It is April. Welcome to that, for all that it may be (but, in my experience, typically isn't) worth. It seems nice enough outdoors, and it is, here in Baltimore. Not that I'd really know, having sat in uncomfortable proximity to my feelings over the weekend.
Sunday was Glenn's memorial service, and I attended. It was jocundity in the face of tragedy, with tenderness and laughter and uncharacteristically articulate accounts of Glenn when he was among us. New friendships were forged, by way of connectedness unearthed by the common vulnerability of our grief, that will doubtless span and endure decades. And, from everything that I could tell, none of it softened the precipitous sense of loss that we felt. But we all seemed to realize that there was little, if anything, that we could do to address that pain, so we tacitly agreed to transcend it with our unique respective love for our dear friend.
And here we sit, among the setting and trappings of April. Life is not moving as deliberately, nor with as much alacrity, as I would choose (if ever I were faced with a choice). I wonder if there's an April equivalent to the axiom that's wielded in concert with the idea of March. You've heard it a nauseating number of times, I'm sure: "in like a lion, out like a lamb." That's a very beautiful concept, and I do love beauty so, but what if the lamb gets eaten by the lion that will no doubt say, in arrogant Lionese, "April Fool!"?
I'll tell you what if. Everyone would be revealed as an outright sucker in that equation--including lions, dwellers of the jungle, having been left to suffer the failed fruits of their hunger with cold weather.
Having just said all of that, I am completely unaware of the current temperature or climate or whathaveyou. I long to see Molly, Desmond, and Ivor, I ponder just how I'll return home (awaiting a delinquent paycheck), and I'm reminded with maximal poignancy about all that I've learned to accept NOT having in life. This neither implies nor infers anything about what I DO have, as all of that is totally amazing. But it seems labor-intensive in a way that it shouldn't be. So, armed with some-or-other strength, I would like very much to declare the following for myself, I hope that you're ready. I am not ready.
1. I am not disabled. Yes, I have a disease and all of its accordant issues, but I remain aware of the world around me, am desperate to contribute to it, and won't (although I'd love to) mail satchels of barf to all of the purveyors of abuse and hapless judgment that I have encountered regarding my health. To them, I have only to say: YOU ARE MAKING THIS INCALCULABLY WORSE.
2. I need a reliable job. This is more serious than it's possible to imagine. While it may seem reductive to say that this is all that I need, it is the agonizing truth. The stress that my family and I feel from the relentless drip-drab of freelancing and unpredictable pay cycles is positively lethal. I am able to work. I want badly to work. This New-Age bullshit of visualizing a bountiful future is all well and good, but I have applied to 1,400 jobs. It has been said (by Albert Einstein or Benjamin Franklin [or another person of far-greater financial means than meager old me, no doubt]) that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Well, does that mean that I should refrain from applying for jobs?
3. I am committed to parenting. This supersedes everything else in my life, and the level of resentment that I feel toward those that have ignorantly drawn conclusions to the contrary cannot be exaggerated. I do not wish to inundate my children with television or plastic or sex-role stereotypes that will instill them with the same hinges and buttons, the same onus of irrelevant privilege, that I have worked tirelessly to surmount. My goal with my children is to help them be, without shame or fear, exactly themselves. And, despite, or even because of, my health, I am a capable and conscientious parent.
I have become so incensed with the well-meaning attempts to corral me that are actually deleterious that I am quite sure that I need to end here and possibly sleep.
Sunday was Glenn's memorial service, and I attended. It was jocundity in the face of tragedy, with tenderness and laughter and uncharacteristically articulate accounts of Glenn when he was among us. New friendships were forged, by way of connectedness unearthed by the common vulnerability of our grief, that will doubtless span and endure decades. And, from everything that I could tell, none of it softened the precipitous sense of loss that we felt. But we all seemed to realize that there was little, if anything, that we could do to address that pain, so we tacitly agreed to transcend it with our unique respective love for our dear friend.
And here we sit, among the setting and trappings of April. Life is not moving as deliberately, nor with as much alacrity, as I would choose (if ever I were faced with a choice). I wonder if there's an April equivalent to the axiom that's wielded in concert with the idea of March. You've heard it a nauseating number of times, I'm sure: "in like a lion, out like a lamb." That's a very beautiful concept, and I do love beauty so, but what if the lamb gets eaten by the lion that will no doubt say, in arrogant Lionese, "April Fool!"?
I'll tell you what if. Everyone would be revealed as an outright sucker in that equation--including lions, dwellers of the jungle, having been left to suffer the failed fruits of their hunger with cold weather.
Having just said all of that, I am completely unaware of the current temperature or climate or whathaveyou. I long to see Molly, Desmond, and Ivor, I ponder just how I'll return home (awaiting a delinquent paycheck), and I'm reminded with maximal poignancy about all that I've learned to accept NOT having in life. This neither implies nor infers anything about what I DO have, as all of that is totally amazing. But it seems labor-intensive in a way that it shouldn't be. So, armed with some-or-other strength, I would like very much to declare the following for myself, I hope that you're ready. I am not ready.
1. I am not disabled. Yes, I have a disease and all of its accordant issues, but I remain aware of the world around me, am desperate to contribute to it, and won't (although I'd love to) mail satchels of barf to all of the purveyors of abuse and hapless judgment that I have encountered regarding my health. To them, I have only to say: YOU ARE MAKING THIS INCALCULABLY WORSE.
2. I need a reliable job. This is more serious than it's possible to imagine. While it may seem reductive to say that this is all that I need, it is the agonizing truth. The stress that my family and I feel from the relentless drip-drab of freelancing and unpredictable pay cycles is positively lethal. I am able to work. I want badly to work. This New-Age bullshit of visualizing a bountiful future is all well and good, but I have applied to 1,400 jobs. It has been said (by Albert Einstein or Benjamin Franklin [or another person of far-greater financial means than meager old me, no doubt]) that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Well, does that mean that I should refrain from applying for jobs?
3. I am committed to parenting. This supersedes everything else in my life, and the level of resentment that I feel toward those that have ignorantly drawn conclusions to the contrary cannot be exaggerated. I do not wish to inundate my children with television or plastic or sex-role stereotypes that will instill them with the same hinges and buttons, the same onus of irrelevant privilege, that I have worked tirelessly to surmount. My goal with my children is to help them be, without shame or fear, exactly themselves. And, despite, or even because of, my health, I am a capable and conscientious parent.
I have become so incensed with the well-meaning attempts to corral me that are actually deleterious that I am quite sure that I need to end here and possibly sleep.
