Are you okay? I know this was a hard day for you, do you want to talk a little? I’d like to know how you’re doing.

We had just executed a mass-layoff in my office, including most of my staff, and my knowledge of this impending doom preceded theirs by a little over a month. I had cried at the prep meeting, while terminating my Payables clerk, and with some coworkers after they were handed their pink slips. I cried all damn day, and only worried a little about my professional reputation.

I’m okay. I meant what I said earlier- this is the right thing for the business, it’s the right thing for those of us who remain- but that doesn’t make it any easier. I know that I’ve been able to look back on my darkest days six weeks, six months, six years down the road and I’ve had the solace of realizing that if I hadn’t faced that hardship, I wouldn’t be right here, and that’s always been a source of comfort to me. To be able to say of the hardest things that they helped make the best things in my life. I’m sad tonight for the people we let go, but more than anything, I just hope that they can look back later on and see that this ending was the beginning of something better.

A relieved smile spread from his eyes to his cheeks, and we chatted for a few minutes before someone cut in and I excused myself.

A few days shy of my thirty-second birthday, I still believe that. I can’t defend it, I can barely explain it, the best hope I have is to point to nature and say it is evidence to me of a higher order that we have not yet grasped in our knowledge of the universe.

If faith is an innate knowing, then this is mine, and I understand it in my bones.

I don’t know why bad things happen to good people, and I don’t know why some lives end so early or so unexpectedly. I understand that people hurt people because they hurt, but I don’t understand the cosmic value in so much pain. Perhaps there isn’t any at all, and I only seek to ascribe it some value to make peace with it somehow.

Since my earliest years of awareness, I’ve been called an old soul. Certainly, I’ve had a few encounters with strangers that were more recognition than introduction, and have always read between the lines without really realizing it. What that means is beyond any of us to understand, and I won’t do it the injustice of pinning it down. Those kinds of things are still magical to those of us that want to see them, and I suppose my biggest question for my coincidence and science friends is, simply:

Why wouldn’t you want to think that things happen for a reason, even if we don’t understand how or why?

I’m incredibly suspicious of anyone who doesn’t believe in something, one thing, anything that they can’t see.

Last night, I sat in the kitchen nook. The steam from my soup kissed my cheeks, and the faint smell of woodsmoke sat in the back of my throat. My thoughts drifted to my upcoming birthday and the annual reconciling of reality against my visions and dreams.

As always, my life looks nothing like what I ever imagined for myself. The people and experiences that filled the gap between my dreams and my defeats are both precious and priceless in their own right, and I choose to believe that they put me right here, right now, with this particular perspective. Any variation on my history would not have produced this moment, with these people, and my capacity to appreciate them.

You can argue with that all you want to, and I would relish the discussion.

What you can’t argue with is the sense of recognition and belonging that strikes deep and true, past my neurotic brain and my poor schizophrenic heart, straight into the marrow. It produces a warm calmness that whispers above all the noise of doubt and fear.

You belong here.

As I sorted the last several years of my life into digital photo albums, something became obvious.

When my heart breaks, it breaks wide open. Observe:

If this girl had not gotten her heart broken…

this girl wouldn’t have become the girl who took this picture:

lake champlain, burlington, vermont

and if this girl had not gotten her heart broken,

photo credit: citizen-times

she wouldn’t have been around to take this picture:

graveyard fields on the brp

and if this girl hadn’t loved and lost…

she might have never become the girl who took this picture:

lake tahoe, nevada

she struggled a great deal with her next broken heart, but with time and love from family and friends, she became this girl:

who took this picture:

She never would have had a wine-soaked night in the hot tub under the desert stars, she wouldn’t have watched the bobsled races at Mirror Lake, or seen a Red Sox game at Fenway. She certainly would not have ridden a puddle jumper from Boston to Saranac Lake. Never would she have considered moving to Burlington, and met a cherished friend in her research. She wouldn’t have known the joys of perfectly roasted peeps and impromptu champagne-soaked Sundays, never would have rode piggyback in a Catholic schoolgirl costume past the Baptist church as services started. She wouldn’t know and love a family that takes Christmas shots on the back patio of a Hendersonville bar and treats hangovers with shrimp fried rice.

