Tenebrae (a poem)

Tenebrae

Tenebrae

at noontide, in an unfamiliar church

I sat in polished wooden pews, beneath smooth arches

tiny colored lights dancing through window pictures

amber glow of candles

beneath the cross.

I listened for God

as readers shared the holy scriptures

piece by piece, the stories to remind us of that Friday so long ago.

I listened for God

in the hymns we sang

still so familiar to my tongue

which once recited the words, caressed the Truth, tasted

His presence.

I have not heard God

since those golden days when we

were a thrown-together family in His name.

Remember how we gathered, holding hands, sharing spirits?

Remember how we preached

to each other

knew

the importance of

loving our neighbor as we loved ourselves

clothing the naked, feeding the hungry

shining lights, a beacon on a hill, the salt of the earth?

 

You knew.

You knew, all of you.

Yet you did nothing.

 

When I was always smiling

doors open for group socials and happy games

you were there (and so was God).

When I stood certain, a rock in my faith, inner light

glowing like a Good Friday candelabra, shining bright

you were there (and so was God).

I saw you all around me

and heard God

felt God

in the old hymns, in the new songs.

We clapped our hands

held each others’ babies as we prayed together

our own private city, Christian club

example to the world

of forgiveness

of love.

 

But when times

grew heavy, when I could

no longer carry my own load, back breaking

drowning in a salt water sea, I lifted my hands out

to you, to all of you.

Remember

my cries? Help me! I can’t…

Remember my long, gray silence

as my candles were snuffed out, one by one?

I curled there in that tomb, searching my way out of darkness

grasping like the blind at every flicker of light.

Where were you then, brothers

and sisters?

 

You were in your homes

raising your children, clocking in

walking dogs, sharing recipes, happy online photos.

I saw it all from a distance

like staring through

a locked window.

 

Where were you, brothers and sisters?

 

You,

the medicine for my pain,

stayed far away, like suffering was contagious

like my crumbling life was too much

for your pampered

sensibilities.

 

You,

fellow followers of Christ

were too busy on your knees, absorbed

in prayer, consumed with your own Quiet Times

wrapped in your hectic schedules of church, and small groups, and

planned events.

My life was messy, in those days.

I did not fit into

your lives.

 

But I was among the naked, in need of clothes.

and I was the hungry

and I was the sick

and the thirsty

and the cold.

The hurting person on the side of the road

as you traveled home to Samaria.

I was lost

I was in darkness

So

WHERE WERE YOU?

 

If I were Martin Luther

I would nail these angry words on your doors,

oh church

for your corrupt culture

your holy huddles, worshipping at the altars

of political outrage, of perfect families, of appearances

instead of following the most important

of all the commandments –

to love.

 

I did not hear God today

as the Tenebrae candles were snuffed

one by one.

Too filled with corked up emotions

released as I reflected on

what it’s all supposed

to mean

but does not.

My faith was a rock

chipped away by too many

years of solitude, apart from those

who once claimed to be

One.

 

I never cry out anymore.

Advertisements

Reverse (a poem)

I wish I could reverse the hands on the clock

erase the night when we danced

in your living room

fireworks blooming in flowers of sparks

shy smiles over glasses of wine

and fine art

no trace of what became Us

fingers interwoven

joined.

Two open bowls of berries and cream

something that could be broken,

spoiled.

I would make myself someone bland

a comfortable face in your office

trading humor in the break room

an easy friend

for barbecue parties

and group nights

an apple in your fruit bowl

shirt hanging in your closet.

Oh look, it’s 9am

and there she sits

open-faced, waiting

someone you turn to to share stories

revel in your travels

your triumphs

confess your frustrations

release pieces of your spirit

and not

someone you would

leave.

One is the Onlyest Number (aka: Pathways)

Life is a maze of pathways.

When we are young, the paths seem fewer. Wider. Simpler to choose. Well duh…I choose the path with the great job, perfect spouse, 2.5 kids, and a 3-bedroom house with a picket fence. Okay, maybe not with the picket fence, because those babies require maintenance.

But as we journey forward in life, those paths begin to multiply. They are murkier, shrouded in mystery. We think we have wandered down the path leading toward our destiny, only to discover that we’ve wandered into some ghetto by mistake. Whoops. Backtrack.

So we choose new paths, with new starry-eyed goals, and new hopes for a better lives. Surely this time, we’ll get it right. Right?

I used to be so good at picking the seeming winners. I wanted to graduate from a university. Bingo! I did it. I wanted a traditional marriage to a good man, with three kids, a golden retriever, and a house in a sleepy suburb. Bingo! I got that, too. Only later, the good man turned out to be not so good, so that path grew more like the journey toward Mordor, until i worked up the courage to flee.

