Julia is working through a "volcano" book with Marilyn -- learning to deal with her anger and trauma. An unsafe volcano/heart erupts suddenly and hurts itself and others. A safe volcano is a heart with hurt and anger in it but can erupt slowly and has safe ways to release the anger.
I fear I am an unsafe volcano these days. Not all of the time, but sometimes. How can I be a better self, a good self most if not all of the time? This, for me, is the ultimate challenge of single parenthood -- There is no balance of a partner. There is just me. And I am so far from perfect.
On another front, I am listening to music again. I did not know that I stopped, but I had. Music was playing sometimes. I even turned it on. But music lost its effect on my heart and soul. I am no music expert and never the person in any relationship to drive what is listened to, but music has a way of creeping under the cracks and into the crevices deep inside of me. Music has great power over me, it does move my soul's stirrings. (And Julia has no real relationship with music -- so much my fault this past year or so) But for more than a year, I have been deaf to music's urgings. Maybe just too much of living life was urging me along; Maybe just too many hard, hard emotions that needed to be dammed up to get what needed to get done.
These days being cracked open again and again. Losing myself in old Joni Mitchelle tunes, music of my much younger self. Reaching back to catch up with myself. Tearing down walls that have helped me survive since Julia came home. Fall, 2006 until July, 2010, no longer than July -- four years of a path so rough that my soul's shoes are warn to nothing. So much, so hard, so unrelenting, so many losses, so much ambiguity, so much wandering around in the dark. So much dark.
Like what I've written before, this is not a bad place to be in. As crushing as I can feel (especially when I am failing Julia), this time is exciting with possibility and prospects (I think I wrote about the excitement of the time very soon after David died. That was no foolish thought. It is the adventure and the possibilities that have urged me on and through. I am still the optimist.) I am still in the middle of this muck, but I can see something behind me. I guess that my ability to take a slightly bigger view, seeing where I have been, doesn't guarantee anything about tomorrow. There could be more muck ahead, much more. I have a rich life. I am privileged in so many ways. And I don't necessarily ask the universe for easy. I don't want to retire from the action. Drink deeply, laugh loudly, cry hard.
And I don't even know what to wish for in the path ahead. For tomorrow. Being useful? Finding a partner one day? Loving those I have? All of that. More. But do I ask to stop crying, or should I ask to cry everyday? Should I ask for an end to the heart break, or a bigger heart?
I do wish for the map.
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