She wouldn’t believe that she deserves coffee in bed and not having to sleep in the airport. She wouldn’t have discovered her capacity to trust again, she wouldn’t have a business website or a pen painstakingly chosen for her hand. She wouldn’t know, on a cellular level, the satisfaction of a joyride, nor the beginning whisper of real love.

This girl had nearly everything she’d ever wanted. She was living her happy ending.

This girl’s future has never been more uncertain; she has none of the security the other girl and ten times the confidence. In believing in you, she learned to believe in herself. Her life is rich and full for all its delicious complication, and her dreams are bigger than any of the other girls ever imagined.

Thank you for giving me a reason to believe.

You don’t look like an accountant. My accountant looks like an accountant…

I thanked her. Who wants to look like an accountant?

The thick logs and dry tinder of various warnings and lectures about managing my image were sitting there, doused in doubt and fear. She tossed a lit match on the pile as casually as she knocked back the last of her drink and dissolved into giggles. That first flash wore off quickly enough, but there was just enough coal left to sustain a slow burn.

Should I try to look more like an accountant? Should I mock the stereotype? Are the people who express concern about the candid nature of my personal writing and tweeting actually right? Is that the cause behind my struggle to communicate a congruent and resonant marketing message for Words and Numbers? Do I appear untrustworthy?

Since the tender age of six, I’ve been warned about the perils of my precocious nature. The reputation lectures would come a decade later. Both are common themes in the constructive criticism I’ve received in my thirty-odd years. When I took over the accounting department, and then as a part of my assimilation when we were acquired by the borg, I found myself continually encouraged to tone down most aspects of my personality. On the record, anyway.

Off the record, I was received with awe and wonder for my versatility. Who the hell is this girl, that trudges into the office fifteen minutes late in flip flops and no makeup, but is stunning in a cocktail dress? How does one manage to hold her own telling lewd jokes on the loading dock and discussing economic conditions over a formal business dinner? How is it possible that the woman who constantly gets her hand smacked for her scathing wit and email grenades is also the source of valuable financial analysis and reliable data? Who is this foul-mouthed creature in a low cut sweater and two inch heels, keeping up with the boys’ club at the bar, at the dinner table, and in the conference room? How does she show up to an afternoon meeting with senior management in flip flops, with an extra large sweet tea in her hand and a pen in her bun and come out with the glow of meaningful praise? How can she write a genuine and eloquent recommendation letter for a former nemesis?

Out of this mixed message, I developed a useful metric for actionable criticism. When it related to anything I did that made me difficult to work with, I made a concerted effort to mitigate those tendencies and situations. I shared my online life with a few trusted work friends, after I password protected any entry relating to my work or my coworkers and some of the posts that were too raw with personal information and emotion for comfort. I lived in constant fear that my twitter feed would come to haunt me professionally.

This was all very much a part of why I was relieved when the borg spit me out, and why I went into business for myself.

When a friend and client warned me about the perils of my openness here and on my personal twitter account last fall, I quickly reminded him that it was exactly those two things that led me to that present moment: en route to an important meeting for a potential project. Our shared client was extremely conservative, and I pointed out my tea length skirt and light makeup in my dismissal of his concern. He chuckled and changed the subject, and an old neurosis found new life.

The writer within abhors any suggestion of oppression or censorship. Stories are for telling. The site name, twitter handle and tagline pay homage to my personal dissonance: the original full name of the blog was cattails: adventures of a verybadcat- a bad pun, a play on my given name, an acknowledgement of the unacceptable parts of myself. It was inspired by the wasbund, who often drew decidedly accurate parallels between his wife and her faithful pack of felines (predilection for napping, lack of concern with approval, moodiness, near impervious to direction or discipline, and the tendency to alternately demand and reject affection, respectively) and by my eternal and undying girl crush on Catherine Conners of Her Bad Mother. The crazy stops here… every fifteen minutes is an expression of my deep desire to overcome emotional dysfunction and the seeming futility of that pursuit.

