Energy shifts back to olden days, makes girl ponder.
I've always been a party girl. Not the kind that gets blackout drunk, snorts lines off public toilets and makes out with the closest mouth on a regular basis, then laughs it off the next day over four advil washed down with a biting dog, but one who throws parties. I love a full house, I love pot lucks and bring-your-own and kitchen messes and even the occasional bit of surprise vomit on my powder room floor the next day (O'Connell). I love to sit around the table, inside or out; I love music and candles and laughter and friends, I love my friends.
When we bought our house a few years back, one of my first ideas was to host Sunday socials in the aforementioned spirit; they'd start in the brunch hour and continue through the evening until people were spent and ready to retire to their own lives. I told everyone about it, "we're going to start doing this, I can't wait for you to see our house, it's gonna be so awesome!" but Brian was the quiet type, his circle of friends smaller than my growing one, and in addition to his personal reservations he was self-conscious, afraid for people to see our home "unfinished," without proper paint or trim or our ugly kitchen floor and, in his typical fashion that I now realize he could not help he squelched my plans and my Sunday socials became a fantastic memory.
We did manage, in the last year, to squeeze in a few parties: My birthday, Fergus's birthday, an impromptu crab feast with new and old friends on a rainy Sunday. I looked forward to more but his illness and his introversion became more profound and things looked, well, not so promising, immediately. Things became so tense, so difficult; he fell back into a depression that rendered him more anti-social than before, more cantankerous and negative and I didn't see, I didn't think, that this was more than another storm of his that I just couldn't weather, not one more time. So I dedicated my Sunday morning practice to the courage to say, "I can't weather this, not one more time, I want a separation," and I did it, I stood my ground and we made new sleeping arrangements in preparation for new living arrangements and even as he stood with a gun in his hand I called it melodrama and thought to do little more than to call his brother and have him come talk some sense into him. His brother didn't make it in time and here I am, separated like I planned but not like I wanted.
Anyway.
When the storm of the immediate tapered off a bit and the Mess was clean and the house ritually cleansed I set out to do what I do, which is to surround myself with my chosen family and make as much social time with them and Fergus as possible, hosting a pot luck replete with pancetta-and-pasta, a host of delicious cheese and a cooler full of cheap beer. There was fresh fruit and laughter and I forgot, for an evening, the horror of the past week and the pressure of what was to become my life, my every day; I felt, for many straight hours, very loved and supported and normal, individual and unique and grown-up. Confident, even. Fergus takes well to my friends which comforts me and puts them, all child-free, at great ease -- children can be frightening creatures and I am fortunate to have one who is intensely curious, loving and happy, if not a bit on the hyper and willful side. I have to believe that his energy and stubbornness will birth a focused and determined adolescent which can only turn into a balanced and peaceful adult. Or a Republican, but let's look on the bright side, shall we?
I tried to plan another one of these yesterday but a potential staph infection threatened our duo and I had to call it off last minute lest we threaten the collective health of what is, essentially, our entire restaurant staff and a good many of them had already suffered a bout of staph in the past year or so. But while I was still planning, before I decided to call it off, I was visited by a strange feeling, something I can only describe as an energy, a deja vu of vulnerability that had been dormant for six years. I thought, "what if someone brings someone with them? will there be potential suitors for whom I should look a certain way? what will I wear? what if I say something stupid or worse: cryptic and random?"
I wondered, "am I good enough?" I've thought about this abstractly over the past three weeks, mostly in the context of who-will-love-a-suicide-widow-with-a-small-child, but being visited by that old energy, that same old energy that's led me astray so many times before, was intense. I didn't call off the party because of it -- Fergus really was sick and I was concerned and afraid that I might have to abandon the fun for a trip to the ER -- but decided to muddle through it, to not do what I might have done years ago, which would have been to artificially represent myself with makeup and a hairdo and more clothing than is necessary for a sweltering August night; instead, I decided to stay in my grocery clothes, sweaty and stinky, to be my usual inappropriate self who happens to have a big scabby zit on her chin at the moment and come what may, I was ready for it, I wasn't changing for nobody.
Let's hope I can maintain this spirit; when I get back to yoga, I'll be dedicating all my practice to self-acceptance.
