What is a friend? Well if you watch primetime TV you know that a friend is the person that lives across the hall, or works in your office, or is someone you solve high profile murders with. I don't have any one description of a friend, possibly because I moved from place to place throughout my childhood always being the token "new girl" in school and making my way in a way most kids and teenagers don't have to, by sheer determination to make friends.

Now, twenty years removed from school and having experienced a very full life... my husband is my best friend, really. I never expected him to be, for my own personal reasons, but for those very same reasons, I learned to understand and notice his generosity towards our relationship and our friendship is unspeakably bound. The point of this is, friends cannot be made through giving the most dinner parties or spending the most time together, friends cannot be coerced into being friends, although they can and do pretend to. Friends cannot be "because" of any reason, they simply just are or are not your friend.

If you are lucky, you will be best friends with your husband. If you are smart, you will be friendly to your husband. If you are sociable and kind, you will have many friends. If you are blessed, you will have friends that care enough to knock on your door out of the blue to check on you. If you are lucky, smart, sociable, kind and blessed... then you should be grateful, and I am.

spirit napping

What is happening to me? I do not seem to care about anything anymore; certainly not at the same fight to the death intensity that I am used to feeling. I sit and notice and do not feel, I just simply notice what I might have felt before and when I would have lost it somehow; either tears, or threats, or heartbreaking silence or simply anger. I do not feel these things anymore. Am I getting older, depressed, or am I sick? I do not know.

The positive aspect of this "illness", this sense of "I am too tired to fight" is that I am literally so outside of any conflict that I feel as wise as Gandhi. Charlie put me to the test a few days ago, with door slams, tears, words, more door slams (all by herself) and finally as I sat noticing her conflict without a word she realized I was just going to sit there watching her tangle with a ghost of mommy past and suddenly she opened her door, to my disbelief, and walked up to where I was sitting and said "I'm sorry Mommy", crying. I had done nothing, said nothing, simply sat at her play table wondering why I was too tired to follow her to her room and tell her if she slams her door one more time I will take it off, etc... but I didn't have to.

Bryan too, misses my spark, not that we argue anymore.. because I refuse to, but on another level there is a spark that keeps us wired and very aware, excited and in tune with each other. Now that I have surrendered to my diminished self, I notice that I simply do not care about some of the little things that were so important to me before. Silly things that would make me crazy; like if he forgot to kiss me goodnight or if he called to see how my day was or if he looked at me in the eyes.. all that stuff I really cared about and now even if everything is exactly the same, I wouldn't notice or care.

I love Bryan and Charlie more than ever, and would fight to the death for them, but some kind of tired has been seeping into my once too energetic body and mind. Part of me is grateful that I am so unattached to actions, yet the other part sees what was (is) so special about me; a fierce loyalty to what is true and right and important to me. A mixed blessing, and for those who care to know.. my guess is that I let too much in, especially work related, and I let too many things have a piece of me, so that there was nothing left at the end (and middle) of the day. Nature has a strange way of saying no, at least for me at this moment, I simply cannot do any more.

It is well past time to remodel, but this simple kitchen update is spreading to all corners of our home, which is wonderful except for the fact that we really hired a handyman, not a contractor to do this. Ted is wonderful, smart, methodic and perfect for fixing things.. not rebuilding half your home. So here we are, a month into it and not near the middle or the end.

I am not sure if it is the dust, the nails, the unkempt rearranged furniture shoved into corners, or simply this summer of work related anxiety that has made me feel slightly depressed about things. As a rule, I habitually clean and organize our closets and home to the point that my cleaning lady (Tatyana) oohs and aaahs when she sees my handiwork; everything organized momentarily in Charlie's room for instance, or occasionally I'll clean out Bryan's drawers, or unclutter our desk area. But lately, I cannot stand anything ancillary, anything cheap, unclean or unecessary.

This change in feeling is unlike me, so I notice it. With Charlie in school I have more time which I impossibly fill with work and commitments. So, here I sit, exhausted; knowing and admitting I cannot do more yet I am not doing what is truly my own pursuit. So I cannot stand to see anything extra laying around, "nothing more please" I seem to say as I throw things away. Nothing more please, as I try to find the space for me.

Why are we here?

Ha ha! You couldn't resist.. do you really think I know why we are here? I believe I know. Here's my best guess: we are here to realize and reconnect with who we really are; we are here to be the truth of what we know.. not what we fear. Yet, our actions are fear based (okay some of us not so much) but most of us act based on the fears that society and our peers and our spouses and our family will judge us unworthy if we were unlimited, uninhibited and honestly our true selves. Everybody knows when they have a moment where they feel truly alive and not just existing, and yet we keep within our boundaries so we can keep existing..

I was reading about anger last night on a random blog and the writers expressed a viewpoint that I have read before, which is that anger itself is a mask for other emotions.. many other emotions. Well, I don't know much about it but again, my reality right now is that anger itself can be simply anger. That doesn't mean that for one to feel anger even for 15 minutes that a person is an "angry" person. It simply means that if you feel anger, it doesn't have to be a "mask" of a terrible childhod, an eating disorder, or an inabilty to express yourself. Why is anger such a bad thing? I love it. I don't live it, I don't feel it right now, but when I do I am going to own it and let it be clear that whatever is upsetting me will no longer be acceptable. You know why? It feels good to me to express joy, love, compassion, appreciation, and even anger. I feel life! I care deeply and I will not deny myself the opportunity to just be. By the way, Bryan was not the inspiration for this post, although he could have been, and that would be okay too.