It's one of those days where, if I wasn't weepy and listless, I'd be glad I don't have ready access to the Hallmark channel or Subaru commercials because if I did, I would have parked myself in front of the boob tube all day and cried into a bowl of uneaten popcorn at the slightest provocation. As it is, I'm incapable of feeling glad about anything and, instead, I'm just crying in fits and starts for no reason sans popcorn.
It's been one of those weekends where everything is just wrong and I'm tired and angsty and frustrated and sad sad sad but mostly just bone tired. I need a boost and there's no one around to give me a boost...not even Lex who, for the first time in a long time, is seeing a girl, a girl he likes spending time with and who gets him to voluntarily leave the house. Which is good. I'm earmarking that one to be glad about later.
Unfortunately, not even Vinny is cooperating with my need for some affection. Instead, mommy's little monster crapped on my bed in some kind of anxiety-laden attempt to get my attention. And now I just feel crapped on by The World. Which seems overly dramatic and ridiculous and untrue. Nonetheless, I insist upon swimming in this cesspool of pity. Adding insult to injury is the fact that it is Sunday and the laundry room has been busy all day so I couldn't get my bed linens in edgewise and am thus faced with sleeping on a bare bed with only a blanket for company.
Aren't you glad you're taking the time to read this right about now?
Hee hee. OK, I just smiled.
Oh! You know what else made me smile (and cry a little too but I'll tell you about that in a minute) today?
This was the re-scheduled fireworks show set off at the Colorado School of Mines last night. The pyros setting off this show? People I know and love. This is the most spectacular fireworks display I believe I've ever seen and I'm so proud of my friends who can and do make things go boom that I just had to smile at their talent. The tears came from the fact that I did not go to the show last night and, like you, had to watch it on the youtube. I didn't go because just the sound of a loud van's engine revving yesterday afternoon had me jumping out of my skin. Being up close and personal to the firing field - which is reserved for friends and family of the gang - was likely the worst place I could have been...aside from a gun range. I'm sad I missed this...mostly because PTSD robbed me of something I would have loved any other time. There is another show they are putting on at CSU in a couple of weeks. I'm going to try like hell to make it up to that one instead.
Oh! Here's some good news. Acr0nym is not moving to San Francisco. He decided over the weekend not to take the job there mostly because he doesn't want to leave here. Color me relieved. At least about that. Let's hope he gets additional good news tomorrow about the health issue he's currently experiencing. A health issue that is likely partially keeping me from gladness about him staying here in Denver. Frankly, I'm very worried about him. I'll earmark the joy for him staying here later too.
I think...so you know how I spent the last half of the week baking all those pies for the DIY food exchange at denhac yesterday? Well, on Friday afternoon, I came home from work exhausted. It had been a rough driving day, worse than I've had in quite some time and I had to do a lot of it unfortunately, it had been a particularly rough, angsty, stressful week. But before I could lie down for some rest, I knew I needed to juice the 40 key limes for the 2 key limes pies I needed to make. And as I was standing there, exhausted, bedraggled, feet hurting, and yet happy to be creating something with love for people I love that I had the thought...
This. This is what love looks like. It isn't sunsets and rainbows and choirs singing. Love is a pooped out woman in comfy pants and crocs, a lock of stray hair refusing to stay out of her tired face, standing in her kitchen juicing limes for pies even though what she ought to be doing is lying down for a much earned nap. That's love.
Anyway. So I made a bunch of pies. And I put so much love and glitter into those pies! I wanted them to be the best tasting, comforting pies I could muster. But I think I put all my love and glitter into them and forgot to keep a little love reserved for myself. Because right now I've got no love for me.
Naked Jen and I talked last week when we were recording the podcast about her idea that we should all strive to do one good thing each day, to love it out, to spread our glitter. What I'm thinking tonight is that sometimes that one good thing should be giving love to ourselves.
So...to end on a good note...I would love to know what your love looks like. Not the person you love but what it looks like to love. What is it that you do or see or take time for and find yourself suspended in that moment when you think this is what love looks like?
