{thank{s}taking}

i had a hard time giving thanks tonight sitting in a bath grown cold despite the numerous refills of scalding water. i think i was hitting hour number 3.5 or 4 when my comfort read was done. my skin was cold when i moved against the water. but if i was immoble i didn't notice the lack in temperature and so i just sat. still. temporarily anesthetized but knowing that it's only while the words of someone else's story lingers. but they end. they always do. and i am left to think about how the universe seems to tell me to look closely and pay attention. but while i can see what it's saying i can't make out what it means.

in a one week span late this past summer i learned that three men of varying significance to me had "another woman" in their lives. a man from my past, a man from my present and a man i had hoped might stretch out a while into my future.

and now, the fall has cupped within it a similar story, through a different vein, and i am left to mourn the probable loss of not one, but two amazingly-incredible-resonating!!! friendships that toed the line of more, all the while pushed up against me with generous and full interest, only to flicker out again and dim abruptly, leaving the faint whiff of a dying fire and sincere words of kindness that only somehow make the burn go a little deeper.

so the bath gets colder, the books get their happy endings and even ophelia gets hamlet, despite the fact that the world kept them apart.

and i am left. here. not knowing what to make of the reoccurring themes and only wishing for myself that i could live in emotional abstinence for a while. not care, no matter how sweetly i am asked. not give, no matter how generous my heart feels. just sit a while and steep in solitude and knitting.

so tonight, universe, i give you thanks for the lovely house i have been able to create for myself, thanks for the lovely people who choose to stay in my life, year after year, despite {because of!} the vivid being i am, the fact that today, i gave some poor boy sitting on a cold, frozen cement sidewalk not just that first $1 bill but then a minute later, when driving past, a rolled down window and a line from a movie 'hey kid!' repeated until he turned, took the steps to my car, saw the measly $5 i then passed through the window and gave back at me the soft, surprised words of genuine gratitude and appreciation as though it were a $50. and i am blessed. blessed that i not only have the money to spare $6 but to buy the food i did today, as well as the growth in my spirit and bank account that i can spend $100 without using guilt somehow against myself. gratitude that in my heart, in the face of all my years of heartache and doubts, i know of a secret place i pretend not to believe in that truly knows in that deep internal trust sort of way that this whole wide world is capable of producing one fucking man capable of not being afraid of risking for me. for something. for anything. and eventually for a future. for the life we want to glean from this world and the kids we want to bring into this world. and that will be a scary place. and we will navigate it together. and it will be beautiful as only he and i can see now, apart, and one day we can envision together.