I chose a new path. One with just me, and three great kids. (Only no more golden retriever, because, sadly, she was stolen from us.). It turned out to be the best path yet. My kids and I make one happy family together. I have a career that I enjoy, our health is good, and I feel that I have an optimum balance of work, hobbies, and rest.

But there is only me.

I’m not completely alone. My kids and I have a terrific relationship. We talk, support each other, and laugh together. What more could I ask for? One of my sisters lives nearby, and though we rarely talk or get together, I know that I could call her in an emergency. So I guess that’s kind of a support network.

Still, there is only me. (Cue Whitesnake)

I am the only parent i our household. Which means, I get to be the nurturer, enforcer, provider, protector, teacher, and final-decision-maker. Those are my roles, as Mom. I can pretend sometimes that my kids are my friends, but truthfully, they have their own lives, with their own friends. And there are many things that I can’t share with them the way you can with another adult.

I am my only friend. I’m friendly enough with people I encounter at work or the occasional meetups I venture out to. But I do not have any close friends. If something exciting were to happen in my life, I would scream about it to No One and Everyone on Twitter and my blog. And possibly with people at work. I would not have a friend to share it with. If something bad happens in my life, well, I would probably write about it in my journal, or deal with it internally while listening to sad music. It is up to me to cheer for myself. It is up to me to comfort myself. Because, there is only me.

Luckily, I am good at being the only one. I’ve had a lot of practice. And I’m a pretty darned good friend to myself. I treat myself to an occasional chai, or glass of good wine. I know myself well, so I know just the right things to say to motivate me. I compliment myself and cheer my own accomplishments. Most importantly, I like myself. And I will never leave me.

This path of Onlyness isn’t the path I thought I would take. I thought that by now, after being single for nearly five years, my life would look a little different. I thought that I would have a couple of close friends to hang out with and chat about stupid stuff and important stuff. I thought I would have been in a serious relationship, maybe even remarried, but to someone much better for me. Why not? I’m a kind, honest, interesting, intelligent, and funny person. But neither of those paths led anywhere. They were only ever dead ends. Somehow, it always ended up with only me, standing there, wondering what went wrong.

So I chose a different path. The path of purposeful Onlyness. A path on which I no longer seek friendships or relationships to fill whatever voids I may have, as doing so only led to deeper voids, and more hurt. A path on which I allow people come and go as they choose, and not chase after them. Nor will it hurt when people go, because we will never be close to begin with. A path on which I will not ever again allow myself to be emotionally weak and vulnerable with others. I will instead hold others at a distance, safe in my aloofness.

On this path, I go out to see concerts, movies, and plays with Only Me. I try new foods. I read great books. I work hard at staying fit, advance in my career, and focus on raising my last two teens to adulthood. I do not look with envy at those who are on a different path. I instead celebrate my own path, and offer myself the love, respect, and appreciation that I know I deserve. Is the Only path a lonely path? Yes. It can be. But no lonelier that when I was on the wrong path, searching for togetherness, and only finding aloneness. Better to admire the garden from a distance than to pick the flowers and be stung by bees.

Letters I Will Never Send (aka: Life in the Desert)

2017 Goals

Well, I did it. On the very last day of 2017, I have managed to accomplished the one and only tangible goal I set for the year. What was that goal, you ask? It was to read 55 books. Yay, me!

I know. Big whoop.

That is exactly how I feel about meeting my goal. Meh. Whatevs. Had I failed, had I only managed to read 54 books, or even 40 — gasp — would it have made any difference? No, not at all. 55 was just some random number I came up with in order to participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge. It was fun, I guess, to see if I could do it, but also kind of pointless. Who cares whether I read 55 books? What matters more is whether I read anything of value, anything noteworthy, anything lasting.

Reflections & Lessons Learned

I didn’t set any other goals during 2017. Most of my life was about maintenance. Maintain my consistent good efforts in my career. Maintain my weight. Maintain my regular fitness routine. Maintain my family and home.

I also had unwritten, less-defined social goals. Go out of my way to talk more with people at my workplace. Attend one or two meetup events per month in order to get to know other people, and maybe try a few new social things. The idea was to break out of this social desert I’ve been existing in for the past 6-7 years. Maybe even make a friend or two.

But then I did something really stupid. Something that took an incredible amount of courage to try, but was still stupid. I gave dating a try. After all, I had been divorced for a few years. I’m still fairly young and attractive, a great person, and fairly interesting, so why not?

Unfortunately, it went too well. I spent the summer dating the man of my dreams. He was ideal for me, in every possible way. We had so much in common and got along beautifully. We were even compatible in bed — something I had assumed would not happen in my lifetime. But Mr. Right did not feel that I was right for him, and he moved on. I can’t blame him for that. He has every right to seek the woman who is right for him.