I’ve trusted you with that conflict in all of my delicious honesty, and both the process and results have propelled me further than I ever would have imagined. The experience is what inspired me to honor two extremely different talents and skillsets: my attempt to make a living by making a life. By bringing my strengths to the promising startups and vibrant small businesses springing up around me.

The accountant within is thinking you can’t eat your principles, and in the name of conservatism, she dilutes the writer’s message. Writing credentials are downplayed on LinkedIn, the business twitter account becomes a container for business tweets. She links from personal accounts to business but never from business to personal accounts. The borg spit her out, and she wrings her hands on the sidewalk, muttering about kool-aid and chewing on the ends of her curls while ruminating endlessly over the message of indoctrination. You’re in a conservative field. You’re young and pretty and tumultuous. You can’t afford to let your work speak for itself.  You must always be beyond reproach.

These two are making me crazy, so I’m asking you: who would you put in charge of marketing?

I started this blog four and a quarter years ago; happily married, running the accounting department of a locally owned small business, attending college classes, and doing a little freelance bookkeeping. We’d been in the house almost a year. Somewhere in there, I started seeing a therapist for my bee phobia, at the wasbund’s request. My sister and I had just started to develop a friendship. The four of us took vacations together, visited each other regularly, gathered for holidays. Adicus was a little shy of his first birthday, and already a magnificent specimen. Nearly all of the ingredients for the life I’ve always dreamed of were at my disposal, and my struggle at the time was figuring out how to put them together and bake a cake. Those early posts center on my conflicts with gender roles, feminism, and modern marriage.

My heart broke wide open for this girl who had absolutely no clue what lay ahead. Her heart broke for me; she thought she was on the verge of becoming a mother. We wept together and were soothed by dreams that found breath and life in the years between us: starting a business, cherishing sisterhood, keeping the house, writing here faithfully. I love her for her innocence; she cherishes the wisdom I’ve found in the wake of so much loss and change.

The irony is a thick lump in my throat. I ponder whether a marriage can survive a reversal of traditional gender roles after I declare a clear preference for them, and then proceed to document the unraveling of my marriage under a reversal of traditional gender roles.

I’m so fucking good I foreshadow without even meaning to.

I’ll make no pretense of objectivity here- I’m not sure that I’m capable of that. The more success and fulfillment I found in the external world, the more success and fulfillment he lost there. The happier and more confident I became, the more miserable he became. Whether that was the force of circumstance or a symptom of unhealthy attachment is a knot that will probably never come loose.

The failure of our marriage only means that we were not capable of navigating the changes of our life together. It is not a testament to whether either of us are capable of it with someone else, or its possibility in general. I’m not proud of the way I treated him in those hardest moments, nor am I proud of the way I allowed myself to be treated. We let resentment, self-justification and contempt infiltrate our bond, and it died a slow and horrible death.

Being a single woman denies me the luxury of dividing labor and responsibility. My sister and I share my home and the joy and burden of keeping house. Admittedly, her masculine energy is stronger than mine and she attends to most of the typically masculine chores. One of her greatest gifts to me is her acceptance of my lack of interest and fortitude in tools and things with motors. I’m more than satisfied with the small victories to that end: building some of the shelving for my bedroom closet, running the wood burner, painting the living room.

A combination of time, experience and making peace with my mother has loosened my view on gender roles. I’m much more comfortable with myself as a person and a woman than I was then. It took not being a wife to realize that my strong feminine energy is an expression of my personality, not a function of role or status. I will never be the kind of woman that could leave her child with anyone else to work sixty hours a week in a traditional office. I still think it’s hilarious that anyone would doubt my ability to be happy and fulfilled as a full time mother and housewife, though I am much more aware of just what a personal risk it is.

Making such a definitive decision either way no longer seems likely or necessary; the gray area is much more spacious than it once appeared. I do still plan on finishing my degree, and I would also love to bring a child into the world, but I am no longer so concerned with how those two goals will fit together. I’m much more confident in my capability to balance them, and the right man will support me in my efforts.

Division of labor is of little significance compared to the dynamic of a relationship. How often is a division of labor argument really about the balance of power? More often than not, I suspect. Trust, respect, communication and commitment are much more important than who pays the bills and who mows the lawn.

