Picking Up Pieces

I was supposed to relax and take today off but that’s so hard to do lately. All I see is jobs that need doing and this irritable anxiety propels me to pick things up and try to feel like I’m in motion.

A psychic told me I should meditate. Guy’s been telling me that for years too. Instead I tried to write to tell you all about my incredible date last week, and all the highs and lows. My phone glitched and the app crashed and I lost it all after 45 minutes of bleeding my heart out. I should know better than to write in the app, this happens too often and there are better plans, Guy’s been telling me that for years too, funny enough.

I’m agitated and I have only myself to blame. I could be sitting still, the universe is telling me to. Even now typing this I got distracted by the idea of writing a ‘zine about the coven, a page per babe and a love letter to each of them. So many ideas but never the time to just sit with them, let them grow, let my hands get dirty.

This new pace since the separation is busy. Only two hands and so many jobs. Add to that chunks of time when I can’t be home keeping the usual wheels of productivity turning, laundry and garden and working at mail-outs little by little when my hands are free for a moment. The days feel longer. But they also feel more peaceful, so this isn’t a complaint, just an adjustment period I suppose.

The week he left I noticed everything in the house all of a sudden, all the things I had been ignoring during our crisis because I simply didn’t have the time. I didn’t see them. But all at once the pile of old photos my grandmother gave to me in April, the disgusting state of our refrigerator, the pictures on the wall that hadn’t been updated in a decade, the birthday bunting from a kiddo’s celebration that just never came down... they all jumped out at my eyes, crystal clear. It all had to change. It all needed my attention.

I checked myself in that moment, my mind flashed to montages of recently divorced women in movies wearing overalls and a jaunty bandana with a smudge of plaster on their face, taking a sledgehammer to their walls, joyfully. I know this is not the time to start big projects. So I start small, with the bedside table and my jewellery box. Little bits at a time.

I should start there with my stillness too. Little bits at a time. I’m supposed to be bad at meditation, I’m only human, we have busy brains. This is why meditation is supposed to be a practice. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.

All this to say I’m gonna try. For a few minutes. And I hope you find some stillness today too.