Tell me. I would love, nay I need, to know.
8 comments:
I feel your pie love even if I didn't get to eat any.
I feel love when sharing canyon info with visitors.
But right now I'm totally exhausted from the reunion and so looking forward to getting back to AZ.
Glad Acronym isn't moving, I think.
For me, it is sitting at the sidelines of my son's soccer game in Bernalillo, an hour and a half's drive from home on a Saturday morning; getting grumpy kids into a car, packing a picnic because we can't afford to eat out, driving all the way, spending our whole, our only free day on this hour's event that is life or death to him. That is love. I often resent it, I feel obligated, and yet I never want to miss it, this showing up to just watch his life unfold.
first, before anything else, this: Naked Jen and I talked last week when we were recording the podcast about her idea that we should all strive to do one good thing each day, to love it out, to spread our glitter. What I'm thinking tonight is that sometimes that one good thing should be giving love to ourselves.
exactly!
i have said over and over and over and over again that we must love ourselves first or we'll never be able or even capable of loving anyone else. so absolutely yes. you have to save just a little bit for you. or start with you. it isn't selfish. it is how it all works.
there was a moment for me this past weekend when i demanded that my professor apologize to his son. and in that moment i realized exactly what love looks like. that son, his son, is not mine. but in my heart, he is every bit as much mine. and the love i feel for him and my professor and the three of us as a family just overwhelmed me to the point that i knew we would all break (yes BREAK) if i didn't shout loudly and get us all to love it out.
that is what love looked like around here.
Love is sitting in a hospital waiting room hoping your sickly mother is okay. It's waiting while all the tests are done to figure out why her blood pressure keeps dropping. It's finding out later it was a self administered overdose of her blood pressure meds. It's realizing you've been here before but you were just barely five years old the previous time. It's coping with the deep bouts of depression that you're mother goes through. Fearing the next one will be the time she let's go of her mortal shell. It's staying by her side when all she does is push you away. It's fighting for her life when she won't anymore. It's loving her when she can't feel anyone's love. It's knowing that this love you have in your heart will never be returned. Because she can't. Because her past won't let her. It's being her daughter until the end. That's what my love looks like.
Awesome and thoughtful post, Jane.
but, first, Katie, you are right on there - love made Real.
and Tara, I can relate... though my days of traipsing around the soccer field are (thankfully) over, it did feel like love the way it does for you.
and nakedjen - it is taking me a LONG time but maybe I get what you are saying - love yourself in order to love others.
okay, so on to love then. The first thing that came to mind was the day I had yesterday (very different from yours, Jane). I went hiking/exploring at Point Reyes Nat'l Seashore in NorCal - I was so completely taken with the beauty of that day -- it was loving me that allowed me to sit and watch the waves, look for the shimmer in the surf, feel the perfect ocean breeze, smell the sea - get a sense of the pulse of the surf (as David Bower put it) -- I hadn't thought about it like that until I read your post but now I get it.
Thanks for posting.
Gracie, I am so completely jealous that you were at Point Reyes. Say hello to it for me the next time you are there, please. Just give a pushy gull a potato chip and say it was from me.
My love looks a lot like yours--I've always tried to keep in mind that love is a verb and not just a noun. It's something I should be DOING not just feeling.
That said, I am HORRIBLE about loving and looking after myself--I would be humiliated and ashamed if I treated anyone else the way I treat me most of the time.
I'm overcome with reading your post and these moving comments from these incredible women. Why is it so hard to show some self-love? Why do I talk to myself in ways I would NEVER talk to anyone else? Why do I not stop at the beach for 15 minutes on the way home from work, to show myself a little affection?
But loving others...
In my menopausal almost perpetual bad mood, lately love has been keeping my mouth shut around people I love. Not screaming, not jumping up and down, not raving. I love them and they don't deserve me unleashing my inner shrew on them.
I save the shrew for my blog, and even then try to cover her with a cloak of reason, when truly,reason eludes my inner workings.
Sending you love, Jane! From these comments above, wow, you've got a lovely lot of women reading your blog.
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