writing stories.

we’re in june gloom, my favorite month of summer. its the month my friends abhor – they long for hot weather and flip flops and afternoons at the pool. in contrast, i wake up to the cool breeze of an overcast morning sifting through my window screen and i am filled with happiness. it is cardigan weather, not-quite-iced-coffee weather, and the nights linger cool after perfect afternoons of warm sunshine and blue skies dotted with tiny clouds and soft winds. this is the month i grab on to as i prepare to sweat and swelter through july and august, and most likely september and even october.

this year is no different, and like a few of the past years, events at this time unfold with the strangest and most surprising twists, and i am knocked to my knees. except this year, unlike some of the past few, when knocked down, i tucked my chin, crossed my arms over my chest and folded in half, so the fall wouldn’t be so brutal and the righting of my self to standing would come easier than years past. this could be bad news. for i have learned to fall properly, having been stomach-punched and heart-swiped a couple of times. or it could be a beautiful piece of growing older and wiser and learning to roll – quite literally – with the punches when they come. in either case, i know only this: it has everything to do with stories. the ones i hear about, can’t help but notice, long for. mostly though, this is about the stories, the ones in my heart, that i write.

i have written a small handful of stories in these five years of singularity. i imagine the reason is to grab on to something – like i grab this month of soft winds and gray skies – in order to see a line like a path curling out in front of me that i can walk on. the line isn’t necessary – for i am surrounded by so much – beautiful friends, family, my health and maya’s health, a work life that is simple and mostly fits my immediate needs and brings me to other like-minded, like-hearted souls. strong coffee, strong legs and my strong beating heart. a sweet house with a studio in the back on a sweet street where my daughter can run with her hair and her laughter flying out in languid waves behind her.

all these things are here to support, but still, the stories exist. first in my heart where i feel them but can’t discern yet what they will be, what their inherent meaning is. then in my head where i analyze and roll them over and try to get an understanding of how they fit and how i can glean from them what i am supposed to. and finally, sometimes, they land here, from heart to head to a small piece of writing sent to a tiny audience in a vast field of words and pictures, definitions and explanations.

so what is the story, the one that keeps thematically showing up here in words and in my life? last week – against my loving-est heart and deepest intuition, i said goodbye to The One Who Absolutely Could Have Been Except That He Wasn’t, and the bungie-jump plunge of loss sent me swaying and then diving to that familiar place where the songs our hearts sing don’t line up with the world at large. days later i curled up on my couch with a glass of wine and the long-familiar and comforting voice of my dear sara, and sang her my sad song. sara listens with her whole heart – always – and asks the most intuitive questions; you know, the ones you don’t want to answer and fight against yet in the end you’ve answered them wholly and what you’ve happened upon is so telling and timely you can’t not look at the answer. yeah, those questions.

here’s what i saw: the two great loves of my life, the ones i would have thrown myself in front of a train for, showed up. i wasn’t looking for them. quite the contrary, i was purposefully not looking for anyone, and they were on my door step anyway, there to be next to me. i’ve always believed we crash in to the people we are supposed to know regardless of whether we want to, are looking to, need to. that is the rhythm of my universe, and looking back upon the people i’ve known and been shown, there is an almost mathematical precision to the part they played in my life. it may be that i didn’t ask for them or even want them, but in the end, what would i possibly do without them?

and in the years on my own, as a working, single parent trying to keep the wolf from the door and create a business for myself again, i started to feel the overwhelming bigness of  doing what i am doing. the loneliness of it, the questions that come in the early morning hours before the sun is up because there is only one person to answer them, and somehow i think i made a switch to manifesting rather than allowing. and in that switch, the one i didn’t even realize i was making, the organic nature of  intersecting where i am supposed to may have been lost in the weaving of stories.

stories that bring comfort, hope, desire. and yet… instead of allowing for synchronicity and connection and the butterflies that flutter through your whole body when the crashing introduction of love happens TO you (simply because it is supposed to), the stories mean the introduction happens BECAUSE of you, and the recipe that follows is built on expectations, scenarios,  projections, and maybe even a few gyrations. and so forms the question i must ask myself: how does the story write itself naturally, when there is a story already in its way?

my answer? i don’t know for certain. last week’s plunging sadness happened after connecting with someone i felt i opened with immediately. and in that opening, and the delicate beginnings of trust, i let myself sink in, because of who we were beginning to be, but also because of who we may have ended up being. and that is a story. it doesn’t mean my sadness is not here, it is. and it doesn’t mean i don’t miss him already, i do. but am i missing him solely, or am i missing the possibility of him – of a shared story, an us? my heart tells me it is both. and so i sit down, try to learn, separate fact from fiction, and flip the switch back to allowance. i breathe in and out, try to release the urge to manifest, and allow again for the right sort of crashing introduction. the one that shows up – simply because it is supposed to – and writes itself.