on the dangers of spinning

Before I sat down to write my first blog post, I worried. I write for a living. I know how writing shapes, positions, labels, crystallizes. How the words applied can become the thing itself - the box we shove our experience into and quickly tape shut. "That's just the grief talking."

I know how writing can be a sell job. How a nice turn of phrase can make a liability sound like an asset. How a slick bit of verbal misdirection will distract from the oozing goo in the corner, the stack of unpaid bills, the rats in the kitchen. "Look over here! We're doing great!"

There was a post at glow that pondered the shape of grief. I didn't want my grief to have any shape. I wanted no limits on it, imposed by others or myself. How unlike me. Making meaning, labeling, organizing, getting my brain around it... this is who I am, what I do. It's my gift, my trap. But how do I make meaning of this? Why would I hem in an ocean of love and sorrow?

So I didn't want to write. I worried that by plying my trade upon my own heart, I would shrink wrap each month of grief, toss it over my shoulder, miss something important. And I know me. Blogging gave me every opportunity of doing a sell job on myself, as well as everyone else.

And really, grief is a mess. I didn't want my blog to be a way of tidying up.

But you know, that's kind of what it is.

I can tell because I've been afraid to post lately. Especially since passing her due date. There's lots going on, inside and out, plenty to say. But I'm not saying it. Why? Because I can't figure out the spin. The attractive metaphor that provides a frame around the pain. Or that moment in the last paragraph where I express hope, or gratitude for what I've got, or try to express myself in a poignant manner. Right now I can't find the spin.

I've always been someone who has tried to stay positive, even in the worst shit. Who always believed things would come right. Who minded the feelings of others, was reasonably responsible, who kept faith in... whatever. But something has happened. Something that maybe would never have happened if Angel Mae hadn't come, and then gone: I've realized that this is exhausting. And that maybe for 37 years I've kind of been spinning... for others and for myself. That I've only been writing one side and labeling, positioning, selling that self as me.

I don't really know what this all means. I guess I'm just experimenting with letting myself feel bad. Really bad. Without spinning it to myself at all. Right now it's just bad. Even when I feel good--when I'm in the pool at the Y playing marco polo with Lilly; when I'm curled up with my man watching the Red Sox win one off the Yankees; when there's a cool breeze through our window on to clean dry sheets--I still feel awful inside. And I don't know when I'll feel better. I assume I will, but I don't know when, and until then I need to let myself edge right up to the abyss and peer down there and see what's going on.

I think it's for the best. Though I'm a little worried it will physically break me, crush my shoulders, poison my liver. I'm drinking lots of water.

And I was wrong to be afraid to shape my grief. Presumptuously really. That would be like dipping a melon-baller in the ocean, wouldn't it? Like the Hebrew God, there is no true name for grief, or love, really. A name is a limit, and God is limitless, attributeless, vast... Ascribing a name would insult and diminish. But then there's the counterpoint: Jewish tradition has 70 something names for God, names with a little "n," names that describe a corner, an edge of the vastness. Names that delight.

So, I'm not giving up on writing, or on this blog. But I'm going to try let it be a little messier. Maybe there will be some bad language. Or, god forbid, some bad grammar. A little messier, a little uglier, and maybe a little more delightful. That's a lesson Angel is teaching me, and one you know she would have taught me if she were here: to take delight in mess!