enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Sleep really does help. Sorry - LONG entry

So last night was interesting. I was under-rested, sniffly and cold-like, and gave in a little bit to disappointment.

But when I asked myself the question, "Why?" I got the answer.

It's a pretty simple and predictable answer. And by the way I think it is a *great* practise to really, really talk to yourself. You almost always already have all of the answers for yourself, often in ready reach.

I have accepted on a relatively deep level that there are no guarantees that I will find the lid for my pot, and therefore that there are no guarantees that I will ever be able have have a child as a result. So I had made the decision to not have children, given that I think it's my decision to make and not that of all of the men my age who will cruelly tell me that only a woman at least five-years younger will do for them.

So that is interesting. I do believe on a deep level all of the things that I have said: that one doesn't get everything that one wants, that I can have a happy life without having my own children, that I have a great deal left to do, etc.

But the interesting thing is that I realized on a really, really, really deep level just a short while ago, that whilst I had thought for a while in recent months that I actually might be someone made to be a lone wolf, something I'd questioned for most of my life, that it's really not true.

For most of my life I've actually been hiding from even allowing myself to believe that I would not *have* to be alone, since it was always easier to cultivate the opposite view in light of the fact that never in my life when I had asked the emotional questions did I get the satisfying emotional answers back.

Lately things are really different with me. Different in a good way. No, a great way.

When I lay in bed this morning thinking about all of the usual questions and things that could be labeled disappointments, I still couldn't access any well of despair. There was just nothing tragic there. There was actually a blank space, a kind of blank calm.

SO that either means that I am completely delusional for the first time in my life and I actually believe that the "prayer" so to speak will be answered and that I will never be alone again (whether it's because I'm with myself or with another remains to be seen), or that I've actually reached this plateau of relative confidence in myself that I will always be able to respond...but I do actually feel pretty "Meh. I'm good" this morning.

It doesn't stop me from aching for touch - physical, spiritual, emotional. But I'm not aching this morning. OK, maybe just a little. But I'm fine.

Perhaps I'll hire an Italian masseur.

It is true that I am not far off the answers that I'm seeking. In fact, I've found them. They are here. It's just that all of the other stuff is out of my control. I can put the steps in place to move things along but I cannot *find* them.

I guess it's a strength or maybe it's a fault, but I always get caught with an ache because I've always been at the root an optimist. It's like finding that final burst of energy that you can't believe at the end of a marathon. I remember winning a marathon once and not knowing where the second woman was behind me. So at every mile between about 18 and 26 I would try to surge a little in spite of the pain. I would imagine that I was flying; I would give myself wings.

I always quote that Leon@rd Cohen line which means something ENTIRELY different, "The cracks are what let the light in." That is me! And what I take it to mean this morning is that I open the window a crack just to take a peek out and the light can't help but encircle me and tell me to keep on hoping. It's just how I am. There's beauty in everything and so there's hope in everything.

I remember having this conversation - or not this conversation but one remotely similar to it - with my ex-fiance. I think I'd asked him what he feared most losing/ not getting in life.

He said something about the opportunity to be a father. He did, indeed, become a father four years later. So his fear got its answer. Or he rushed into something that temporarily at least crushed his *biggest* fear. I'm not judging him, but I get that that's what people do. And then they discover that they have an even bigger fear lurking...

I remember distinctly what I said at that time. I said "the death of hope." I fear that someday I will stop hoping.

I guess even then I knew that that was who I was. And most outside observers would chuckle or snort and say, "She's talking about faith."

And do you know, I think they'd probably be right. Not a faith in any Divine. Or maybe not exactly that. I'm not in defined territory. But an intuitive faith that all of these tiny bits of matter that have come together to make me - the physical AND the intangible - are real and vibrating, sometimes on fire with a transcendant energy that I don't think there is a word in ENglish to describe. Joy or delight or love or forgiveness or any of the even tangentially-related words just fall flat here. But maybe rolled altogether...

Nature understands it. Flowers vibrate with the same energy. So do hummingbirds. And so do trees.

Oh lord now I sound *really* mad. I'm likening myself to a hummingbird. But when I was a little girl - and a not so little girl - I used to lie with my ear against the earth for hours. I would listen to the earth tremble, watch the spears of grass from close up, watch the ants moving about. I wanted to be as close and related to them as I could possibly be.

I have felt that proximity sometimes, and even sometimes when there was a wind and the clouds blew across the sun creating an even greater chill, I would not budge from the earth. I would know that it was giving me warmth.

