I'm learning to fly  and I ain't got wings.....  -Tom PettyI haven't been brooding (and I don't mean that in the "brood-mare" or "brood of whatever" kind of reference), I'm not melancholy, morbidly obsessed, hiding in my mental "closet", running from the things I don't want to know, or the things I do know but don't like. I'm not over or underwhelmed, "well" or "unwell" (cause what the hell does that really mean anyway?), angry, frustrated or infuriated. I don't know how to explain my absence, as I'm not entirely sure I understand it completely myself...Strange as it may sound, I don't think I've really had anything to say..........Or maybe it's that my running dialogue (the one that allows me to be the "narrator" of my own life) has changed over the last few weeks and I haven't figured out how to turn the understanding I seem to be coming to into words that would make the experience accessible to someone else........Or maybe it's just that learning something new.............. like how to be me in this time and place......takes the energy and focus that I have, up until recently, been devoting to DS.When I was inside the dark place that had claimed my life and spark for so long, my dad once made the observation that the yard and "gardens" around the house were serving as a mirror for how broken I was on the inside. It was as if the outside of the house going all to shit was a relief valve that allowed me to think that I was "OK" on the inside. I have NEVER liked yard work so it is actually rather ironic that I would find us a house surrounded by an ENORMOUS lawn and flower beds filled with (among other things) 40 COUNT'EM 40 rosebushes! On the other hand, the "yard" has been the catalyst for a whole series of lessons about myself and my life so an argument could easily be made that this is EXACTLY the house I was supposed to find and we were supposed to buy.................this is an entry "in progress" so I'll be back later.................................................................................................................OK it's later!Over the last several weeks, it's beginning to look like I've been reinventing myself. I've been spending long hours in the garden digging out weeds and the patches of grass that have jumped the garden rails to take up residence in the rosebeds. Grass is, oddly enough, more insidious, more obstinate and in the end, more pervasive and obnoxious than theworst of all weeds. Grass lays roots like they're eggs and those roots grow fast and deep although they are tiny and slender like the roadways of an enormous map you'd need glasses and magnifying glass to read. Grass is more weed-like than the worst of all weeds..........So digging out my beds is becoming a real-life metaphor for the work I seem to be doing on myself. You see, I'm out there alone. I wear shorts with big, deep pockets and into one of them goes my little Sony Walkman tape player and the other pocket carries an extra tape along with one to two pair of clippers for the rosebushes and/or the evergreen shrubbery I've been learning to shape and prune (actually, reverse that....... prune and shape would be more accurate). Over the years, I've made a great number of "greatest hits" tapes taken/compiled from songs I love off of a variety of my albums and CDs. I use only 90 min. tapes so they're 45 min. a side and flipping them along with counting the number of sides played helps me keep track of the time I spend working out there. It's very cathartic as it turns out. My progress is measurable, the results have been rather astonishing and it's beginning to look like I'm in the process of creating a "world" that I can build to my own specifications which will take me away from everything and everyone else and that will feed and nourish me even as I am trying to do the same for it. The garden is becoming my teacher and although some of the lessons are both painful and frustrating, it's starting to look like they are every bit as valuable as those I try to teach in the classroom.The most blatant of those lessons is that I can only do what I can do and what I CAN'T do is the work of anyone else........... or the work FOR anyone else. Yes, that was a segue.........Bear and I are struggling. I don't mean that in the negative "we're having trouble" sense. That we're having trouble is rather a given after almost 15yrs of marriage. What I mean is that we're struggling to work through the "trouble". I am reasonably certain that he really is doing the best he can to help "us" and to show some consideration to me....... But as is often the case, I'm the one who is mostcognizant of what is happening between us at any given point in time; so it still falls to me to be the one to back down or slow down and watch my footing as we try to stay on this path which often seems to be far too narrow, steep and covered in pea-gravel............We do what we are able and capable of doing even when it means that we have to take on the lion's share of responsibility as others around us don't see what we do, understand and know what we do, or evenrecognize the need for something to be done. Am I tired? Yes. Digging out the entrenched roots of my own obstinance is an exhausting process. All the more so because although my progress is visible, you'd have to actually be LOOKING to see it and I think that, at a certain point, we stop "looking" at each other in relationships that are long-lived and have been hard-pressed. But you know, people are only capable of what they are capable of just like kids in a classroom and they often balk at having to push outside their comfort zone to do something beyond what they want to or believe themselves ready for. I make excuses for myself by saying that it's HIS turn to take on our relationship as a job (because relationships ARE a job and they do take sweat, blood, tears and effort even when you think you have none left to give) but the truth is that many people, my husband included, don't see what I do or the way I do. One of the reasons that gardening, like teaching, is so difficult is that you can't see what's going on beneath the surface. Have I gotten all the roots out?Did that student REALLY do the best they were capable of...... or just the best they were capable of given that they're smart, talented and only started working on it last night instead of last week? Yes, I am getting better at recognizing (really good in point of fact) what the roots I'm pulling belong to. It wouldn't do to pull out the tender roots of the rosebushes that I actually want to keep. But there are signs, recognizable signs, that clearly indicate which belongs to whom/what and as I go along it's getting easier and easier to identify what I see and to make that "in-process" decision which allows me to keep going at the pace I've set without having to stop and ponder over every little thing.I'm responsible because I am the one who sees. I'm the one learning to be in the moment and learning to think before I speak and intuit what may be going unknown or unsaid.... I'm the one who remembers that consciousness is as much a work in progress as it is a state of being...... (damn, that was really profound wasn't it?! *smile*) ......... and having that understanding obligates and requires me to act on it even if I'm the only one who does. Last night, we got into an argument. As usual, it wasn't about what either of us thought it was and as usual, I was the one to try and make some kind of truce regarding it. Because I'm the one who realizes that his job trumps EVERYTHING. All that we plan, all that we do, whatever we say or leave unsaid; his job trumps it all. It trumps his ability to reason and flattens out any chance he has of dealing with us as an outside entity. We are surely as bound to his profession as we are to each other and may no man or woman or wedding or WHATEVER break the chains with which he has bound us........(hmmmm...... that was a bit passive-aggressive wasn't it?) In any case, I can't be mad at him for something he just doesn't get anymore than I can get mad at the clumps of grass that have migrated into my flower-beds because I haven't done the work that was necessary to prevent it. I'm responsible because I can be. Because I recognize what I see and I know that if I don't accept responsibility we will both end up in the weeds and I'll be damned if I'm going to let anything or anyone stand in the way of my own growth and development.I'm trying to pull the weeds from my head and clear the debris out of my marriage. I'm doing it as much because I have to as because I want to and I can. I don't know what it's going to look like when I'm done. I don't know what it's going to look like from one minute to the next. All I know is that I'm doing it because I can. Because I'm ready. And because it's what I need to do.And yes Lynne, he thinks I'm lazy too.