My father has always said that I am looking for someone to walk beside me, not in front of or behind me. I would agree, with the caveat that they do most of the navigating, know when I need a direct order and/or a stiff drink, and are willing to take me to the airport at an ungodly hour. One last catch: he should do these things with the same loving gratitude I feel when I am cooking his dinner or balancing his checkbook.

I fear the one-dimensional nature of the page may have given a Jekyll and Hyde impression of the man who brought me to the world. There is some truth in that portrayal; my father and I share a penchant for intense extremes and mercurial mood swings. Certainly, many of my most vivid memories lie at either end of his emotional range, as well as my own. Beneath even the most tumultuous tides, however, a gentle but constant current runs through fathoms of still water teeming with all the beauty and mystery of the sea.

There is no denying the subtle pull of shared consciousness and genetic code; we are a part of each other, and those like parts call to each other from a deep sense of knowing, an understanding that extends beyond the boundaries of words to the silent harmony of like energy. For me, at least, there is a cellular satisfaction- a key in the lock of my secret self that brings a sense of order to a still strange world.

For his part, I can only offer the story he’s told me nearly once a year for three decades and witness to that glance of wonder and pride I still occasionally inspire.

It bothered me not to know my biological parents. I love your Grandpa and Grandma, and they love(d) me, but it bothered me not to know my blood. Every so often, I would do a little digging to try and find them. That ended the day I held you in my arms. I looked at you and I thought to myself “I don’t need to go looking for family anymore, because I made my own. My blood runs through her veins”.

Score one for biology, but obviously its significance beyond providing a well-spring of devotion and motivation is debatable. Particularly for two very proud, stubborn and opinionated people. I offer my sister as evidence; she and Dad love each other deeply and dearly but her connection with Mom is stronger. Happily, they seem to grow closer as the years go on.

I could speak to his incredible openness. He brought me to the world without pretense or boundary, never failing to find a truthful way to explain difficult subjects in a manner I could absorb, only reserving a few sacred cows of privacy in his attempt to teach me to live well.

Talking about how much you make and spend in public makes other people uncomfortable. We like to pretend we don’t know who has more, but you can usually tell by what they’re wearing and what they’re drinking. I want you to understand how all of this works, so I’m going to share this information with you, but it isn’t yours to share with anyone else.

We often sat at the kitchen table together while he paid bills and balanced his checkbook. He showed me his pay stubs, the mortgage statement, year-end credit card summaries, insurance policies, checkbook registers, grocery store receipts- my lessons started as soon as I could grasp basic arithmetic.

As I traded knee socks for stockings, he handled the heavier and awkward subjects with as much grace and honesty as he could muster: love, sex, violence, drugs, death, religion, politics- no general subject was verboten. His constant disclaimer still stands today: these are my answers, and should only be a starting point in forming your own.

I could speak to his humility, and it is perhaps the most deserving of my attention- many of our bloodier battles are enshrined in monuments to peace built from his willingness and ability to admit his imperfections. Much of the bedrock of my self-esteem is made of the same stone, stacked in his acceptance of my own shortcomings.

We are who we are, and the smartest people are always learning, growing, trying to be our best selves. Everybody fails all the time, though. You do what you can with what you have, you play the cards you’re dealt. Sometimes you win a hand, sometimes you fuck it up, but the only mistakes you should be ashamed of are the ones you don’t admit and learn from. I don’t care who you are, everyone fucks up a hand. I do it all the time.

These virtues are incredible gifts to me. They are what make me who I am- not the sweetest moments or the darkest moments, but the quiet hours of instruction and reflection. He supports me in any number of countless ways, and that too is a precious resource and a mitigating factor in much of my success so far. His devotion is unfailing, and that makes my appreciation of everything else possible.

The real secret behind my adoration of my Dad is simple but potent.

At every point in our sometimes stormy relationship, he is willing to grow as a person, a man and a father to retain my love and respect. He doesn’t just bestow his approval when I earn it, he makes a determined if imperfect effort to earn mine. His demons are a fierce and mighty legion, more cruel and cunning than some men could stand. He doggedly beats them back into the dark recesses of his soul to leave enough room for our bond. The greatest compliment he’s ever given me: learning how to be the father you deserve makes me a better man.

