A little over 48 hours ago, I went to a gathering at Golden Gate Park called Off the Grid. It's a once a week gathering of select food trucks and outdoor seating. Prices are slightly high, and the chairs aren't the most comfortable, but you pay for the lively setting as much as the food. It's like a concrete picnic. Almost everyone is part of a group, or at least a couple. Kids, dogs, families, friends...it's all there. The new priest at my parish has successfully been able to encourage members of our congregation to attend this gathering once a month, and it was this small group that I was meeting up with.
While I was walking there I had a premonition, though I was unaware of it at the time. I had a sort of daydream/vision that while at the gathering, someone attempted to take my purse off of me. I tried to fight them off, but instead I ended up getting shot. I didn't die, but I bled profusely. It was at this point in the vision when I brushed it off. "Dramatic much?" I thought to myself. I was convinced my brain was overreacting. It's been known to happen, though there is usually an external cue that triggers it. This time there wasn't one. Or at least, none that I could physically see.
A few minutes later, I found my group, grabbed my food, along with my chair, and got ready to dive into food truck gluttony. I was seated next to a woman that I barely knew (I hardly ever saw her at church), and she started talking to me about all of the wonderful things that she was finding out about the City: cafes, musical and comedy performances, etc. I sat and chewed more than listened. And then the bullet found me.
"Oh," she said, "And I just met this wonderful young opera singer, Margaret Holstead*. She just graduated from the Conservatory and was having a yard sale. She had all of these wonderful records, I just couldn't believe it!" (*Name has been changed to protect the privacy of those unknowingly involved...and to prevent any self incrimination.)
The first name immediately caught my attention. Though common, the fact that her name was paired up with opera and the Conservatory struck a familiar chord (as it were). But the last name didn't match. I knew of a Margaret Gardner* who had studied opera at the Conservatory. To explain how I knew, I have to go back two years. Because that's when I met him.
Mark Finnigan*. We only dated for two weeks, but during those two weeks was when I came the closest to getting what I wanted, as far as romantic relationships are concerned. I felt as if I had met my childhood best friend at the age of 26. I won't go into details, but it all ended because he felt that he wasn't ready to get involved with anyone. I was left broken hearted, but resolved to continue in my search for someone who was ready to connect with me. Surely, if I had found him, it wouldn't be hard to find someone else. But I couldn't get him out of my mind, and, try as I might, I couldn't come close to connecting with anyone as well as I did with him. There really was something different about him that I had never had before or since. We tried to be friends, but on my end, it was all on the unspoken pretense that he still wasn't ready for anything romantic. I guess I held it in my mind that maybe when he was ready, we could pick up where we left off. I soon learned to never tell yourself something about the future when it involves someone else.
He didn't lie, but he wasn't exactly honest, either. He had rejoined the dating website we had met on, and I only later found out that he had done so before we had reconnected. He withheld this from me, and it wasn't until I revisited my message inbox on the site did I notice his profile was back up. Two weeks of silence after this discovery, I decided it was best to end things. No one can really be friends with someone they want to be with--but who doesn't want to be with them--no matter how much they might wish it otherwise. I had tried on at least three previous occasions, and all I ever got from it wasn't worth having, much less keeping.
So the pain and broken heart were revisited much sooner than I had hoped, but I again resolved to move forward. More difficult to do are the things that are only said. I never quite got over my loss, for reasons I won't go into here. Suffice to say, the pain did subside significantly, though it took longer than originally anticipated, but the memory and longing remained clear. The desire to connect with him in some way--usually indirectly--would crop up unexpectedly, so I used the only tool that I knew of where I could seemingly satiate my desire anonymously. (Sometimes I think whoever invented Google must have made a deal with the Devil that included all of our souls.) And it was while I was on one of my ill advised searches for connection that I found out about his relationship with Margaret. A picture was enough of a confirmation--I didn't need to see the words.
But this time, at the gathering of the food trucks, the words would paint the picture for me and I was forced to look.
"I'm sorry," I said to my new acquaintance, "but do you mean Margaret Gardner?"
"Oh yes! That's right. I got the names mixed up for some reason. Yes, that's her. She's a lovely girl." I began to inquire more information, just to be sure it was the same person. It was, and what's more, my food truck companion offered more information than I had asked.
"She lives very near here, actually. Just over the hill. She and her boyfriend."
"Oh." Bang. Zip! Please excuse me. I'm so sorry about the mess, really. It's just that I don't have any control over my circulatory system. It just kinda keeps on pumping, even if there's a leak. I'm sure it'll stop soon, though...you really do have to wait these things out.
The woman with the undesired connection to the one I still desired kept up her pace down her winding path of monologue, but I had since fallen behind. I made the half-hearted sounds of someone who was trying to show that they were listening, but who really didn't have the energy to be that convincing. I could feel the bullet still lodged somewhere between my heart and my belly and I started to think that it might help if I walked around a bit. I managed to use the cold air as an excuse to get my blood flowing again, and I headed off in a direction that would hopefully help me escape what had already found me.
I'll spare you the internal drama, and the events immediately proceeding my foray into friendly fire. I'm sure if you've gotten this far, and have had similar experiences, you are quite capable of imagining for yourself what happens when old wounds are reopened. All that's left to talk about is now--the present--and the gifts that came when I decided to stay there.
Twenty four hours or so after, the bleeding had subsided, but the pain remained. I had talked, corresponded, and slept for dreamless spurts, and it was time to start moving again. But instead of moving away from it, I decided to move with and through it. What better way to start the process than a trip to the gym?
