After 7 years, I moved. You're invited. (schmoments.blogspot.com)

building stairs @ deep ellum

Well, I guess this is goodbye.  And hello.

I began this blog in 2004 as a way to track my fitness.  You guys surprised the shit out of me by becoming, instead, one of the most important tools in my spiritual development.  We became for reals friends.  We rode out illnesses, marriages, divorces, babies, deaths and spiritual awakenings.  We became friends outside of the blogging world.  We sent each other real live mail.  Texts.  Calls.  Facebook messages.  I wrote for you sometimes.  And I know that sometimes, you wrote for me.

I was like a hungry caterpillar who didn't know she was hungry, and you spiritually fed me.  I ate.  I grew.  You fed me.  I grew.  I fully believed I was on my way to become the best caterpillar I could be.

In something like 2009, though if I really consider it, probably years earlier, a cocoon began to form around me.  Instead of comforting and safe, it felt terrifying and bleak.

I became very ill for about two years.  From lab work and MRI's, dr's could see some stuff was really wrong, but no one seemed to know why or how to make it better.  Most of the details so took over my existence that I never want to discuss them again; the worst of it was that for awhile, I I couldn't even take my students on field trips, drive or stay alone.   B was my rock.  He took care of me when I could not take care of myself, which was most of the time.  I was so dependent on him that I would have nightmares of something happening to him.

When I happened to be at my worst physically, his sweet mom called us to say she had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.  And it was Stage 4.  It was time for B to take care of someone else.

When he went to KC to care for his mom during her first treatment, we flew my own mom in to help take care of me.  She complained of abdominal pains.

About six weeks later, she appears to be 7 months pregnant.  A cancerous tumor has rapidly grown on her ovary, they tell us.  Turns out, it is also non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.  Two moms in two months. They feel it is inoperable.

I email my truly amazing therapist of seven years to draw support.  So much of my life had been changed because of her, but like my relationship to B, I suspected I was probably overly dependent.  In fact, when I moved to Dallas, I panicked about my inability to leave her.  I begged her to continue our sessions via Skype, which we did. This time,  return correspondence includes that she has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and will no longer be seeing patients.  "I'm sorry that you are being hit with three cancers," she said.  "I want you to know that you're very special to me."  

I always thought there was something secretly spiritual lingering beneath the professional relationship between a therapist and client.  

She later died.

My caterpillar body, life as I knew it, seemed to be dissolving.

Desperate, I bought an 800 dollar juicer and began pretty religiously following Gerson Therapy.  I began to finally gain strength physically as I watched other parts of my life slip away.

Reaching for any access to inner strength, I paid what felt like a gazillion dollars to learn Transcendental Meditation.  B went as well.

Many amazing things happened after this.  Both of our moms went into remission.  I got better, physically, little by little.  I even lost about sixty pounds.  I seemed to find my body's recipe for happiness; most importantly, I learned that what she says goes, no questions.  Oddly, for Bruce and I, meditating was the beginning of the end.  Maybe the old us' didn't have the sense of infinity to let go of what needed to be released?

The relationship was easy to release at first; the unbearable parts came later, when I realized how long he had been miserable, waiting for me to push the Eject button.  B and I had been like two friends who picked one another from the Catalog Of Intellectually Defendable Decisions to be life partners.  We realized that as far as love goes, that catalog sucks.

Another version of me, shed.  Am I the same person, I wondered?  Am I who I planned to be at all?  Am I the same chick who had a soon-to-be doctor husband and a baby plan? 

broken open @ deep ellum

I have no plan.

I'm a chick who busted out of a cocoon. I don't know what's next, but I know it will be perfect for whatever it is.  I'll be here: schmoments.blogspot.com

Namaste,
Faye

my new boyfriend: Shakespeare

I'm watching the BBC "Shakespeare Retold" series on Netflix. Tonight, I watched the "Much Ado About Nothing" episode.

Much to the dismay of old, more romantically pragmatic Faye, these days I'm feeling secretly hopeless romantic-y. Whaa? AND I'm on a dating moratorium. For who knows how long. I have decided to date Shakespeare for a bit; because, I'm nerdy like that.

I was never the girl who dreamily imagined my wedding day or had lots of crushes on boys. I was terrified, since before I ever dated, of losing myself in relationships. For reals; I was the youngest cynic ever. 

Love. Love. Love. Who knows what's real and what isn't real out there; I'm not sure what I believe in these days, and I guess it's not time to know. "More will be revealed," I am often being told these days. Wisdom. And so maybe stuff like this only exists in literature, but I find the words of Beatrice hopeful for the kind of relationship I would secretly one day hope is for reals. Secretly. Maybe. Okay, yes. I duuuunnnno.

"I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest."

- William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1

SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

                    Analysis (from Faye's lurve schema):

                I like the analysis below; however, it is my opinion/feeling that, whether over                    lifetimes or what not, the purpose behind a romantic relationship always becomes complete at some point (probably!).  So, I don't know if I could say that the only love that is true is also an ever fixed mark; unless we can say we're talking about love in general and not necessarily romantic love.  As hopeless romantic-y as I am, I don't know about forever.  It feels presumptuous (for me). 

 


Analysis (from Wikipedia):


The poet begins by stating he should not stand in the way of true love. Love cannot be true if it changes for any reason. Love is supposed to be constant, through any difficulties. In the sixth line, a nautical reference is made, alluding that love is much like the north star to sailors. Love should not fade with time; instead, true love lasts forever. When it says "Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom," Shakespeare is saying that love is timeless, and only death can do it part.
The last two lines employ a paradoxical conceit. If there is no such thing as true love, the poet says that neither has he ever written, nor has anyone ever experienced true love. However, because the poem has been written, it means the poet, ultimately, is right about true love.