His flaws and failures are just so much rain in the sea, because my father taught me that real love never stops trying to love better.

Happy Father’s Day.

By the time I came along, he had worked and picketed at the Detroit Free Press, served a tour in Vietnam, earned a business degree and sold a dozen different products. He sold himself the whole life insurance policy he would later give to me as seed money, from Prudential.

His job history is spotty for the first few years of my life; he had a new title, Daddy, and we spent long hours fishing in his boat on the lake nearby. He did odd jobs here and there, and a month never went by that he didn’t help Mom with the bills even when he was out of work.

My little sister’s arrival required something a little more substantial, and Mom grew weary of the financial inconsistency. So when I started first grade (approximately), my Dad started his new job as a Custodian-Laborer at the Post Office.

The transition was hard for me; he had no seniority, which meant that he worked afternoons and midnights, and weekends off were unheard of. He met with the principal of my elementary school, and for most of that first year, I walked home for lunch. We would sit at the table with our sandwiches or canned ravioli, watching CNN and talking. He dropped me back off at school on his way to work, and I usually managed to hide my tears until he pulled away.

My nocturnal nature soon became evident. I lay in bed until just after eleven, when I would hear his key turn in the lock. The crinkle of the potato chip bag was my cue, I padded down the hall and crawled up on the couch with him to watch the evening news. The first few nights he attempted to send me back to bed, but I was persistent and he eventually gave up any guise of chasing me back to the blankets.

On a raw, chilly day in November, I was called from my middle school English class to receive a phone call in the office. This was unheard of, and I knew it was very, very bad. I sat across from the Vice Principal’s desk and took the receiver to hear my Mom breathless on the line.

I wanted to call you. Your Dad is okay. There’s been a shooting at the Post Office. I know you have televisions in your classrooms. He called me from the bar next door- he’s fine. I can’t talk, honey, I have to go, but I just wanted you to know.

You would think that would be the worst thing that could happen at work. It was not. My poor father, already shaken and haunted by a near-miss with horrific violence, was expected as a Custodian to clean up the mess left by the gunman. Fortunately, he was also an active union member and served as a steward for years. They fought back, and an outside crew was hired.

Atlanta was not anymore hospitable than Royal Oak. His supervisor goaded and tortured him, and nearly got him fired before being terminated himself. When Mom finally retired in 2002, he transferred back to Michigan with a palatable sigh of relief.

Tonight, he will retire after nearly thirty years of service. His tour of duty with the United States Post Office ends tonight, he is punching out for the last time. His coworkers had a party for him a few days ago, complete with champagne and hot dogs. If you know my father at all, it was a fitting feast.

This man has worked his fingers to the bone his entire life to take care of his family. Countless offers were made to promote him to management, which would have meant better hours, a higher base salary, and no more mopping. He turned them down every time to keep his overtime and be available to his family. He sacrificed his own formidable potential in the business world to work as a janitor, because it allowed his wife to pursue her own corporate ambitions, because it allowed his daughters to have field trip chaperones, class parents, and assistant coaches.

This is just my job. Your Mama has a career. You and your sister- you are my career.

As a child, he appeared to me as half-machine; the man worked every single holiday and overtime shift he could get his hands on, he labored tirelessly to bring home every last penny possible. For us, for our house and our yard, for our annual vacations to the Florida Keys, for prom dresses and wedding gowns, new cars, glasses and contacts, groceries and goodies.

Congratulations, Daddy, and thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Love Always,
Cathy

Choose to be better, not bitter. Leave the losses, failures and mistakes of the past behind; you aren’t the girl who suffered those heartaches. You’re the girl that learned from them and triumphed. Keep that without clinging to the haunting details of your pain.

Realize that looking too far down the road is just a sneaky way of looking over your shoulder. Live by your beliefs and values in the present and take heart- this is all you can and should do for tomorrow.

Honor your intuition. It isn’t paranoia, though it might feel that way when you obsess and over-think things. Let your feelings prompt the question instead of trying to answer it on your own.

