coincidence?

detail from MFT (My Favorite Things), the first “art piece” i made. 2011.

so in the middle of meditating/sleeping on and off over the past two days of this stomach bug, i half-jokingly thought these are just like the contractions i felt the days/weeks after giving birth, of the uterus shrinking back to pre-baby size. and then BAM, yeah, what happens next week? all my kids, my reasons for being for certainly the past five and a half years and more expansively for the past 23, are on their own. they have flown from the nest. cliché comparison, i know, but in my defense, my first thought after that was about watching the robins on the porch fledge. i know they still need me. i know our relationship will continue to grow and get deeper and stronger. and this is my body (stomach bug or not) mourning the end of that part. cause you can’t have a new beginning without an end. and damn if i also didn’t realize later on that my bleeding ulcer five years ago corresponded to mo’s leaving for colorado. everyone kept/keeps asking how i feel about the coming empty nest. aside from the immediate i’m-not-thinking-about-tomorrow-while-i-can-still-focus-on-the-now reaction, i get excited, cause i will have a freedom that i haven’t had in a very long time. and then, of course, i think about all the parts of our lives together that i will miss. but then i think, that part is always accessible to me cause i can remember it, and when/if i can’t remember it anymore, i will still have that warm feeling. that’s a lot of conflicting shit there, and no wonder i’m having stomach issues. it’s abating, but yesterday i was working really hard to breathe into the pain. and i did, and it broke through. works even easier with weed. but for most of yesterday, i was doing it without and it helped me feel better.

we have an asylum seeker, an elite athlete, from africa staying with us for a short time. when he first landed in the US last year, they put him in a detention center in louisiana. he now has a kidney issue that he traces back to that time, when he couldn’t get fresh water to drink. WHAT THE FUCK IS THE GOVERNMENT DOING IN OUR NAME? he said it was hell. it was horrible. and still, he preferred that to returning to his country, which would almost assuredly result in his torture and death. yes, what he went through at home was horrendous. and yes, what he went through in this country, the good country, was horrible. i KNOW life’s not fair and i KNOW humanity can be cruel (very very cruel), but can’t we learn? can’t we get better? it really doesn’t seem so. if we are so divided that we can’t even agree on every single human being having the same amount of rights as each other, then we are doomed. 

as always though, i have hope. i don’t expect anything different, but i do have that hope.