Grace And Conviction

What is the shame in folding? You knew the hand you were dealt would need work, and the work hasn't been up to par. Yet you continue to believe that a little more effort will make everything ok. It is not failure, Emily, to take yourself out of a situation that makes you miserable. It is not failure to have the feelings that you have.

No carelessness in your actions. No confusion in your words. No imprecision in your thoughts. No retreating into your own soul, or trying to escape it. No overactivity.

They kill you, cut you with knives, shower you with curses. And that somehow cuts your mind off from clearness, and sanity, and self-control, and justice?

A man standing by a spring of clear, sweet water and cursing it. While the fresh water keeps on bubbling up. He can shovel mud into it, or dung, and the stream will carry it away, wash itself clean, remain unstained.

To have that. Not a cistern but a perpetual spring.

How? By working to win your freedom. Hour by hour. Through patience, honesty, humility.

To have been born into the family that I have. To have a father that, without being provoked, says that they will support me whatever I choose, and to know that he absolutely means it. Libby, and the strength of her conviction even in the face of a moron jabbing her with spikes for her decision. To have made a decision, and to stand by it because you know that it's right and because you are strong enough to do the right thing for yourself. Anne and the light that she casts upon everyone, every situation. To be that strong. To know that resolutely what life is, to laugh at a challenge, to be grateful for the opportunity to show your quality.

It is time, I think, to become strong at the broken places. Clarity of thought, forward momentum.

Late.

I keep having these startling moments of clarity. Walking into work today and my stomach plummets just to be there and I start sinking into the negative thought patterns. Had a voicemail from your boss on my phone wanting to know when you'd be back. And last night when we talked you said "so should I try calling work tomorrow," your round-about way of asking me to do it for you. Like a storm cloud, it just overtakes you. Can't get it out of my head.

But then I realized all of a sudden like just choosing to be smarter than that, none of this is my creation. I want something more, so that's what I'm going to get. Simple as that. I'm not going to languish going down these old roads with you because I'm just not going to go. I don't really care that you want me to. I'm going... my way. And I don't want you to come with me. Sorry. There is something amazing just around the corner, and I'm almost there, and I'll arrive on my own. I did the best that I could for you, and now I'm going to be very selfish.

Tell Me,

She had a big face and a poodle haircut, and a bright sparkley shirt that might have seen a bedazzler in its lifetime. She was asking him point-blank questions and he wasn't saying anything, and the silence made me strangely harried. Why am I even here. Everything. When I first walked through the doors he was standing there, and the look in his eyes made me feel fearful and repulsed at exactly the same time. And then shortly after, shameful.

So she said finally to both of us, "what needs to be worked on?" and my mind flashed to laying on the forest floor at Priest Point Park, seeing Anne's car pull up in Lakewood, the photo shoot in Coshocton when he walked around with that face like a corpse, here we go here we go. Words. What are the words?

And I just wanted it over with. It made me angry that she came into the room with a box full of kleenex. That she said I had pain embedded in my face. How do you go back? You don't. I told him, I have hardened my heart. It is a survival mechanism. You don't tell someone that you tried to kill yourself after you were unsuccessful and then expect them to not self-preserve. And he kept looking at me with hopeful eyes because I kept talking and she kept saying that I wouldn't have been there unless I cared, and I thought, some of us are sheepdogs. And I thought of Anne and I smiled. I do care. But my life isn't forfeit anymore.

I am too close to my own thoughts to see them in perspective! Shut them out. That's what you do, it's how you survive. It might be harsh but some of us, she said, have to be sheepdogs. You fake the strength til you really have it. And it's either that easy or it's not.

When You've Got Family

Irritations just under surface of skin. Constant analyzation and re-analyzation. Like looking around myself 360 to see why I'm a bad person, which part betrayed me, which part I need to flagellate and cast off. The phone makes a sound and my skin prickles. I go into the basement and my chest compresses. Pile of laundry on my closet floor, close my eyes to that room and everything that it entails. He made a jail cell for himself down there, and was sending me the last email from Alcatraz (final rites) when I came home early. I thought about sitting on that barstool in Olympia and how I was crying, how I felt like the loneliest person in the world. I need protection too.

He said to me on the phone, "i feel so lonely." His voice was small and wanted everything to be ok, like it always is. Just take take take.

And everyone looking at you like "just hold on a little longer," like I know my brother is troubled but I am so glad you're there for him. And it is a rock crushing down on me. And that first night I was thinking, "I could be a cop now!" and the walls around me revealed themselves, how can I be so willing to give up my deepest wants and desires.

The running shoes I customized had an ID name up the back: My Way. From now on. Just remind me.