Value your creative life as much as you value your business life, in recognition that they both provide sustenance necessary for your survival.  Money spent for travel has the highest return on investment of any discretionary purchase, high enough to warrant liberation from the discretionary column.

Stop continuing the work of people who want you to feel small and undeserving to serve their own needs and fears. No, seriously, stop. Because you know damn well they try to trick you into playing small and low out of sheer terror for who you might become. You’re a force of nature. Memorize the affection and appreciation in peoples’ faces when they’ve said this to you, and own it, already.

Understand that punishing yourself for receiving is the exact opposite of humility; guilt holds no more virtue than entitlement.

Keep a balance between your need for solitude and your tendency to hide behind it. Go out into the world before the walls start to close in on you at home.

Absolve yourself for failing to forgive those who’ve betrayed you. Accept as your penance: not begrudging them the compassion of others.

Remember that all love is a gift, and that any time you are working to earn it instead of honor it, something is very, very wrong.

When a man asks you to see only him, take the opportunity to share your expectations. Explain what commitment means to you, because most people do not comprehend it on the same level. Do not allow yourself to be put on the shelf one. more. time. by someone who isn’t capable of sticking around. Let the challenge of winning you over become the first they face in the relationship, so you can make an educated decision.

Just so we’re clear: if they are anything else than willing, capable and utterly devoted, your decision should be to get back out on the dance floor and enjoy yourself. You’ve lived on crumbs for far too long. You know in your heart you’re happier on your own than with someone who settles for a pale rendition of partnership.

Wear high heels and avoid men who are uncomfortable with a level gaze. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and irritation.

Stop excluding your own body from the awe and regard you have for the rest of nature, and always tend to it with at least the loving care you show your pets and plants. Sleep when you’re tired. Eat. Play. Be strong and healthy. See yourself through the eyes of others when the mirror is too unkind. Throw the fucking scale out. Throw. it. out. Do your pants fit? There you go, no scale necessary. If you really want a number to obsess over, test your blood sugar. Yeah, I thought so.

Make more time for your people. They miss you. So you hate the phone. Text. Write. Visit. Send cookies. Do whatever makes you happy, so long as it demonstrates how much they mean to you. Do this often and at regular intervals.

There are two things in this world that provide both security and freedom. One is love, the other is money. Be a good steward of both and you’ll find contentment.

Resist the lure of cattiness and drama. Time and energy are too precious to waste on anyone that provokes it.

You’re an entrepreneur now, and that means that the work/life balance is a murky shade of gray. This a huge change from corporate life. It’s also the very reason that you want so very much to succeed at this. Work is life, and life is work. The right work does more than earn a living. It makes a life. The marriage of these two functions is the summit of self-actualization. A touch of altitude sickness is perfectly normal, but don’t let it overtake you. Just breathe, be present, and keep climbing.

It wouldn’t hurt you to ask for help once in awhile. I’m just saying. It only means that you are sweet and smart enough to surround yourself with people who shore up your weaknesses. Just like using Google Maps on your phone, it keeps you from heading in the wrong direction needlessly.

As I walked past the kennels along the wall, I spotted a small Russian Blue/Siamese mix. We made eye contact and he let out a little sing-song meow as he rubbed his face against the wire door. I asked to hold him, and he curled up against my chest and tucked his head under my chin as if he had waited all his life for my embrace. After a few minutes of cuddling, the wasbund insisted I put him back to look at a silver tabby kitten. I reluctantly obeyed, but Ivan had another idea. The minute they put him back in his sad little metal box, he began to scream and smash his face frantically into the wire door.

I tried to concentrate on the six week old kitten, but I couldn’t. My tears came quickly and forcefully. I stepped back from the wall of cats and shook my head.

I can’t take it. We’re taking him home. Bring me that cat.

We thought he was maybe two months old, he was so small and thin, but he was actually six months old. He’s named for the Russian czar Ivan the Terrible; he was found behind an elementary school and developed an insane appetite for scraps. Our kitchen trashcan was raided nightly while we slept, and I felt so sorry for him the night he managed to turn it completely upside down, so he wasn’t even rewarded for his efforts. I did not feel sorry for him when I discovered the bites he stole from the tomatoes I left to ripen on the counter.

