UGH the process

I watched Ms. J get married yesterday to an awesome man - seriously awesome and it was full of joy and hope and all the other amazing things and in a small way it did hurt my heart and yet thankfully it didn't really - the joy was a blessed covering over it all. However, once the party ended the real work, the real work of getting into the rough part of the break up had to begin. And so I started my steps.

Step 1 - Sweat the bastard out of my pores on a dark dance floor, in the company of safe people. My toes are brutalized but that was absolutely necessary.

Step 2 - Be awkward. I am fully, maybe too much so, okay with making others awkward as I am awkward. I will take a conversation to that point etc and I am happy to be awkward in my love and devotion. I'm also apparently down with making myself terrified for a moment while being that possibly cruel person sitting on the fringes of LG's life (this morning literally in church) and poking every so often is a hey NLLL'er, remember me, I'm not going to fade away, I'm going to make you, when I'm damn ready look at me, know me and know that you didn't break me but that you also were an asshole to me - maybe those words you said will ring in your ears like they do mine. On that note I will likely not continue attending, it took too much work to make him disappear from my line of sight while knowing he could see me. I am happy with being a nagging presence on my own terms, I don't need him getting any stealth cornering moves up and yes if you're wondering I was calculated enough to leave his keys at home. I am handing those back on MY terms

Step 3. Stock up your house-sitting with good soul nurturing food and some bad stuff - help ride the waves AND FLOWERS.

Step 4. Being affirmed in the blessed company of amazing new friends and an old one and have the words of affirmation from a female pastor, reminding me that in my Mennonite and social justice ways I am not a heretic for affirming that we must consider socio-economic (and race) issues in violence/war, birth control/family planning and just shalom. Shit is real peeps, and being a white Canadian middle class educated woman means I don't really know how real the shit is but I'm under so illusion that it smells nice, that's for sure.

Step 5. Go to sleep, knowing that AE (and KAB by proxy) will be present to support and love through the possibly brutal process of handing back the keys.

Living on the Other Side of the Line

For all intensive purposes I am currently living below the poverty line.  I knew I would be when I started graduate school.  I knew that things would be tight, at times very tight.  I did not expect that they would be this tight.  I had to contact my church this week to ask for help - after almost two months of wrestling with the idea, knowing that despite how ridiculously tight things are right now, that there are always those who need more than I do.  I have a home right?  I have heat (well sort of - my landlord is stingy in that regard), I have some resemblance of health and more importantly I'm the only mouth to feed. Well in asking for help I'm realizing how socially shameful it is to be on this side of the line - regardless of how you get here. There are strings, lots of strings, and questions and judgements.  All I conceptually understand are well meaning, but they hurt.  They hurt a lot. They imply - they imply that I should have known better.

I guess this is also me venting at God too - I know I try to keep my faith out of this blog - but I guess in all this hurt, is the question of where is the provision? And if this is the provision why does it hurt, why does it come with shame and guilt attached to it?  Isn't that counter to everything that is who you are?  Funny somewhere in this I know there is an answer - just feels beyond reach at the moment.

This is not a hand out moment but may be a moment to remember that when you judge a person on the other side of that poverty line - the world on this side is full of enough hardship without that and for better or worse I now know that first hand.

Changes

I started school today, I quit work on Friday and X and I are no longer a couple.  And I all I want in all this change is him.  He is an amazing, sweet, smart, handsome, talented, funny and gentle yet strong man.  A man I am crazy about and I know I will always be to some extent or another - there aren't a lot of great men in this world.  He even bought me amazing jewelry I will cherish with no hints whatsoever. So why?  Why didn't I jump on the next plane?  I cannot bend time and space - we are in different time zones, different countries and different life journeys and we could go on living with 5 minutes of bbm and the occasional Skype date as the glue, but the glue I really need more than anything is knowing in the nights I have anxiety and nigh terrors that I can cling to him and not my cold blackberry.  If I could have I would have bent everything imaginable for this man - but maybe for us that just isn't enough.



They are right - I just wish I could have held on longer.