical Man in the Mickey Hat, I wish I had told you how much I appreciated your presence. I wish I had known that you, like me, felt the weight of depression. I wish I had the ability to do for you what I am only beginning to learn how to do for myself. Perhaps it would have made a difference. Hope allows me to think so and one thing I know, without any doubt, is that holding onto hope is the bravest thing, sometimes the only thing, we can do in this life.

It’s Christmas night and I am one who does not feel well at the holidays. For those of you who understand this, I just want to say how necessary it is that you know you are not alone. Find that tiny place of light, you know it exists even if buried deep, and cup your hands around it to feel its perceptible warmth. Hope lives there. And you can fan its little flame.

Deadline

~ storm257 ~ 1 Comment

Sometimes it is necessary to set a deadline in life. We spend a good deal of time anticipating “the moment” when we will be ready for something to happen: new work, new space to live, children, love. We expect, perhaps foolishly, that when that arbitrary time arrives we will be ready. For example, when I was in my early twenties, I thought that by the time I was in my late twenties I would be ready to have children. Never mind that my romantic relationships had been less than healthy, or that I was still quite clueless about what I wanted to do for work, I felt that twenty-six seemed like a perfect age to become a mother. Fortunately for me and my maybe baby, nothing lined up to make that a reality.  I was ending a damaging relationship that had dragged on several years too long, beginning graduate school, and moving to a new city. More than that, I was starting to change the way I viewed my life and I was reasonably happy with those changes. The happiness factor, turns out, was the essential part of transforming the right time into the not quite yet time.

It has been more than ten years since I was that young woman and I realize I could stand to take a lesson from her. She called off an engagement because her gut told her it was the right thing to do. She applied to a graduate program at a school she had always longed to attend because her gut told her it was the right thing to do. She moved to a city she had loved from the first moment she visited because…well, you see where this is going. In the space of one year, she transformed her life, which had not been a happy one for some time, into doing and being something she felt proud of and safe within. She took a risk that her body did not reject and that her mind and heart responded to with joy and excitement. She was smart back then and I am proud of her now.

When I made the decision to move from Maine to New Jersey it was the hardest decision I have made since I was twenty-six. No joke. I have moved cross-country in the intervening years, been diagnosed with depression and attended therapy, left all of my closest friends on the west coast, been alone in a life I never expected to have in Maine, but the several months leading up to moving from Maine to New Jersey were harder than any of that. What made this decision so hard was that I tried to let my heart lead and chose to pay less attention to my gut. Sometimes what our guts say feels like fear and does not feel particularly trust-worthy. Sometimes we want to believe that we’ve had so much to fear, been hurt so many times, that our gut is just reacting to all that baggage. I think that may be a mistake; guts care less about our history than we think. And hearts are hopeful in ways both endearing and dangerous. Sometimes we end up with our guts in a knot because of all the acrobatics they have been doing trying to get us to listen. This is problematic for anyone, but coupled with depression brain, it can be downright sickening.

I am making a promise to my twenty-six year old self and to my gut. I am setting a deadline. You are going to hear about this probably more than you’d like in the next two months, because aside from the friends I talk to on the phone and through social media, you are what I’ve got for a daily companion. Which is perhaps better than nothing. I am trying to see the good in being here. I am trying to remember what it is that made me think moving here would be something I could feel good about. I am trying to find a way to be proud of myself again. I am trying.