Ivan never lost his taste for scraps. His favorites were refried beans, canned string beans, creamed corn, twinkie filling, boston creme donuts, yogurt and ham. He had a special cry for ham begging- a ham song- and anyone who dared open a package of lunch meat in a two mile radius was serenaded. One Christmas, Mom left the end of the ham wrapped in tin foil on the stove top overnight. We awoke to a kitchen floor covered in chewed up bits of tin foil and a very full cat deep into what can only be described as a ham coma. His weight topped out at 19 pounds a few years ago. Just a month ago, he eviscerated two Krispy Kreme whipped cream filled donuts while we slept. My sister found them frosting side down on the kitchen floor, and when she picked them up she realized they were hollow. Ivan chewed a hole through the pastry, carefully extracted the filling and discarded the rest. Just like the naked pizza crust he always left in the box, licked clean of even the tomato sauce.

Ivan never inspired ire, no matter what his offense. He was entirely too charming and sweet to reprimand. He loved everyone. Other cats, dogs, people big and small. Ivan is by far the friendliest cat I have ever known, a complete and total lap whore who truly did not understand why another animal wouldn’t co-exist peacefully with him. He could smell a nap brewing anywhere in the house, and there he was, ready to curl up with whoever was sporting heavy eyelids.

He sensed a heavy heart just as easily. In those first chilly days after the split, after I lost my cherished marmalade monster, after the wasbund took Adicus, I drowned in the wreckage of the life I had imagined for myself since I was seventeen. Ivan came to bed with me every night, chirping and mewling, smashing his face into my hands, curling up against my chest as I wept my way to the sweet escape of exhausted sleep. The increase in his chatter and antics in our waking hours seemed eerily like a concerted effort to fill an empty house and the space that hope left vacant in me.

Over the last few months, his appetite waned to nothing. He had a cold for a few days this winter, and when he recovered fully and quickly I heaved a sigh of relief. When I came home from my trip to see my parents, he wasn’t in great shape. He was tired and weak, though he still kept his schedule- including making his rounds of the property, he just didn’t have his usual spark.

He trotted off down the driveway Monday night, just before I came home, and we haven’t seen him since. He’s never prowled this long without coming home. We called for him all day and searched the yard. Ivan answers my call with a reliability that humans never manage; he would call back to me as he sauntered up to the porch.

Part of me wants to hope that he’ll show up for breakfast, but mostly I know better and it just seems cruel to entertain the possibility of anything better than a confirmation of the knot in my stomach and the ache in my poor, raw heart.

lazy will the loam come from its hiding
return this quiet searcher to the soil…
-the decemberists “don’t bear it all”

When she suffered the slightest mishap, she would wring her hands and cry, bitterly exclaiming that she was stupid or unloved or treated unfairly. Delivering a compliment without a self-depreciating accompaniment was beyond her ability. Her desire for acceptance and belonging was painfully apparent, but so was her judgmental and bitter nature. It confused and infuriated her that she couldn’t manage a lasting bond with any of her peers; she never understood that they wanted to forgive her faults but required the same in return. She was sweet and caring, but respect evaded her. She could not bear to give it, and so she rarely received it.

The saddest thing about her was that her failures were ultimately of her own creation, either by self-destructing or by offending the people that could have proven worthy allies. Even when you had her dead to rights she would not take responsibility for her anxiety, for her mistakes, for her careless words. She got in her own way at every available opportunity.

A friend asked once, after weathering one of a million rants about her, if I realized why she incited such vitriolic rage in me. I answered without hesitation.

She reminds me of my worst tendencies. She is the embodiment of everything I fight, with everything I am, to avoid. Oh, tell me I’m not just like her!

He very carefully said: I think you could be, if you let yourself.

My life was much easier after that. She still had an ability to prickle the hair on the back of my neck merely by speaking, but I terminated her lease on the dark recesses of my mind that day. At first it was merely an act of will- if I succumbed to the ancient call of war, I was admitting that I saw myself in her. Later, when she outright declined an opportunity to further herself, I let go completely. I do not decline opportunities to further myself, and overcoming my lack of patience with her became one.