And that was the end of the dating experiment. Because after you’ve met your ideal partner, well, there’s nowhere else to go but downhill, into Settlesville. I already spent 17 years being unhappily married to someone I had settled for. I have zero interest in repeating that history.

What did I learn from that failure? I learned that I can’t handle losing friends. Because that is what he had become to me. Strip away the romantic stuff, the kissing and flirting and sex, which I can live happily without, and we had developed such a good friendship. And then…nothing. Another abandoned friendship. The inevitable fate of every single close friendship I have ever formed. And as usual, not my decision.

The pain of losing a close friend is the sharpest, most intense pain I have ever experienced. It hurts worse than natural childbirth. It is harder than divorce. It is as deep as grief. The only solution that makes sense to me, the only way to keep it from happening yet again, is to never form close friendships with anyone ever again. Not in a romantic or platonic sense. The end result, the rejection and abandonment, is far too high a price to pay.

Luckily, I have had many years to practice being my own good friend. I’m pretty good company, I must say. I’m interesting, and kind, and funny, and I have great taste in food, music, and movies. Not to mention books. This year, I plan to take myself out on more solo hikes, to a concert or two, and maybe, just maybe to a live sporting event. All activities that I have been avoiding, saving up to do when I finally have a person or two to share my life with. Well, no more. I have waited long enough.

I still very much miss the people I once called my good friends. I think about them often. I still miss Mr. Right, too. I write to him weekly — letters about my life, wondering about his, sharing jokes I know he’d laugh at, all the things I wish I could share with him. Letters I will never send. Letters I pretend he’ll read, because the only way I know how to cope with the leaving is to pretend that they have all stayed in my life. That they are still my friends. That they still care.

2018 Goals

I have no idea what my goals are. I have no current actual, tangible goals. I have ideas, like traveling with my kids, volunteering in my community, writing stories, and paying off debts I inherited in the divorce. There’s also the usual maintenance stuff. But until I have written these down along with a clear objective and a timeline, I hesitate to call them goals.

I have no more relationship goals or dreams of any kind.

Hey, I know! Maybe this year, I’ll set a goal of reading 75 books. Why not? I have the free time. And just think of all of those books waiting to be read. And if I fail? Well, then I end the year with a few less literary notches on my belt. No pain, no big loss. I’ll drink to that — Cheers!

Too Much Like Water (a poem)

(I wrote this poem tonight, though it has been in my heart since a friend (or one I thought was a friend) stopped being a friend. What makes a person decide to stop being a friend? What makes a person decide to stay? What do we do with the unanswered questions that haunt us? Was it something I did? Was it something about me? About us? All I can do is turn my obsessions to poetry.)

Too Much Like Water

Maybe I was too thirsty
and you heard the rasp and rattle
when I spoke
with words unused too long.
Maybe I was too much rain
crystal, pouring drops
flooding shallow banks
too soon.
Or together, two strong rivers
flowing, roiling, pushing
for the narrow neck
to the wide, vast sea
Or you, like ice
(like me)
unyielding
ungiving
Or we, a stream
that rippled toward the sun
whose hissing touch
left us only vapor.

Just One Friend (aka: Wistful Thoughts of a Facebook Hater)

I am a Facebook hater.

Mostly.

It’s funny, because years ago, I was a Facebook addict. There was little I enjoyed more than checking in daily with my peeps, posting status updates and comments, and joining in the games on our very own virtual playground. It was my second greatest social outlet.

But…life happened. And life isn’t always pretty. And Facebook became something to hide from, rather than something to enjoy. It still feels that way.

Mostly.

Sometimes, I love to see updates and photos of everyone celebrating life. But sometimes, seeing all those happy, glowing photos filled with smiling faces can be a little too much. Friends together at parties. Friends at concerts, singing along with the band. Friends camping. Friends waving from the bleachers at sports arenas. Friends running in races, striking goofy poses for the camera.

Like. I click the button from time to time. Like. Like. Sometimes I post the obligatory family photos of my kids, and a few people (strangers and distant relatives, mostly) click like, too. It’s a never-ending circle of shares and likes that mean so little, really.

Maybe it is a kind of envy, the gnawing, empty feeling I get sometimes when I peek at everyone else’s happy chronicles of adventures with their friends. It is dumb, really. I love my quiet life with my three great kids. Together, we have plenty of fun. We camp. We hike. We roller skate. We laugh together. I am not bound to travel through life completely alone, because I get to enjoy them nearly every day.

But still. There’s this constant yearning. If only I had one friend. One good friend. One who would be as happy to hear from me as I would be to hear from them. One who would be like – What? Go to a soccer game/concert/camping/karaoke/movie/party/weird new restaurant/bookstore/lecture/farmer’s market/have a cup of coffee/whatever? I’m in! Relaxed, caring, reciprocal coolness together.

