This “rant” needs to be something more than just keyboard-driven digital self-gratification, it needs meaning, like the best possible mutual gratification, so I am writing this as a letter to you. I will not talk about Today, the date, the anniversary. Everyody who reads my 'rant' knows how I feel and my fears and dreams of peace, so I will do everyone a favor and rest on it this day - this day that just happens to be my sweet baby brother's (USAF) birthday (HAPPY DAY TO YOU SHAWN! Stay safe). Instead I will talk about something much smaller, much closer to home. It’s something I'd like to try to say to the WORLD, but it’s easy to talk just to you, mo Hobbes.

I’ve been thinking of writing, knowing I owe you a full three courses, at least. I’ve thought of you throughout the days and phrased poetic posts about my bizarre life at ‘Con, (whoa.) I thought of you again yesterday evening, duskish, in my kitchen, making tea. I thought how you might laugh at my sloppy yet scientific measurements and preparations (I always spill tea leaves and drops of milk). But my cup has to be just so. I thought how much you’d enjoy my VERY hobbity little kitchen and leaning at the back door soaking the misty green mountain air (Gandalf and Bilbo, we) I thought how much you’d know I was trying to be just so for you, and self-conscious of my yank tea-making skills. I wanted you to be there, laughing at the fact that my Discworld calendar’s still on Wyrmberg…

The world has been a bit surreal for a couple of weeks now. Week-before-last I was sick with a cold, then as I was coming out of that I went to Atlanta and spent 6 days, sleeping in an air-conditioned hotel room at night* and watching lobby-bound Super-Geek Mardi Gras spin past me during the long and strangely lit days. I came home to flooded mountain valleys and a water-filled library to discover that I am very allergic to mold, wet carpet, wet paint, wet sheetrock, wet books, wet insulation, dust and people. I then spent a very odd evening in the emergency room of a very nice hospital** where sweet but strangely dressed interns talked to me about seeing Keebler elves, alternative medicine, and the virtues of smoking more interesting plants than tobacco***, having x-rays and snuffalupagus-meets-alien-effects breathing treatments. I’ve spent the pursuant days in a haze of chemical, physical and emotional dissociation. Luckily, I’m used to this. In order to be able to work I am having to take three different allergen combatants. One inhaled, one pill (which I will probably keep having to take indefinitely) and one sticky sweet syrup with a street value of approximately 5$ a teaspoon. Needless to say, my head is not my own. I loll here in a fog of memory and misery. Fortunately the memories are recent and good, or distant past and bittersweet; and the misery is not of the soul but of the congested chest and overmedicated head. This too shall pass.