Yesterday, I noticed the green of spring edging up the ridges. The slow progression of spring’s new growth, unending renewal, just one of countless phases in the constant cycle of birth, death and regeneration. Envy tinged my observation; how lovely it must be to just keep pushing up the ridge with the eternal knowledge and quiet confidence bestowed by the laws of nature.

It occurred to me this afternoon that I am doing exactly that. Pushing up the ridge like the lime tender leaves crawling the ridges, and just like the frost has nipped those new leaves on a few recent nights, my own hardship is inevitable. It will be weeks before the warmth settles into stay. Chilly breezes, dawns caked in frost and gray days are the hallmark of beginnings.

I remembered all of my beginnings, all of those unbearably raw days of growth, the gray looming fear of failure. The memory soaked in somewhere that it had not reached in some time. My struggles, my experience, the things I’ve learned and accomplished- everything led me here.

These battles are just another front in a war sieged for thirty one long years over the territory designated as my rightful place in this world, against whatever stands in the way of occupation.

Especially my own demons.

In our timeless dance, I poured my anguish at his feet. The little things, the big things, the secret things, the hardest things- my frustration, fear and pain rushing over him like water over rocks, attending but unyielding to the force of the current. His quiet, thoughtful reply stunned me.

You have everything you need to make the life you want. You know what to do. You know how to do it. You have more support available to you than you avail yourself of, even. What is missing? What it is in your way?

The stark reality of his words haunted me for days. I picked at my past, at the pain; I stared down the wallpaper until I could see myself behind the pattern.

My dreams one night were vivid recollections of the past year, flashes of sense and emotion in certain clarity against a set of oddly familiar but inaccurate surroundings. Resting my cheek against a barrel chest. The hard edge of steel cutting into my hip. A gentle squeezing of my thigh just above my knee. Soft, spicy-scented whiskers. Huge, strong hands that dwarfed mine and the steady tenderness of their weight on the small of my back or the firmness of their grasp on my hip. Powerful arms that lifted me up as effortlessly as they grounded me and drew me near. A gaze as steady and curious as my own.

In that first moment of wakefulness, before reality permeated the lucidity of those memories, I felt safe, secure, confident, focused. Warm and happy. As the last traces of that feeling evaporated and the cold aching truth returned, I remembered a lullaby my mother used to sing.

you are my sunshine
my only sunshine
you make me happy
when skies are gray

you’ll never know, dear
how much I love you
please don’t take my sunshine away

the other night, dear
while I lay sleeping
I dreamt I held you in my arms

but when I woke, dear
I was mistaken
someone took my sunshine away

I have hated that fucking song for as long as I can remember living.

These men are every bit as incredible and imperfect as I am, and my affection for them builds on genuine appreciation for who they are as individuals. Our connections and experiences have taught me invaluable lessons; I can say with some measure of certainty that our time together was mutually beneficial in that and most other regards. For one reason or another, something didn’t work out. None of that was any more or less complicated than it ever is; but the loss I felt seemed a little too deep, too ancient, too devastating. As if I were losing a part of myself, each split took on the gravity of a little death.

Tucked safely behind my camera lens, eyeing bare branches against the horizon, I noticed that it disappeared entirely. Layers of cold white and gray clouds blended seamlessly into the drifts of ice at the shoreline and the elusive open water. With admiration for the beauty and strength of the trees despite the harsh conditions they endure, I noted that my own circumstances felt just this way: barren, frozen, an endless horizon of gray despair, clarity and success disappearing into frozen shorelines and snow clouds charging in.

I was born and raised here. There was a time when this air was not so cold and raw to me, but it borders on unbearable now. Why is that? What happened? Why do I feel so completely overwhelmed by the life I want so desperately to create? Has my intuition become a self-fulfilling paranoia in those relationships? Did I enter them with an unconscious selfish motive that burdened these men unfairly? Is my affection for them driven by it? Perhaps more importantly, why don’t I feel so overwhelmed when I’m not single, despite the reality that my relationships increase demands on my time, attention and energy?