It’s not like I don’t put forth an effort. I’ve tried a number of times in the past few years to make acquaintances, and then nudge that toward friendship. Sometimes, I think that maybe I’m close. But it is so…I don’t know…difficult. Maybe it is due to my INTJ way of seeing the world. Maybe it is my insecure way of fearing that our feelings are always one-sided instead of mutual. (Or maybe that is not the voice of insecurity, but of wise intuition).

Maybe it is a strange sort of Catch-22, in which my lack of friends frightens away potential friends, as though they can sense the desperation hidden beneath my calm, cheerful exterior. Please be my friend? And I, afraid of seeming too needy, quickly back off, too. And so, friendship doesn’t happen. And I return to my cave and my world of imagination.

If I had just one good friend, then today, perhaps we would have sat in the stands together, cheering on Manchester United as they beat Barcelona. (Those are um, soccer teams).

Together with my one good friend, maybe I would have found the courage to go to a downtown event that my Meetup acquaintances mentioned earlier today.

With one good friend, maybe I would go eat inside of restaurants instead of getting takeout and watching old shows on Netflix by myself.

Maybe that one good friend would even help to connect me to a few more friends, and together, we would all go out to roller skate or dance to celebrate my upcoming 40^th birthday. And maybe take a few silly, fun photos to post for the Facebook peeps, like all the not-so-lonely people do. Or not.

Or maybe I will just live it all in my head, then write about it in my creative, introverted way. Which is okay, too.

Mostly.

Top Ten (aka: Handwritten Letters to C.J.B.)

Dear C.J.B.,

Remember me? Tiare/J.K./Princess? The girl you met at a forensics speech team competition in the Bay Area when we were sophomores at different colleges? The girl with the strange tendency to break out singing girl scout songs and commercial jingles, or quoting Shakespeare in a British accent?

I found your letters today.

There are so many. Dozens of letters, resting in their envelopes. All hand-written on paper in your familiar handwriting. All filled with little side notes and underlines and funny quips and movie quotes. Remember? We wrote about a little of everything, and a lot of nothing. Politics, school, Bruce Li. My obnoxious college roommates, and your family and Pembroke Welsh Corgi. Our faith, our friends, our life goals, and shallow TV shows.

Remember the letters I sent you? I wonder if you kept any. I know, I know..I went a little overboard by writing in every existing color of ballpoint pen, or using colorful stationary and confetti in every envelope. And I snet you stories, and poems, and shared every detail of my life as an independent 17/18/19-year old. But you went overboard, too. My favorite is the letter with the stick of chewing gum taped to the top (“Before you start reading, have a piece of gum.”). I also loved the doodles, and the corny jokes, and the way you wrote my name in a zillion silly different ways (“Dear Erait…”). When I was a counselor at camp one summer, you sent me a newspaper clipping every week of David Letterman’s Top Ten. Oh, they made me laugh so hard! This one was my favorite:

Top Ten Rejected Titles for the Movie ‘Speed’ – June 21, 1994

10. The Speedstones
9. Jurassic Park 2: The Exploding Busosaurus
8. Honey, I Drove the Kids Really Fast on a Bus
7. Faster, Bob Barker is Chasing Us!
6. Creepy Guy in the Window
5. Debbie Does Greyhound (Times Square Only)
4. El Autobus Muy, Muy Rapido
3. Dave Letterman’s Drive to Work
2. That Whacky Big-Ass Bus
1. Mrs. Busfire
Remember the few times we managed to get together in person? That time at Fisherman’s Wharf, when you gave me that adorable teddy bear, whom I named C.J. after you. And we visited all of the little cheesy touristy places, like the Earthquake Experience? And that time when I showed up, unannounced (how rude!) at your house in the city, along with several of my Girl Scout camp counselor friends, and met your family and (sweet) dog? And when you and my sister dragged me to that Star Trek exhibit. Oh my god! I totally forgot what a Trekkie you were, although you didn’t seem nerdy in the least. You even managed to talk me into trading shows with you — if I watched Star Trek the Next Generation, then you would drop your pride and watch Melrose Place. The hilarious thing is that I ended up (not hating) STTNG, and you became crazy about Melrose Place. (!)

I am sitting in my bed, filled with nostalgia, and smiling at the memories. You were one of my best friends. One of the few people who really got me — who looked beyond my unusual surface and saw a gem. And you were a gem to me, my old friend. You and your Jeet Kune Do and action movies and being an overachiever. I know…life changes. You are a successful lawyer now, just like you said you would become. And your wife is a brilliant doctor, and your daughters are absolute dolls. I could not feel more happy for you, and for how your life turned out. I will keep your letters, and the way you made me feel, forever. You were, without a doubt, one of my Top Ten.

Live Long and Prosper,

That Tiare Girl