I did not like last year much. Sorrow sat all too closely on my shoulder for most of the summer as I had to bring to an end the lives of two of my dogs and sandwiched in among those hurts was the death of my friend and one time lover Berta Freistadt. And it was a cruel death, a final inequitable assault on her body, which was so ravaged by disease that her ability to laugh on that final day just shook the complacency, my assumption of good health, right out of me. My visit to London to see her one last time was filled with a sort of sad ooze which clung to every experience no matter how enjoyable.
A month earlier I had said goodbye to Oscar, a dog who had become over the previous 4 years a muse of sorts, a daily reminder of the nobility of short red dogs, and a creature whose very existence had re-inspired me to take my camera with me on even the shortest trips. And by the end of the morning of the last day of August I had buried my broken beloved border collie Frankie, and I felt a swoop of sadness and it has not left me.
Calvin, my aging grey and white corgi/Aussie mix started showing signs of dementia last week, clip clopping through the house back and forth, can't get comfortable on one of the many dog beds strewn around, and then I found him, snout pressed up into a corner, standing staring at a wall. He cries in discomfort when I lift him, he snaps at the other dogs if they land too close to his painful back legs with their surgery scars running north to south.
Tears, always an incredibly easy release of emotion for me, have been dripping down my cheeks at the most inopportune times - I cried in the middle of a meeting with the architects, Commissioners and city staff as we discussed the new animal shelter and I started crying recently during a meeting with board members and I realise - not for the first time - that I exist, have always existed with a sort of reservoir of sadness as a backdrop to the landscape, no matter the state of my conscious brain. I envy those who can keep their emotions in check. It's hard, let me tell you, to be seen as a somewhat combative butch, and have these wet cheeks as if I were right back in the headmistresses study being asked if I were masturbating in class.
But I wouldn't want to do it a different way. Maybe it's that I couldn't do it a different way. It's not the dogs or their loss that makes this murky sadness, it's not the loss of Berta that causes the tears to be such familiar friends to me. It comes from a profound sense that I still have not proven myself in the world, it won't matter what I accomplish, what books I produce, what iconic photographs of mine make people smile in comforting recognition, how many animals I save, how much I follow my father's exhortation to do 'justice' in the world, how many times the vulnerable can depend on me. It just doesn't seem to matter. There just is no comfort when the skin you inhabit is a jagged edge to the soul within.
I used to pick a fight to relieve the tension. 3 years in therapy have done wonders to unclench my emotional fists, but has left me with fewer options for self defense. I actually like crying, I think it's kinda beautiful. Just wish the on-off switch hadn't been busted.
"But I wouldn't want to do it a different way. Maybe it's that I couldn't do it a different way. It's not the dogs or their loss that makes this murky sadness, it's not the loss of Berta that causes the tears to be such familiar friends to me. It comes from a profound sense that I still have not proven myself in the world, it won't matter what I accomplish, what books I produce, what iconic photographs of mine make people smile in comforting recognition, how many animals I save, how much I follow my father's exhortation to do 'justice' in the world, how many times the vulnerable can depend on me. It just doesn't seem to matter. There just is no comfort when the skin you inhabit is a jagged edge to the soul within."
we seem to have the same accounting book. different reasons maybe but same emotion jill(ie).
nina
Posted by: nina | January 10, 2010 at 12:11 AM
oh man jill. those tears of yours. you know already they were the first of you i fell for. then the sadness. then your jagged edges. then and then and then...
susie
Posted by: susie | January 10, 2010 at 09:12 AM
I'm sorry for your losses, Jill. I think you've already accomplished much, that it has mattered and you have mattered.
Posted by: Deb in Minnesota | January 10, 2010 at 11:04 AM