Just A Little Push

Keeping my mind on target. He came through yesterday early, voice full of sunshine and bellowing that deep bass. "How ya doin," to which he always replies, "Fabulous!" with a big smile and a wink in my direction. His response yesterday was met with complaint from the head honcho, and he just rolled into a great belly laugh. "Every morning when you wake up, you have a choice to make. How am I going to greet this day? What attitude will I chose to mark this day with?" It made me smile a deep, warm, to the bottom of my toes smile because I thought, this is truth. Small choices stacked together over time turn into the entire ocean plus contents.

And on Monday we clinked glasses and he said, "you only get one life. Might as well make it the most phenomenal thing you can."

Thankful for these little gift along the way, this road paved with broken glass and arrows.

My Way

There was a varsity tennis match happening in the field house, so I was relegated to a treadmill for the run my body was screaming for. For beating out stress, nothing comes close to running. It was night and the overhead lights shone brightly upon me, turning the window before me partially into a mirror. I kept staring at the words on my tshirt, the one she gave me for the last birthday. I have the card she gave me with that gift on my desk at work and I have re-read it every day for the past week or so.

Veritas. Aequitas. I thought of the analogy he gave me, of being the blind kid in the middle giving it his all but in the end, everything being for nothing. The more I thought about it the more I realized that this situation is nothing like that at all and he only used the analogy because it was a weak spot in my armor. If you decide, before you start, that you're not going to be successful, guess what's going to happen? Life is pain. You figure out how to deal with it, or you spend your entire life in that nowhere land of self doubt. Maybe I'm an a-hole, but I won't go down with this ship.

And after the run I took in a deep breath of cold night air, dialed the number and put the phone to my ear. "He feels emasculated in the house, I think. Like he's not contributing." As though this is something that is up to me to remedy. As though I haven't already tried, a thousand and two times, to help light some kind of spark.

The voice that replied to him sounded like steel, and I was filled with pride to hear it. "Yeah, this has actually been going on for a lot longer than we've been in the new house." When I pulled into the driveway I gave him a gruff goodbye and hung up because I don't want anymore negativity in the Ponderosa. You know, I have spent a vast quantity of my life making sure that the people around me are fulfilled and happy, and when I try to apply the same care to my own life I feel guilty for doing it. It's a behavior that's up to me to change. We all are the keepers of our own happiness. She's right; I too have filled my heart with hate. He looked at me with those shark eyes and said, "no one has helped me" and I wanted to smash him.

But it also made me realize that there is some selfishness in my desire to help him. I am not a martyr. We each save ourselves.

Gone.

Never mind hymns of thanksgiving: hold on to a step once taken. A hard night! Dried blood smokes on my face, and nothing lies behind me but that repulsive little tree! The battle for the soul is as brutal as the battles of men; but the sight of justice is the pleasure of God.

Yet this is the watch by night. Let us all accept new strength, and real tenderness. And at dawn, armed with glowing patience, we will enter the cities of glory.

Why did I talk about a friendly hand! My great advantage is that I can laugh at old love affairs full of falsehood, and stamp with shame such deceitful couples -- I went through women's Hell over there; and I will be able now to possess the truth within one body and soul.

A ranger in Prescott AZ who is only there if you look for him, and the will to protect and uphold all of those tears that were shed. You will make it, and together we will raise the banner.

A Tergo, Lupi

A late night email sent as a consolation. An olive branch laid at my feet to quell the longstanding miasma. He sends them from where he feels safe because the words he forms with his fingers are ones that his mouth won't utter. I am alone in an icestorm. I don't know how to save myself. The point is that the conversation is still one-sided. And later he looks at me with eyes full of hunger when we are alone in the room, an expectation of compassion standing stoically between us.

I am tired.

In my stomach there is a knot, and it has been tied a million and two times, and everything adds to it anymore. Everything. I front like I am the most secure and strong individual, but there is this huge insecurity like a weight deep within me, and every time I think about "fixing" this, the knot grows. I wish that I had a stronger survival instinct. I am clawing at the Emily who can read the meditations without feeling a strong sense of fear. When I look in the mirror I search for the one who really understands the words "strength, duty, honor" as they relate to her own life.

12. Why all the guesswork? You can see what needs to be done. If you can see the road, follow it. Cheerfully, without turning back. If not, hold up and get the best advice you can. If anything gets in the way, forge on ahead, making good use of what you have on hand, sticking to what seems right. (The best goad to achieve, and the one we fall short of when we fail.)

Preservation.

