The Bubble

 Inside the Bubble

I live inside a bubble, safe and lonely in equal measure. Inside the transparent, 

almost invisible walls.

Unperturbed, insulated, managing my disappointment.

I unplug my phone

Sit on my couch with exactly 2 cushions behind me

Consume myself with activities of varying levels of productivity...(being productive is safe)

I mentally check, "where are my dogs? what will I eat for dinner? how do I schedule my week as 

               to be busy, but not too busy? who should I talk to and who avoid because their words are                 razor cuts to me....

Sometimes I don't bath for days in my bubble.

 I sometimes only feel able to love Kenzie, Hudson, Chris, and my dogs.

Then I wake up and have a moment of knowing I need to do something, so I push against and through the rubbery edge and reengage a bit; I go meet a friend, step out and allow a little hope of a future to dribble in around me, even though that darkness inside whispers:

 "this is just a story, nothing means anything and nothing is real. 

Everyone else believes their lives are real

and mean something 

and lead somewhere..." 

And so I pull back to my bubble

Back to my cocoon

Back to my cell.

Henry David Thoreau was erroneously reported to have said: "We are all living lives of quiet desperation, and die with their song still inside them."  What he really said in Walden was this: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." 

That's a little more hopeful; that is something I can still hold on to....that I will not be one who dies with my song unsung. Right now, the love of my daughter and son and grandson, my clients, this beautiful world, a few friends and family and my damn dogs....is all that still register in me.  I sigh and remember the great mystery of Love with a big "L"..... which is literally all I am certain of when I think of God.

 Love still lives in me, weak and tired, and that means God is still there too.

It is why I recently started going back to church (though it makes me feel more lonely sometimes), it is why I went out with a man this week (which was scary and unsettling) and it is why I have not locked the door on my cell and thrown the key out of reach. 

I still sometimes get a tiny glimmer of a spark of memory of my previous excitement for life-barely visible to the naked eye-more a feeling than a visual....and I remember what Matthew Arnold suggested in The Buried Life:

"But often, in the world's most crowded streets,

But often, in the din of strife,

there arises an unspeakable desire

After the knowledge of our buried life;

A thirst to spend our fire and restless force,

In tracking out our true, original course;

A longing to inquire

Into the mystery of this heart which beats

So wild, so deep in us 

To know

Whence our lives come and where they go....."

I haven't given up on God;  I am trying to trust in the insanely optimistic hope that maybe He really is real and He might pluck me up and out of my silly cycle of desperation. Lend me a Hand indeed. And maybe He really does have you safely in his nest, too, my precious boy. I pray that God will show me how much He loves me; that I can maybe share that love with a few other dreamers today, and that, if nothing else maybe I can surrender and love Him back a little bit. Not as an observer watching a show, but as something or someone who is a thriving part of something real. I have used up all my own bullets and I can do nothing anymore without God. 

Ugh...

 God......invisible, indiscernible, 

almost inaudible God.

 Squint my eye and I miss Him, God.

Travis from Solstice (your friend) texted me that, when he died of an OD at 18 and was revived after 10 minutes he told the doctors he wanted to go back. He had the awareness that "EVERYTHING  OVER THERE IS PERFECT AND CONNECTED" which rang like a bell in my heart when he told me. That would be nice.

Maybe God's reassurances are all still woven into the tapestry of my bubble.....of my buried and broken life? And even though He bestowed in me a churning, restless, (no fractured) heart and a fragile will..... an equally strong drum beat that is my own desire keep exploring the corners and edges....to stay desperate and safely buried, or not.

I love you,

Momma