Listening To Myself

I would like to think I am through with hiding in plain sight, through with playing the adult equivalent of A game I played each morning in bed as a child. I would lie there, still as a corpse, covers pulled neat as a pin over my head, pillow on top, trying to make my breathing shallow enough to pass unobserved. But from whom was I hiding?

Now, I find I am hiding from myself. Yes, I’ve just been through a divorce, my second. I am tired, I am confused. Having spent so long keeping my head above water I’m clinging to the shore.

It is not the divorce that drives me but the question: How did I get here? How did I marry a man who, on our very first date…some things are too painful to say out loud.

Some lessons are too important to forget. Reliving them is what I fear most. Folding in on myself, pulling in the welcome mat, agreeing to abandon myself along with what dreams may come to replace those stillborn. This is the enemy within, the one without which the enemy without can do us no harm.

Some things one remembers. Others it’s best to pretend to forget. I write to know the difference.

The only things that make me happy are the clouds and the breezes. Here in Las Vegas, clouds and breezes locate me in my body and on the planet. They serve as reminders that I am here and now and though, thankfully, this moment will not last, here and now can be beautiful.

I have attempted therapy before, ten visits as allowed by insurance the first time. Two visits the second. In the first session, the counselor asked if Jamaican mothers leaving their children behind to work as domestics in The States wasn’t a common practice in the 60s, and if I wouldn’t mind being interviewed for her doctoral research. I scheduled our second session by phone so I could give her time she sorely needed and because I was afraid she might hurt herself if I stopped coming.

What I have learned before and since is that listening to ourselves counts for more than we know. So maybe this blog is an attempt at accountability, a further bid for truth-telling and shaming the devil. I will listen to myself now, patiently.