I could see my face reflected back in the glass from where I was sitting, salt stained blotchy and I couldn't even feel anything. I kept seeing the situation from above and to the left, as though watching a movie. "Is this how I react?"

Just numb. I feel like my heart is encased in tar, a crust of protection from what I have too easily gotten used to. Monday, he said. We cannot do this together. The rut that has been forged does not lead in the right direction. By being too kind I have wasted my life.

I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me; God's wisdom to guide me.

A Few Things.

Another snow day and at 1:00 I headed down to the station, hoping someone would be around to show me something good. Maybe we'd get a call and I could ride on an engine again. This brotherhood shit gets into your blood, it's the stuff of life. You can't really describe it to people; it's just a tacit understanding among those of us who are civil servants. I was thinking of St. Crispian's speech today while I was poking around the trucks in the bay, in particular:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

But anyway, I got to the station and OJ was the 24-hr guy, and Rob was there doing station duty. My spirit secretly did a cartwheel because Rob goes out of his way to teach me stuff. Since OJ was there, I knew it would be just a matter of time until Rob came out because he likes to get into stuff just as much as I do. I think that after 4 years on the department he's still as excited to be doing the job as I am, being new.

My hunch was right and it wasn't long before he was going around all the trucks with me. We pulled stuff down and he explained it, and I noticed that his hands have as many scrapes and cuts as mine. Worker's hands. After I asked a bazillion questions he looked at me and said, "want to take 44 out and try some of this stuff?" I just looked at him. 44 is the rescue truck I got to ride on to a call the other night.

"Wait, like take it out of the station? Seriously? Me and you?"

"Yeah, we can pull the jaws off and you can mess around with 'em. I can explain this stuff to you a million times, but you're always going to be apprehensive about it until you get to have it in your hands."

I am trying really hard to not do Anne's little geek dance at this point. I said, "uhhhh, yeah!!" I hurried up and jumped into the cab before someone burst my bubble. He started it up and explained absolutely everything in the cab, how it worked, when I would need to use it. We pulled out and he kept explaining things. I felt like I was 13 years old and on my first date. So freaking excited and afraid that at any moment it could end! We played with the air tools, the cutter and spreader, the retractable light panel.

I love this job. I love this job! The whole time I was there I couldn't stop feeling so incredibly lucky. Everyone is so freaking awesome and everything I've learned is so exciting. When I roll up to a call, pop my trunk and start getting into my turn-outs, heads start to turn in my direction and there's no way to describe what that feels like. "Dude, a female firefighter!" I heard someone say with admiration. And I hope it doesn't sound like I'm gloating, or seeking praise or glory. I barely know what I'm even doing yet. But to think of the long line of Irish civil servants that I come from, to think of my mom's struggle for equality among their ranks... it makes me raise my head up to think that I'm continuing that legacy. And to walk up to the truck and stand around with the guys who already are like my extended family...

Civil service is the best kept secret among the working class. There is no amount of college education that could possibly compete with this job.

But, I digress. When we got back into the bay OJ was parking the aerial. I asked Rob about training on the aerial, and he said that in the summer I'll have the opportunity to RAPPEL OFF OF IT! He said that most Mondays over the summer entail going out and getting dirty. I started talking to him about the agility test, and how climbing up the aerial was the scariest part for me. I admitted that I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but that once I conquered the aerial I knew I would be fine with the rest of it. He said,

"Yeah, I remember that day. I was one of the people timing you. I could tell you were nervous because after each event you'd say, 'how'd I do?!' You were going faster than the guys, but I wasn't allowed to tell you that because you're not allowed to talk about other cadet's tests. It was funny though... you were kicking ass and you had absolutely no idea."

What a good day.

Every Worthless Word

Slimy rock in the pit of my stomach, you can't swallow it E, it won't go away. There is this thing called too many second chances, try again.

Head up.

Nothing is promised.

Through The Wire

So much on my heart right now, and there's just no good way to tell him about it. He looks at me with these eyes that have loathing and rage just behind them, I've vowed to myself at least to not be the calm and collected third party anymore. Like I got run over. He returned home at 1:30 and came up looking for a fight. Doesn't matter that in four hours I have to be up to earn our mortgage payment and health insurance.

The vows feel like a joke, like a slap in the face. You can't just remember what you said when it's convenient for you. He was mad at me yesterday for coming home at 3 in the afternoon, said that it would have been nice to know that we weren't going to spend any time together. I said, it's three in the afternoon. There is an entire day left. He didn't speak again until 1:30 in the morning with that face full of fury and the spikes I will never understand!

You make the world you live in.

"Put it on my tab" when he lost my phone, like he is already planning to leave. Where do I fit, inside that head? How utterly lonely.