When I work up it was storming. We sat on the porch and watched it rain and the wind blew in. It was a dark, cloudy, the sky opaque.
I began the day in rage. It was anger like I haven’t felt in a long time. Or ever, perhaps. I was seething. Irate. Just pissed right off. I thought about screaming, roaring, yelling, pummeling the floor, punching what-the-hell-ever. Fighting. Ripping someone up. Just to do it. Just to fight. I had stories. About why I was mad. About how justified my anger was. About how I had a fucking right to be angry.
I talked to DH about my anger. He eventually seemed to get it. He seemed sorry and maybe even genuinely so.
But I was still mad. I was fucking sore and ready to destroy somebody.
That narrative is a story of striking a deal with the male-of opening and consummation, if he would provide and protect. But he didn’t. Either through inability or malice, he broke that bargain. And I’m left with my sacrifice, no help, and a burdensome obligation to care for and nurture his children. That, and through his ineptitude or malice he inverted his duties of provision and protection and created in himself an indulgence to his own vices. Through his vices I am obligated to not only care for and nurture but provide and protect against his willful inversion.
More personally, I called out DH for seemingly not prioritizing the marriage. And he wonders why I am so heated. So angry. So focused. Well, it’s because you’re inviting in a man who has repeatedly tried to sabotage this marriage. Who is unapologetic. DH wants to consider entertaining his wants, needs and desires at the expense of prioritizing the trust in the marriage. And, DH is totally oblivious. Or, he acts like it.
The sky grew more intense. Finally, around noon, as I stepped outside running an errand, the tornado warning sirens sounded.
And I’m fucking infuriated. I’m so fucking mad.
I wondered then, what was I really mad about? Was DH not allowed to have ulterior loyalty? What if I am betrayed? It that not an experience within the boundaries of my life? Am I really intolerant of experiencing this? I feel humiliation, fear, and sadness. Under that anger was this very deep-scary deep-narrative story. It was a very old story. And not “mine”; but it also is mine. I made a deal, goddammit. And I want what I bargained for. But what if he decides it’s just not worth it to him?
And then it was like the sky opened up and a light poured down.
It is a story. A narrative which the entire human race seemingly is living out.
That eternal struggle between what is dictated by survival for us, and our own divine intent.
That which we know we are, and that which we think we have to be to survive.
I felt an uneasy receding of my anger, and the rising tide of sadness. A sadness so deep, so pervasive, that I thought it was endless.
I watched the sky. It was a tumultuous sea of dark grey, greasy smears of haze, that undifferentiated fog of sick dark murk. It revealed patches of blue, as impossibly huge puffy, discreate clouds parted around the sun. They seemed like castles. Castles of such magnitude that those who dwell there must be a hundred feet tall. A thousand. Some incalculable immensity.
I wondered still, feeling defeated, sad, and anxious, about it all. At the end of day. After all of this. The threatened tornado, the sun coming out, the clouds parting and seeing a castle like formation around the clear blue in the center. Could it really be so? Or could I just be a subjectively hallucinating self indulgent narcissist? Were my parents right?
I tried it on. That sad, but also angry, feeling of being always wrong, always in “sin”, always a selfish brat who like the pretense of being someone that everyone can admire.
I tried the other on. That impossibility-the rising light-filled hope and wonder of communicating with the sky.
A gentle, reassuring breeze blew through the yard and picked the sweaty hair off my forehead. I looked to where it came from; the South-West. There was clear sky there, and the trees all danced in that gentle breeze.
I felt a chill. I felt a real fear of being pretentious, of pride, of being smote or struck or knocked down from my precarious and foolish position. And yet, as I looked again at the sky, it sparkled. Those dances lights were there. And I realized that it was only the willingness to be aware of them that was required. I don’t have to be anything. I don’t have to claim any certain label. I don’t have to stand for anything. I am communicating with the sky, the very weather, because I simply have a willingness to be aware of it.
I sighed. Relief. I felt peace.
That gentle breeze buffeted me again, as if to give me another caress. Then it was gone.
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