I walked there, as I usually do, as a warm up before getting on the treadmill (saves time and the fresh air usually does me good). Admittedly, I was still lost in thoughts about future encounters that would probably never happen, when a piercing cry stopped me in my tracks. Above the noise of the busy traffic, it sounded almost like a bird call but without the confidence. Eyes scanning the fence by the dog park, I managed to pick out a tiny ball of grey fluff. There was no sign of the mother cat or any siblings. This little guy was all alone and very frightened when I approached him. After a minute's contemplation, I decided that he was either ferral and/or his mother was sure to come back for him at some point, and to continue on to my destination; but after I was finished, I planned to come back and check on him and decide from there what to do.
****
Circuit training has become the custom routine for me lately (as opposed to just rotating on the machines), and today it was ball walls and bar lunges with a lap in between sets. (By the way, I love saying ball walls.) Ball walls (ha!) consists of squatting while holding a medicine ball, and then tossing it up high at the wall. On its way down, you get back into the squat position only to catch it and release it again. Bar lunges involve holding a weighted bar above your head while you lunge across the floor, trying to get your back knee as close to the ground as you can before going back up. It wasn't until my second set of these that my shoulders started to ache halfway across the floor. As I walked the lap after my set, a little voice in my head said, "Hurts to hold all that pain up there, huh?" Softly, I nodded.
"But what else am I supposed to do?" I asked.
"Let it hold you," it replied. I didn't like the sound of that. To me, that was threatening. It incited the idea that I would lose myself, lose my way and never return. But I knew the Voice was right. I finished my lap and came back to the medicine ball.
"Now," the Voice continued, "I want you to think of that ball as your pain. Toss it up and let it come back to you, and be ready to receive it when it does." My spiritual gut groaned and a lump developed in my throat, but I did what I was told. What I realized as I did it was that there is this rhythm that we can have with pain and disappointment: there's a time to grieve, and a time for letting go and setting the pain free, only to know that we are not entirely done with it yet (and it is not done with us). The trick is to be ready to receive it when it comes falling back in the gravity of human drama. We have to hold it, and let it hold us, before moving away from it again. It's the cosmic see-saw and tug of war.
As for the next round of lunges, my shoulders ached, but I tried to connect to the pain rather than power through it. I allowed it to be there and even invited it deeper into my body. I may not have been in perfect form, but the clouds in my mind were clearing and I was starting to feel normal again. I was so relieved from my workout that I almost forgot about my little friend in the weeds by the dog park.
****
The closer I got to the fence where I last saw him, I strained to hear his little cries. None came, and I thought that maybe his mother (or even an owner) had indeed found him. I soon saw his still little body right where I left him. His eyes were closed, but he was still breathing. I called to him and he slowly opened his eyes. Putting a couple of fingers through the fence, I attempted to get him to come to me, but he didn't budge. His sharp mews were escaping from his little body, but they seemed to say, "Leave me alone!" I decided it was probably for the best and turned to go. But his mews continued and hit my heart like tiny sharp arrows. I couldn't leave him.
Twenty minutes of being curled up in my sweatshirt later, I had the little guy in my room, set up in a large microwave box lined with towels. I had no food to give him, and initially his mews persisted. He managed to calm down while I put in a call to Animal Care and Control. The dispatcher told me there was no guarantee that they could be out anytime soon, and that was a problem for me since I needed to leave within two hours and no one else was going to be home from what I knew. I decided to chance it and follow through with my original plans and hope for the best.
They came by when I was still out, and little Oliver (as I decided to name him) was still in his box, snoozing, when I got home--a can of wet food in hand. Thankfully, he lapped up his serving, and I pondered what to do next. I called Control back, but they said they couldn't get anyone out there until the following day. I was going to be out all day, and I had no idea if anyone else would be home while I was gone. Fortunately, before I had left earlier, a friend had seen my post on Facebook about my new find and had inquired if I needed help in taking care of him. I called my friend back and we made arrangements for him to swing by and pick up Oliver within the next couple of hours.
It was during that space of time that I began to reflect on all that had happened in the last 48 hours. In a correspondence with my priest, she encouraged me to discern what I was meant to learn from the painful experience I had encountered. "Something new is about to be born," she said, referring to my upcoming move across the country to go into a Masters program. "So it may be that this is the final letting go? Or something else." In my reply, I said I really didn't know for sure what the lesson or message was. It could very well have been a wake up call to finally let go and move on, or it could have been a way for me to know that he and I are still connected somehow (however painful that connection might feel).
As I sat on my bed with Oliver crawling around me (and sometimes sitting still long enough for me to show him some physical affection), I started to think that maybe it wasn't a coincidence that I found him when I did. Here was this new life, so fragile and in need of care and protection. His present was a fractured series of events, and his future was uncertain. This was the representation of my life ahead of me, and it came in the form of an absolutely adorable mewing grey ball of fur. It was then that I realized that while my connection with Mark certainly mattered in the past--and might still matter in some small way now--my focus needed to be on the life that lay out before me: exciting, unknown, and absolutely terrifying. I need to embrace that future and all the feelings that come with it as much as I embraced the tiny kitten in my sweatshirt on a walk home on a windy day, never forgetting that the first step before the embrace is the openness for connection, the bending at the knees to catch the ball as it falls, and trusting the pain just enough to hold me before I'm ready to let go.
P.S. Here's that little representation that I mentioned.
