Raven Song...

This year will be different.

This year will be different…I chanted to myself every day for weeks. Was I preparing myself for success or misery? I wasn’t sure…but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t surprised.

For many years, Christmastime usually lent itself to tension and arguments practically under the tree. There was always a source of contention, something to be angry about. I tried to be the calm, the peace, the one who made sure the magic of the season didn’t get left behind.

This year, I was determined not to feel that familiar angst and pressure…the nervous system dysregulation. The stress. The tears. The hold it all together for everyone else. I was determined to find my peace, no matter what.

And I did… though it required explaining to others that I wasn’t going to walk the road of years past. The days leading up to the holiday were busy, but virtually stress-free. The only real challenge was the babies, struggling a bit with things being different.

Which led me to thinking about all the Christmases of my past.
They were all first Christmases.

The year I was born.
The year I took my first steps.
The year I wished for my front teeth.
The first year without my Grandpa.
The first year with my boyfriend.
The first year with a new boyfriend.
The first year I was married.
The first year with a new baby.
The first year divorced...

You get the point.

Every year is different. What hasn’t changed is that celebrating with my family has always been a constant. I made sure the babies knew that was the most important part…to take it all in.

Have you ever had a massage from a blind man?

A few days after Christmas, I did. Ninety minutes of full-body, get-all-the-knots-out magic.

It was the strangest thing. I assume his sense of touch is more attuned than most… he found every knot in my body that I didn’t even know existed. But I also had to read the massage oil bottle to him to be sure he had the right one. I had to be very specific when asking for anything: which part hurt, which part needed more attention.

Something I haven’t been very good at- with anyone- because somewhere along the way, my brain learned that asking for what I need causes problems.

But for the first time, asking for what I needed didn’t feel like a burden.
It felt like participation.

When was the very first time I asked for what I needed and was made to feel undeserving? I’ve been working hard to figure that out…scrolling the Rolodex of memories. Was it a single moment, or a collection of moments?

I’m cautious of the idea of playing victim. I own my life in this moment. So, I wonder: do I need more life experiences where I give myself exactly what I need? Or more experiences where I am forced to ask for it?

When I left the massage therapist, my music app was still on shuffle. As I pulled out of the parking lot, the song that came on was “Raven Song” by Elephant Revival. At that exact moment, a raven flew nearly into my windshield, then landed on the ground near the stop sign ahead of me.

We locked eyes for a minute.
He cocked his head.
Cawed.
Then flew away.

The irony made me laugh out loud—and then I cried the rest of the way home.

Was it magic?  It surely couldn’t just be a coincidence…

I keep asking the Universe to show me magic still exists... but I'm afraid it would have to slap me in the face or hit my windshield for me to believe it.

I don’t know how to explain this liminal space I find myself in as I’m nearing the end of the year… one of the hardest years of my life.  I’m in a place of being so thankful that chapter of my life is over.  But I’m also grateful for the years of being able to stay at home with my babies. For having a roof over my head and food in my belly, while the bare minimum… I am grateful. 

This last time we were together spanned fourteen years. Nine years in, when he asked me to marry him, I really needed that. I needed to feel wanted. Worth staying for. Worth building a life with.

He didn’t mean it, though. Those were even some of his parting words…that he only married me because it was the right thing to do.

At the time, my heart and soul needed that feeling more than anything. Which made his words a gut punch I was not equipped to bear.

I’ve been trying to remember what brought me to him in the first place. The only thing I can truly recall is the spark. I remember, with explicit detail, the day he knocked on the door of the radio station…the smile on his face, how the air felt electric, even what he was wearing. I remember our first “date,” the laughter we shared.

I had never felt that with anyone before…and haven’t since.

The grief I carry comes from knowing it was always one-sided. I feel like I’ve been playing the longest-running game of make-believe, abandoning myself over and over and over again for nothing. I try to gather all the good memories before they slip away, but doing that keeps me suspended in a painful limbo…. grateful but knowing I deserved so much more; knowing I got what I wanted and still ended up here.

The truth is, it was a comfortable place for me.

At first, I thought my love was no good.  That I was kidding myself, I was a sham.  BUT…. No matter how much I loved him, clapped for him, lifted him up…I was never going to be enough. My love was never going to fix him or save him. Being the fat kid who had to be extra just to keep a friend…that’s my comfort zone.  And that’s why I stayed.

My work now is to understand that my love is still worthy.
That my heart is not broken.
That I deserve healthy, reciprocal love that stays.

I want to remain that open-hearted girl who believes in the magic of this world. That some things happen for a reason, and some things are not coincidences at all. I want to believe that love between two people can heal more than it harms…and that sparks really do mean something.  I hope that it doesn’t stray for too long.

So, I keep chanting to myself…

It will be different.
It will be different…because I am different.