Yeah, you me and all that stuff we’re so scared of
Gotta ride down baby into this tunnel of love”
Like having a cough. Maybe that’s not a feeling, and is more an experience. It’s a virus. And it’s a combination of powerless and confused emotional feelings, and uncomfortable and itchy, barfy, painful physical feelings. I don’t know what makes a cough go away, for the season, for a year, for years, for good, but I know I haven’t had one in maybe six years. So then I started to think I won’t ever have a cough anymore when I’m sick. I still think that! Eventually I will get a cough again, because families change and germs do too, and I get knocked down with new viruses after each kid. What makes me think that won’t happen with Rider, and baby #4? I can dream.
When I get a cough again, I will think, or say aloud, “I thought I was in a place in life in which I would never feel this way again. I was wrong.” And it will pass, but I will worry it won’t at that time. Feelings are just like that, whether they are physical feelings, emotional feelings, or weird experiences and periods of time and viruses that hit you in every which way. I feel powerless and confused. Scared. Uncomfortable. In pain. And the worry that it will never go away. Sometimes it does in days, and sometimes it takes longer to go away. At times, you go long enough without these feelings wrapped into other feelings wrapped into events, experiences, viruses, and more, that you get used to the absence. Then, it becomes a little, or a lot, horrifying to realize you’re not beyond the things you thought you were beyond. And maybe you won’t be. Maybe that’s ok.
Maybe over time you’ve built up more immunity and more medications and more notches in your survival toolbelt. I don’t have a cough, and I’m not the same person I was six years ago, one year ago, and heck, even one week ago. The information changes, and so do we. We take from it and choose to learn from it, and sometimes we push that learning clear off for years or decades. I believe we know, though, what we need to do to prevent future coughs, or at least soften the painful, itchy, uncomfortable blow that the cough, or really anything, can deal you. I don’t have a cough, but I’ve been having dreams this week of emotional feelings I thought I had left behind, just because they took their time to come back. I learned some darn good things, and built up some darn good immunities, but the tide changes, and the viruses mutate. You have to let go.
I’m laughing at you, you’re laughing at me
There’s a room of shadows that gets so dark brother
It’s easy for two people to lose each other in this tunnel of love”
There are spiraling love and life and light lines, and they don’t go in linear order. And they never have. They never could. I love the way they intertwine and how my personal journeys become his; become theirs, and also go off on their own weird and winding ways. No doubt there have been a lot of missteps and mistakes, and so many real and metaphorical coughs along the way.
The demons resurfaces, like viruses do, and they’re different now, because you’re different now. Pregnancy dreams are so vivid that I find myself in the throes of the oddest corners of my brain, bringing up bad feelings I have about myself and even us. The last time I had an argument with Cassidy, last month, we were better at resolving it than we were in the past. And we’ll be even better in the future, but I said to him, with stark honesty: “I guess I thought I would never feel this badly with us again, but here we are, exceeding my expectations.” And it wasn’t even a bad argument, or at least an insurmountable one, but I just didn’t think I’d feel that crappy again. It made me think we were in the same place we were in years ago, or I was. And of course, we’re not who we were six years ago, one year ago, or one month ago. Now, we have new immunities and preventatives; medications and new notches on our survival toolbelts. This, I now believe.
The world needs more tenderness right now. Sure, it always has/does, but there’s a particular, “What’s with today, today?” going on right now. “What’s with right now, right now?” Well for many of us, especially in the Northeast, we’re in the raw and bitter heart of winter. Our hands and noses bleed with the dryness, the driveway is a skating rink which will just NOT DO in my pregnant state, and the hair is staticky; the sinuses clogged. We’re still facing the problems we have always faced, and may always face, and it’s hard to tell if they’re getting better, or worse. Are humans getting better, or worse? I think it’s probably both. These intertwining but separate love and light and life lines, doing their things. Getting strong, getting weaker, dragging the others up, or even down. The virus rages on WORSE THAN EVER BEFORE, but it isn’t, is it? New immunities and medications; preventatives and notches in our survival toolbelts. This, I believe.
Yeah, man meets woman and they fall in love
But this house is haunted and the ride gets rough
You’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above
If you want to ride on down, down in through this tunnel of love”
