And everything around me stays the same.

There's a lot to say about the weekend, the trip from Maryland to Boston to Maryland and back home to my bed again, and I know I can't really adequately explain it all. I'm really tired. My mind and heart and body are tired. There were things I needed to experience in Massachusetts, things I'd sort of expected but not really, plus three days of intense driving across strange highways and connection with people who in many cases I knew but had never met before.

Massachusetts broke my heart a long time ago, not on purpose, just as a player in a drama it knew nothing of. And this weekend in addition to going there to see amazing women whose writing inspires me, and who work on special projects with me, I ended up meeting up with someone who lives there who has meant a lot to me for a long time because apparently we had a few final loose ends to tie up or cut.

It was fine. It was low-key. I ran my mouth as I am prone to doing. I tried to make it all make sense for everyone, because that's also what I do. I felt someone's pain whose pain I am able to feel like few others, I tried to give solutions and really felt like what I was thinking was right. It actually felt strangely easy at the time.

Then I got into a cab at the end of the night and laid my head against the glass and vaulted immediately into another episode of helping a frustratingly clueless and unmotivated cab driver find his way in a city in which I do not live in which ostensibly he does, when I really just wanted to be and let someone else who could PLEASE know what they're doing for once take the wheel. (Could one cab driver have a GPS system, in his brain or on his dashboard, please?) And in the spaces in between that aggravation I felt a certain feeling of not feeling which I was relieved to think would hold. I did - as I always try to do - what I thought was the right thing.

The next day I drove, hopelessly lost, out of Boston and finally onto the gorgeous roads of central Massachusetts south through Connecticut and New York, finally into Pennsylvania and onto home. I felt peaceful, and relieved.

Then, today was a mess. I've been crying all day, off and on. I had another big event yesterday with some of the the same people from the weekend and hundreds more, which was great and exhausting at the same time. I think it was too much stimulation. Even though it was good to see everyone, it was too much to deal with my unsettled heart on top of it all.

Barenaked Ladies has a lyric in what is probably my favorite song of theirs, "I wake up scared/I wake up strange/I wake up wondering if anything in my life is ever gonna change" and that's how I woke up today. I shrunk into myself, into a withering feeling of loneliness, of finally having let something huge go for who knows why.

There's no reason for my heart to be unsettled, except for every reason that anyone's ever is. I went for - and got - that aggravating "c" word, closure, on this trip. I was told by smart and caring people that that was what I needed, for real. I knew deep down that it was what I was doing this for, that it would come about if I approached it in the right way. I needed to be an adult. I needed to let go. I needed to accept that there were things I had done and said that weren't helpful, and that in order to move on, to have any shot at a better emotional life, that this was what I needed to do.

I know this is true. I am well aware of my delusions and blind spots, of how I clung to the wrong thing for so many years, looked after the closed door when supposedly God was opening a window as it's often suggested. But the thing is, really, that when I'm completely honest and unfiltered, I'm tired of closure. I'm tired of trying to resolve things and make them right. I'm tired of trying to be happy on my own, of accepting that every road that has led me back to a room by myself with a pile of resolutions is the right one.There are days when, even though the basic premise of Buddhism is that everything must be let go and released because that's just the way it is, I cannot let go of one more thing.

This sounds like whining and maybe it is. Maybe at my core I am angst-ridden and needy and ridiculous. But I don't want to let things go so much as I want to grab onto them with both hands at this point, of love and joy and connection. There is so much lack in the world, uncertainty and fear and garbage of the highest order that I want something beautiful. At the very least I want to stop having to give stuff back, and maybe I am specifically daring to tal about love here.

And what is beautiful - the most beautiful - thing about healing this relationship that I dealt with in Boston is that it was angry and acrimonious and it isn't anymore. It was really easy to work that part out. We were able to communicate with each other and put some things right that hadn't been for awhile, and again, some of them my fault to a degree. I think that was good. I can't say it was joyful, on any level, but at least it was better than the alternative.

So the crying today, I don't know. The serious tears that came out of nowhere maybe meant that something was excising itself for a final time, or at least I hope so - that the last vestiges of hope for an old feeling that had planted a perennial garden of sorts in my mind and heart were leaving me in salt water as they've done so many times before but never for good.

I still hate it, I can't lie. I can't say I understand it really, that it isn't one of the great and terrible mysteries of my life. And I wish that I could be more gracious about everything on so many levels. Someday I will be, I'm sure, but maybe not when I'm this deep in the end of it, when I'm not working so hard to be better off than I still am.

Luckily, this is burned into my brain. Maybe there's some kind of hope.

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." Rainer Maria Rilke

Comments

[Zandria]

The crying is completely normal. You've been through a lot. You've had a very busy and sometimes emotionally taxing time over the past few days. You'll get through this just fine.

It was GREAT seeing you on Monday, as usual. :)

[Linnea]

Wonderful writing.

The Rilke quote is lovely.

Regards, Linnea

[joanna]

chill.

[Tre]

huggin' you for sharin' from the heart....felt every word....have been there, am kinda there now, and will be there again. i so get the beautiful hope...the not needing to have it all be resolved...the quote is a tender reminder...a fave author (Eddy) writes 'desire is prayer and no loss can occur from trusting god w/ our desires that they may be molded and exalted before they take form in words and deeds.' (she penned this over 150 years ago)...but i take from it the same gist of rilke's...you have this feeling...a knowing or a question...w/o the form...and you move forward....and you trust....i admire deeply your live blogs (how i stayed in touch w/ the blogher stuff) but to your post, again, i weigh a lot these days what i need vs. what the whole needs (re: relationships)....and i've lived deeply enough to know you never have to let go to who you love....you really never do...hold it close if you need that...trust it to the wings it already has....
keep writing from your heart....it surely touches, reaches, connects, comforts....:)

[Lisa]

BIG HUG to you, dear Laurie.

Yes, I'm struggling with a similar issue right now. It really sucks at times.

The Power of Now is helping me keep it in the present as much as possible. I'm seeking to find the balancing between healing/dissolving the past by giving it the attention it needs and not letting it take over my current existence.

Please know you are well-loved and not alone.

[Karen Sugarpants]

I wish we could have had a longer chat. Be well. xo

[marit]

Glad we could talk some on your way home. I love this quote--and hope I can burn it into my head as well. You are so insightful!

[Deb ont the Rocks]

It's not whining. This post sang a big chord for me. xoxo