So online dating seems pretty foolish and removed from all of this, from my true self. I woke up this morning regretting wasting the money and time on it - feeling a guilty sorrow - but I don't think it's reasonable to do that. It's just one tool in my toolshed and I don't even have to take it out very often. I can take it out as a kind of *study guide* book of dating exercises. All of the other work will have to be done through other actions.

Because, you see, I'm tired of waiting around for someone to come along. For sure, I was in hiding for a number of years and that didn't help. But as C. said yesterday, "It's probabilities, S. You've got the high level of education, you've got the 37 thing, you've got the well-traveled thing, you've got the maths, you've got the more artistic temperament, you've got the desire to be with someone deeply kind. And you've got the athletic thing. And this is a SMALL city. Plus, you'd never date anyone from work. There's just a low probability of someone available and matching you just stumbling into your life."

That is really an aside and sort of a sad justification for online dating. But I *do not* want to spend another nine years of my life not really being in love, loving another human being. I really don't. I just can't do it by "fighting the wave." I know that. I have to be patient, but not patient to point of suppressing desire. Fear that leads to suppression of vision and of desire has trapped me before and I refuse to let it do so anymore. There's where the line must be drawn.

So I think what Italy is - what I've been moving towards forever - is reclaiming my connection to every tiny molecule of beauty that I want to let tingle on my skin. As I write this I laugh - it's like the animal putting on the suit and putting on all of the codes of behaviour in order to not be seen a freak in a Line Dance Dept - and it is pretty funny.

And for the first time I don't think it's wrong to do what I do, to be finding a kind of relaxation in having job security and in taxing those funny analytical parts of my brain. But the rest of me must bloom and flourish in my off-hours.

Anyhow. I'm not sure that I'm providing a concrete prescription here. I asked myself again this mornign if I wanted to "join a running club or a cycling club, or take an art or a language course" this summer. And instead of saying "NO!" and then panicking that if I don't I will never meet anyone, this morning I said, "No, I really don't have a passionate desire to do many of those things. But instead of panicking and forcing myself to join a soccer team or something - which I would hate more than words could possibly describe, and which C. suggested kindly I should at least think about (there is an Ottawa co-ed sports league that functions as a singles meet-up thing) - I said, "No. But you're going to think about in Italy what it is that you are really passionate about or that you could fall in love with." (And again, it's definitely NOT joining an ultimate team and running around a field thowing a frisbee at 25 year-old single guys. And let me say to all of my friends who have been telling me to do this: "Just because I can run fast around a field doesn't mean that I should do so.")

I find myself slipping into a weird rhythm of languge here, but as I write all of this stuff I know it is true. The style might not be right but the relative quiet at the centre *is* right. So definitely I've come leaps and bounds forward in the last year. I went from being someone with a central kernel of pain to one with a central kernel of calm. And I like myself much more than I *ever* have. I believe in her.

Last night when I was sitting here alone and feeling suppressed sobs in my chest and asking the question "Why the fear?" I got the answer. It was, "Because I'm going to be turning 38 all by myself in Italy. How sad and pathetic, what a cover for what your life could be - all sunny and happy and independent when you're just a sad, barren, middle-aged woman."

But that line was a line that someone else would place on me. I am neither sad nor pathetic. I actually do enjoy my independence and I'm going to enjoy the glow of Italy all over and nurturing me. After I said that thing to myself at something like 2 a.m., I got to work and started collecting my sketchpads, sharpening my drawing pencils. They're laid out by my knapsack. I wrote a list of things that I need to organize today. I went online and got all of the details for my cycling trips. I laid out my prettiest few skirts and decided for Italy NO BLACK, except for the whisper of a silk dress. N0 - yellow blouse, a brown skirt, brown dress with blue accents, a pretty little white blouse with an empire waist and very fine ribbon stripes in cream, beautiful sleeves, a good pair of cute jeans, walking shoes, one pair of ballerines, maybe a rosy top and maybe a puffy cream with orange-red summer skirt that when worn with a pretty warm dark coffee-coloured gathered tank and neutral ballerines makes me feel like Audr3y H3pburn or maybe a Degas ballerina all in vibrant, earthy pastel crayon. It's a kind of bright light these pieces of me, all on their own.

So, there you go. I've just run out of words. Or I threw myelf off the trail. Vanity will do that to you! Y+(You can allow me *one* deadly sin, can't you?) So, verdict: I am not going to sit idly by and wait for something to happen for me. I am, however, going to fight very hard to stay with the seed of the person whom I've always been, ignite her with what she's been wanting to whiff again...starting with Italy.

I slept like a baby last night. And I woke up to hear Julian B@rnes talking about not believing in God but missing him. :) Coincidence???

Sleep really does help!

11:20 a.m. - 2008-05-04

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