There’s a river under the ice though, and the insulation of illness and medication allow me a snug little cove in which to huddle and trawl the depths. (you can conjure up your own metaphors about the lampreys and lantern fish of my soul, cleverbritches.: )
I’ve been confronted with a few significant chunks of my past lately. I walked away from it wholesale when I moved here, basically agreeing with myself to just not care. I assumed that this would be mutual, and in most cases, it was. I have very little contact with ANYone from my distant (10 years+) past, including most of my family. There’s Sandy, a miracle of friendship, whom I’ve known since I was 9. There are my siblings, and my contact with them is sketchy at times (and this is mutual and oddly normal/respectful). There are maybe a dozen more old friends – Mississippi, Austin, New Orleans, Tennessee and California people - who I keep in touch with, but few who I talk to often.
Lately though, the internet has been a catalyst for several reunions. None that were truly unwanted and some that were my heart’s desire. This weekend at con I also spent some time with someone special from my eons-distant past, and ran into other familiar faces that I’d forgotten completely. More than anything, more than the joy of seeing healthy happy faces from days gone by, more than receiving long desired attention from role models and crushes, more than a friendly note from someone that I was sure I would never speak to again (but never, never forgotten), was the bittersweet pain of realizing that I just don’t let things go, that I have a lot of growing up to do still.
My heart is heavy. I realized this morning that it’s basically just a crusty old piece of beef jerky anyway. How can I have been through so much and loved and lost so much and still have tenderness there? How can ANY vengeance and anger live next to so much love and desire and sentimentality? And how can I feel so much of all those things for the same people? I immediately think of my mother as a prime example, but then I realize that she IS prime. The prime source. The root of all ME. Can I make peace with all of my perceived traitors without making peace with her? Can I make peace with myself and peace with all of them will follow?
I’ve never failed to come away from a brush with the past without depression and painful introspection. And yet it lingers. I thought that confronting it made it better. “Processing”. Whatever.
I got a note from someone who broke my heart many many years ago. We last spoke angry words to one another, and I thought we’d never speak again. I am so torn in my feelings, if not in my decisions. I would not be myself if I could not welcome anyone who seemed truly ‘safe’ back into my life, no matter the past. There are some that, though I miss them, I feel certain that they would hurt me again in certain circumstances, and so I choose to say, for certain, “never.” Others are not so clear-cut. I am truly delighted to hear from them – real love never dies – but there are echoes in my heart, and I can’t turn them off. I feel that, socially, I should let it go and never mention the, in some cases, ugly past, my own ugly feelings of hurt and betrayal, feelings that should be dead.
There is no point, really in bringing them up, except that they are real, and that for me, they stand in the way of true discourse and the trust and love that friendships require for me now. I’ve learned to make friends who could not hurt me in these ways, or who I could be honest with if I saw this kind of pain coming and perhaps avoid it, or part amicably before the damage is done. These people from the past, though, they own significant real estate on the planes of my heart. These relationships were built there by the love that only fervent young passion**** can construct, and then burnt to ruins by fate and fickle humanity. And so these ruins have sat for so many years, in some cases, all of my life, taking on the weight and mystery and funkiness (ie: metaphorical rats, mildew, ivy, ghost stories, etc.) that such ruins do.*****
This is my doing. I should’ve called “Scary Old Ruins’ Exterminators”******, I could’ve called in the SHT (spiritual hazmat team), and cleaned out the musty corners with some form of metaphysical Lysol. But what do you DO with all that old stuff? Do you pollute clean waters (wail to your new friends in hopes of purging past hurts)? Do you pack it up and deliver it back to the source (wait for the so-called offending parties to open the gate and then dump it back on them) and let them deal with it? These don’t help. They just add insult to injury – except in the rare case that talking to a close girlfriend and pouring it all out seems to soothe a little and leave them none the worse for wear. Those kinds of girlfriends are like an Urban Community Renewal Project for the soul. They take old tires and make flowerpots and plant herbgardens in rusty bed frames. Bless their charitable natures.
I should’ve just let it go, and I suppose, ultimately, that I’ll have to. I know I’ll come across as snobby and pretentious, maybe even as small-minded or pinch-hearted, but the fact is that I’m GUARDED. Can it just be enough that I know I NEED to let it go? That I know I SHOULD’ve? That I’m trying? That I want to?
I hope so.
I feel bad about being so un-evolved. Really. Just as I’m haunted by every betrayal and heartbreak, I’m haunted by every mistake I know I’ve made, every shortcoming, every time I’ve embarrassed myself, or worse, someone else. I remember every horrible insult I’ve taken – especially the ones I’ve deserved… how much can one person not let go in one lifetime – and why?
You’re right, I’m not really an orc. I just long to be. To not care, to enjoy the misery or even discomfort that I cause. To be tough and callous and not wuss out at any fight, run or climb. I long to be unhaunted. To be the scary thing under the stairs myself. But that just ain’t how it is. I want to be loved, I want to be forgiven. I want to love and forgive, and see all old wounds healed. All of them.
Maybe the reason I can’t the past go is because it’s my armor. It’s my history lessons, and I haven’t learned yet. It hasn’t repeated itself, because I simply cut the cycle short now. Even if the situation were the same, if I were betrayed, abandoned, injured, made to look and feel foolish, at least I am different, and I can walk away from it this time and be left with nothing worse than memories and nothing better than a sense that I’ve grown tougher.
The fact that there is hope under all of this really is my saving grace. There’s not enough hope to make me stupid, but just enough to let me try again. First time, shame on you, second time, shame on me. And I can handle shaming myself FAR more easily than being shamed by someone I thought I could love and trust. I am gentler with my loved and trusted self than the world is – more often than not…

Woo, this ice is getting cold, and for now, the fish aren’t biting. Wish me luck. And no polar bears.
-Sam

p.s. oh, and just as a "warm"up...

*well, early morning anyway.
**obviously NOT st. flukes.
***he was congratulating me on having given up cigarettes 17 months ago.
****SAM-passion, no less…
*****ooh, my heart is Gormenghast. You are Titus, "mo ghrá thú". : )
******didn’t you used to work for them?