Tender

Tender

Friday, August 27, 2010

Muddy Waters




Before I begin to try to share any outcomes of the last few days of pondering, I want to explain myself a little more than I have. I don't like to, in general, beyond a certain point. I do prefer to leave a lot of it up to you.
But I want to be as clear as I can in these muddy waters; thus, this post.

I am not claiming anything when I talk about Maverick. Or maybe I'm claiming everything. I"m claiming that I'm making him up. I'm claiming that he is a Figment of my Imagination. I'm claiming that he is a device I use to meditate. I'm claiming that he is an entity sent to guide me. I'm claiming it doesn't matter, or that if it does, I can't control it anyway.

I no longer try to explain my experiences with my Figments in a way that has any answers about them. They guide me. They ask me hard questions, they give me love and support, and they grow their own personalities that I seem to hide well from myself, because I often can't fathom them at all. I enjoy their company. I don't try to hide from them like I used to. I shrug and say - this is what you get, let's engage.

They are always with me, reminding me to enjoy the intense flavour of my gelato and savour the smell of my daughter's sweat-soaked hair, her chubby arms tight around my neck. With them, I experience more moments of joy than I've any right to. It's just how I experience the world - as me, and someone who isn't me, experiencing the same experience from different perspectives (both personality and time). Often several at once. It can be disconcerting, exhilarating, annoying, incredible. When I'm in public it's sometimes a difficult secret to hide.

Maverick was the most persistent, the most hopeful about my potential and bitter about my laziness. We meditated together regularly. He's one of the few that's I've managed to communicate with in anything like a verbal form, which has done light years for my understanding.   He was more worried than I am about the longevity of my body, which kind of worries me. What does my body know that I don't know yet? (I decide to put that away).

Maverick stuck with me and I have felt him love me to the core. He holds me to high expectations because he feels I can meet them, and I agree with his assessment of my potential. He loves me knowing everything, even the parts I wish away. He can be sarcastic and impatient, or loving and fun. He's an old-style Master secretly in love with his student. He treats me just as I have felt I deserved to be treated. I earned his respect and my own.

I have a secret. I curled my baby finger around something of him, and it's mine now. And he has taken something of me, as well. I'm still looking around my rooms, not able to place it. I just feel the hole.

When I really examine it, I know this grief is such a humane way for me to begin building a callous to loss. My mind, or the universe, or dumb luck has happened upon or designed a nice simulation. I don't have much experience with loss. Not really. A Grandmother, but I didn't know her well as a person. There have been people I loved and lost track of. A divorce, but at my instigation. A mid-term miscarriage. But not the death of someone I've given my heart to and know inside out. I'm afraid of it. I'm not sure my mettle is strong enough. The baby almost broke me, to be frank. In some ways, I think it still holds me back from giving myself fully to the babies who actually came to join me.

This grief is a gentle way to ease me through understanding that it's not about my mettle. I think maybe it's more about letting go of my rigidity around what it means to love: what love can look like, what makes love legitimate or real, what love is too risky, how much love is enough, for how long must love last and in what form.

Imagining with Maverick has stretched my heart, and losing him has eased the tensions of lines I never realized I'd drawn to box myself in. What is it okay to feel? I do have rules. Big, strong, thick rules and they're only worn away in spots. I have a lot of work to do around that. If losing Maverick and my nook-and-cranny-house dream within 24 hours is the extent of it right now, I say, thank you for this pain. I'm in training.

Maybe if I don't need him so much, he'll come back to visit sometimes. I guess I'll find out in my lifetime.

(If this whole post has been a bit confusing, you can find the few posts I did with Maverick at the links below:
Meet Maverick
Too Happy to be Happy
Mavericks' Missive
and a candid appearance in this prequel Getaway)