Can A Girl Get By With a Mustard Seed in 2011?

Last year was an interesting mixture of the hilarious, terrifying and the sublime. Everytime it seemed as though the gas was out of "The Little Engine" that is my life, just like Tillie, the little engine that could, some how, some way things would work out. At the end of of 2009, I had lost one of my closest friends, I was legally separated and my divorce was kicking into high-gear, my kids were being pulled between two households, one of my dogs had to be put to sleep, my mom was recovering from breast cancer and I was diagnosed a stress related medical conditions.  I was living a bad country-western song.  I was looking for relief at the beginning of last year, hopeful, my "luck" would turn.


During 2010, in between everything else that was going on, I was always working at least two jobs, sometimes three and trying to be a pretty decent, new, single mom.  As this was going on, for some reason it seemed very important not to let my mom know how horribly bad things were, after all she was just getting her health back.  I felt terrible talking about this to my friends because it seemed like there was always some damn crisis in my life, so i just joked about stuff, and tried to evade them whenever possible for fear they would invite me somewhere that I could not even afford to buy gas to drive to let alone pay for when we arrived.


All the while the secrecy was such a burden, especially for a motor-mouth like me.  Trying not to let my family and close friends know how bad things were really getting was creating a chasm between me and my loved ones.  And without an outlet to relieve my pressure, my emotions were running high.  It seemed like the morning was my most vulnerable time, I was wide awake, my brain was skimming ideas, problems, solutions, contengencies and choreagraphing each play like Terry Bradshaw.  To say, I cried on Mr. Pierre's broad shoulders a couple times, would not be an understatement.  But ever stoic, he withstood the tide of my early morning tears, and pushed me back into "the game" with words of wisdom.

During the first 8 months of the year, in my spare time I was looking for a new place to live because my house was probably going into foreclosure, my twins had to leave the school they only school they had known since they were one year old, my oldest was away in college struggling and I was still trying to have some sort of tiny social life to keep from sucking on my car exhaust.  I can laugh about it now, but trust me, there were many nights when I would be thinking about my little Corgi, Maggie-Mae, or my little beta fish Sampson who bit it and think that lucky bastard... he got out.


I can tell you the situation looked pretty bleak.  There are no words to describe the terror you have when you can actually see the walls of your life start closing in on you, especially when you "feel" alone yet are in fact, accountable for the lives of three other human beings and a dog.  But there were a couple of things that stood between me and disaster.  First there was my mom then my uncle Dwight. 

People assume they are push-overs because they are the kindest most tender-hearted people you will ever meet.  What I have learned about them is they truly are an example of a titanium fist in a velvet glove.  No one has taught me more about tenacity, loyalty, love and supporting the people you love more than those two people- and it has all be by example.  My girlfriends were also always there holding me up too, even when they did not always know why or what was going on.  Each day a phone call or a card in the mail, a lunch, a glass of wine, just a sister-to-sister moment, to make me smile and keep me strong.


I wondered so much about what was going to happen.  Something as insignificant as printing the date on a check, or writing a report, or helping the girls with a homework assignment, would send my mind running in a hundred different directions.  What would happen to the girls if we lost our home, what about my mom, what about my other dog, Milo?  He was on the maximum dosage of Doggie Prozac and still had already licked himself bald-bodied, over the passing of Maggie-Mae.  God knows he could not take one more problem without stamping his paw on a newspaper and throwing his body over the deck with a carefully worded - "screw you all".


Do you want to know what happens when your mind gets so filled with fear and anxiety you cannot think straight, literally?  Well I don't know.  But I do know what happened to me.  I developed a new philosophy, well new to me.  I call it the Tao of life - "Bend with the wind".  This approach, actually a hybrid, of tai-chi, christianity, taoism which mostly is to focus on the problems of others, deal with what you can control, and stop fighting against and running away from life's lessons. 


When I began to understand that in every terror-filled moment, there was an opportunity to improve myself or help someone else, each breath became easier to take, each step forward felt a little lighter.  The road I was travelling was not as dark or as cold, because when you focus your efforts outward the universe sends in reinforcements...  Those people I had helped, started helping me.  Some do not even know they did help me or how much their efforts comforted me, or re-fueled me so I could keep going. 

Though it is already March, this is my first real blog-post, "why men lie" was written for Litchell, as an h'omage to the lessons he taught me and re-taught me then taught me one more time in 2010 (I can be hard-headed when the sex is good).  Hopefully, he is a part of my romantic past, because there are a host of new characters already assembling for 2011.  In the spirit of excercising the lessons of the Tao, I am trying to remain focused on the  Three Jewels of the Tao: compassion, moderation, and humility. 

With that in mind, my ex is making a special appearance, and hopefully, we have and can continue to live in some form of harmony.  We were able to keep our home, Milo's hair has started to grow back.  Now with Matt living here it seems like the good, the bad, and the ugly have re-assembled as well.  My biggest epiphany for 2010 was that the struggle is not separate from life, but it is life itself.  That push and pull (yin and yang) makes it interesting, fun, exciting, terrifying and intoxicating.  I don't regret one moment of 2010, but if anyone is listening and there is an opportunity to offer a moment of silence in gratitude, allow me to ever so humbly say thank you.  Thank you for my loving friends (Ms. Needles - special shout-out to you) my family, my exes... my daughters, (the hoochies and cori, my angel and the gentle sweet soul that is always in my heart, even when she is so far away), and my faith, which is as strong today as it has ever been.  That faith in myself, given to me by strong, beautiful, intelligent people who raised me, allows me to always appreciate my blessings in this life to retain my integrity, maintain my sense of humor, and remember everyone deserves the opportunity to be redeemed.  Bless you all.