Category — money honey

I stood in the middle of the bar and took a long sip from my drink, letting the vodka slip down my throat and start a slow, low fire throughout my stress-ravaged body. Just as I felt a month’s worth of tension start to slip out of my toes and fingertips, the General Manager of my sector at the Borg approached.

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.

Some trips are vacations and some are pilgrimages. Very few are both; a perfect storm of rejuvenation and discovery, perspective and introspection, spiritual advancement and respite. My long weekend in California managed that delicate balance, and I offer this as evidence that San Diego is magical.

On Friday night, I attended a house party with my faithful travel companion, his undeniably awesome college roommate, and an angel. Yes, an angel, with a halo of curly spun gold and kind, soulful eyes.

I slipped out and away from the crowd to admire the stars, and he came to me with his message, carefully cloaked in parable.

It appeared to be simply a meaningful conversation between two souls newly acquainted, until the anguish crept into his handsome face and he began to wring his hands.

“It isn’t that I don’t love her. I do love her. She’s a great girl. She’s beautiful and smart and wonderful. She deserves someone whose heart skips a beat when he sees her across the room, you know, she’s so worthy of that, and mine just doesn’t, it doesn’t, and I tried so hard, because I wanted it to be that way. But it isn’t. And she deserves that. I hate hurting her, I hate it, I do, and sometimes I miss her so badly, but I know that she won’t move on if I give her any reason not to, and I want her to be happy, even if I can’t be the one to give her that happiness.”

Everything in me wanted to pull his frame-  slender and tall, with an hauntingly familiar grace that one only recognizes by aching for and agonizing over every last inch- towards my own. I wanted to cover him in tears, rest my browbone on his collarbone and feel his strong but nimble hand in the small of my back.

I wanted to tell him that I loved him too, that I understood, but that I didn’t understand, really, that I never would understand why it wasn’t enough, what it was that was missing, how he could miss me so terribly and still think it wasn’t enough. My hand felt pulled like a magnet to the crown of his head, and the swell of my hip ached to sit just above his, and I wanted to smother him in kisses.

We were interrupted then, and to an outside observer, it seemed as if the two of us were having an incredibly intense and personal discussion. Only this angel and I could see the two other people with their hearts in their hands. I never did get to answer him, but I did insist on hugging him goodbye.

“Now as he was speaking with me, I was in a deep sleep on my face toward the ground: but he touched me, and set me upright.”

The next day, I noticed that my heart had stopped waiting. For so long, I feared that my hope would slip away with the aching, that letting go was a resignation. Instead I found that the canopy had opened up to let the light in at last, and hope began to cover the forest floor like a carpet and bloom like the entire month of April.

I tried to find him, so I could thank him, so I could tell him that I heard his message, so that I could answer him, but he was gone.

Early Sunday morning, I met a King. He kissed my hand and held court for me, he flaunted his riches and fame with unabashed pride, mentioning only one defeat in a lifetime of battle. When I wished him blessings as I made my leave, he grinned true and wide and assured me that he was already blessed.

Concerned onlookers saw a woman having an animated discussion with an old man wearing a field jacket with a bible in the front left pocket, and nothing in the other pockets.

I couldn’t hold the front off the shore after that, and I wept openly with despair and fear, yes, but more than those, gratitude for all the love and light that keeps me safely sheltered from the war this man fights within and in the world. For family and friends that care so deeply and give so freely that though my net worth is only a little bit higher than the King’s, I am kept in so much finery. Enough to both raise and answer the question of my worth, in dizzying proportion.

As I entered the outer edges of familiar territory, I encountered a powerful healer. He was surprised to see me, but I knew better, because he always shows up when my emotional sea is churning dark, just before the wind lays down and the sun breaks through.

I told him what I’d seen and done, how I felt, and the questions I still had. He took it all in, as he always does, and said with quiet measure:

“I really believe we find what we seek- if you look for doubt, you’ll find it. I try to look for love, instead.”