It is strange. I just came "home" to my house, a house I bought, a house that exhausts me, a house that feels like it is not enough and is too much all at once. I came home from Santa Barbara, from a conference that was at once both nourishing (for the intellect, for the spirit) and exhausting (for the body, for the soul). We are at once humans, fully in our bodies, incapable of allaying psychic and physical exhaustion, to be pure mind, unable to inhabit our bodies, however, without the razor sharp critical view from the panopticon of our own structural apparatuses of failure.

I had few tasks that HAD to be completed today, and yet, I failed to complete them. (The chiding voice claims that the night is not over yet, and the other voice, the one that whimpers meekly, but stands its ground firmly nonetheless says, just... rest... tomorrow... tomorrow it will all hurt less). I don't know why some days are better than others, some days, that open door to the world's sorrows is less open, or is partially obstructed by the bellowing laughter that we have stuffed, like feathers in a cotton-clothed pillow, into the threshold, pushing back gently, solidity made from the stuff of nothing, to keep the pain at bay. Some days, though, like today... the news makes me weep. Makes me despair. Makes me want to die.

I won't, of course. I mean, I will, of course, but not today, not of this pain, which is so unfathomably remote, and yet it permeates the seemingly sealed spaces that I have caulked myself into. I come home to a reconstructed bathroom. The walls are painted the color I had asked for. A panic-inducing emergency, that has become an opportunity for change, for peace, and for personalization... and all I can see is the slightly off-kilter angle at which the medicine cabinet was hung.  This is my problem, I think... I always see the cracks. They scream at me. I see the good things too, (that small meek voice offers, in my defense) but they are noted, and duly dismissed. The cracks... Oh, the cracks come out, and they glare at me. They taunt me. They remind me of why it is never good enough. I am never good enough. Why I don't deserve to be loved.  But you are loved, my wonderful loving friends will say, and I will concede this, briefly... but it isn't enough. The voracious hunger tells me isn't enough because I am 36 years old, and the only noise I hear, the deafening noise, the white noise that is like the ocean crashing around my head, is that I have failed. Ignore, for a moment, that I have raised an amazing child to almost adulthood, alone for the last 10 years, ignore the graduate degrees, the job-seeking success, the consumption of goods... (I am such a good consumer-citizen, except I'm not even... I am reminded several times recently, because men see my poor, sweet, functional, but ugly car and offer to buy her... they see my slovenly vehicle, and I see my failure to live up to some standard of... who knows fuck all what). I only see the ways in which I have failed.

Leaving Santa Barbara, I congratulate myself for my progress, my emotional successes, my standing up for my own self-worth in the face of those who would unwittingly wrest it from my clenching fingers. I have finally grown up, I think, for a brief, shining moment, floating in the Pacific ocean... but then, the waves of loss come rolling in. And then, the pain of the others bursts through the door, and I can't fight the tears, of loss, as if it were mine. Loss of life, loss of limb, loss of love... and what I feel isn't so much emptiness, but an endless pit of despair. The laughter cannot fill this hole with feather-cement, I cannot push the anxiety away. So, I only manage to cook soup, and pierogies, remembering how my once-upon-a-time partner, used to like this meal, and how that didn't stop the belittling, the anger, the rage. It is strange to think that one could be nostalgic for that, but sometimes, one still is. Not for those things, of course, but for the sense of belonging to someone, to something, somewhere. I don't know if I know how to belong anymore or if I ever did, but I do know that my edges are worn thin, and my emotional reserves, that sometimes appear endless, are running low.

And I think. Maybe this is it, maybe this is the reason that adults grow more conservative and less idealistic. Sheer exhaustion. Pragmatism. Such an ugly idea, and yet... so practical.

Tonight I am tired, and instead of being held, or holding someone, I will be enveloped by the blank page, a page that once offered so much relief, and still, from time to time, resurfaces as a reflecting pool that can assuage one's ego, allay one's pain. My pain. My ego. The nasty, vicious voice reminds me that I have no right to compare my insignificant discomfort with the real, tortured, suffering of millions, and yet... their pain is real to me, it wakes me in the form of a crying child that isn't there. It bores into my bones, it reaches into my chest and teases me with choking, wavering on the edge of life and death, knowing that death will not come so easily, knowing that I will soldier on, shouldering the boulder, climbing back up the hill to be pushed back down again tomorrow.

Must we push back against impunity? I wonder. Aloud and inside my head. What difference does it make? But it does make a difference, the tiny, shuddering, whispering voice urges from her corner, shackled to the walls of a prison of my own making. I suppose it does. Push back we shall. Even when our elected officials fail us, even when our compatriots vote for bigotry, even when our governments use their power to kill other people's children. To destroy them, beat them, maim them, burn their bodies in prisons, ditches, ravines, deserts, with drones, bullets, bombs, poisoning their food and water supply. It hurts. Too much. There are no words, but the words become the balm, they stand in for the love that I need to smooth over those cracks, to fill them in, to make their harsh, angry, ugly, gaping maws shut. Once and for all. Until the next time.