Would it surprise you to know that I am happy? It surprises me. And yet, I know somewhere that this happiness is a contract with a catch. I must make no comparison with the life that I was trying to build. Because the truth is, that I want it still. My bones ache when I think of what almost was. Tears live on the precipice with only my current happiness to tamp them down out of view. I forget more often now. I am distracted for longer periods of time. I don’t know if I should blame pragmatism or weariness for this but what is certain is that I am doing my best to move on. But I am also doing my best not to lie.

So I do not ask myself difficult questions with dark answers that take me back in time before I was so far down this path, so committed to the failure of the only dream I have ever given myself to. And that helps, a lot. But that doesn’t stop the stranger. I bump into my dream and my failure in the most unlikely places.  I can’t blame them. I go to the doctor, they ask about the career change. The tears rise up, but the doctor does not know about the flood or that he stands kicking at the flood gate.

I meet the friend of a friend who wants to know what my hobbies are and I falter wading through the hobbies that used to define me to find the ones that don’t hurt. I go to a church function and they pass around a hat filled with questions. The hat asks me “what is your favorite book?” But every book I have ever loved has brought me to my knees in front of my dream. Book after book flashes before my eyes and I try to find the least noxious answer or a suitable lie even though I hate lying to simplify myself. I give in and describe the writings of a pilot who pioneered so much of civilian aviation. Everyone is awed or inspired by the sense of adventure.

I am undone inside. All of the pain comes back. I ache and ache until I go to sleep. I do not dream. When I wake, my soul is sore. I can’t focus on my work. There’s no one to talk to about this though. Tears leak out whenever I think about the sky.

Resiliency keeps coming up in conversations across many sectors of my life. It's begun to feel like a conversation that I'm having with God rather than any one person. I'm just enough of a mystic to stop and look up when that feeling creeps in. See, this season of life was supposed to be something else. I wanted to focus on community, but it has been cold and lonely. I feel as though I'm moving backward in the lessons that I wanted to learn. I feel less capable than ever and like something inside of me is damaged.

At the same time, I have had several days during which I have had to stop and note to myself, "I am surprisingly happy." I've whispered it so as not to blow the dandelion head of this secret into oblivion. I often feel something like guilt sidle up to my happiness. We all know that it is possible to be happy even when everything is not perfect, but when are things "good enough", "balanced enough", or "successful enough" to give ourselves permission to be content? For myself, the question has always been "how do I know that I am doing enough so that I can trust that it will work out?"

I don't really know the answer to that; but something I have begun to observe in myself even in difficulty is that I know how to be both happy and not happy at the same time. I just noticed it this week. Hiding in the corners of my unhappy self is happiness. I didn't will it to be there. I didn't meditate on all that there is still to be thankful for even though things have gone down "Unexpected Blvd".

I am truly surprised to find that I am both happy and unhappy. I am dissatisfied but not empty. This is not what I hoped for. I am hurt and disappointed. But I am nothing if not flexible. These years have taught whatever muscle or reflex is in charge of hope to be nimble.  It feels a little like coming out of the darkness. I wonder if this paradox of being both happy and not is what resiliency is made of.

Yesterday, I gave the best explanation for why I got fired from the flight school to a friend. I explained the complexity without getting lost in the details. I was able to take responsibility for the weaknesses that I brought to that proverbial table without excusing the abuses of power that combined in such a volatile way with circumstances so far beyond my control.

In no way do I ever want to be back in that time and space. It's better left where it is as it is. But I'm still not over it. This March will make 4 years since I was fired and I have adapted and adjusted, rebuilt and remade so many aspects of my life. I'm proud of my resiliency.

I never thought that I could take lessons from the Phoenix and choose to live again still surrounded by the ashes and rubble of what I thought was a good plan. Even though this phase of life hardly feels like a glorious rebirth, I can sense myself becoming someone stronger than I was as I keep pushing forward. It feels like I am woman with one foot in two different worlds. Each day, I lose a little ground in one world and live more fully in the other. At first, this process grieved me. I didn't want to lose the dream, but I didn't want to get hurt anymore.

The strangest part of all of this is that the more I leave aviation and the life that I was building there, the more clearly what I want comes into to focus. What I want is what that job should have been. I love the potential that a flight school has as a work place with a culture of learning and adventure. But that dream burned and I remade myself into another animal entirely...right?

What I want is flying. Oh God, how I want to fly. I want a team like the one I have now but I want aviation. The question I return to in the inconvenient moments when talking about the past resurrects it for a little while is "why can't I have both?" And there I am, astride these opposing galaxies trying to figure out what is good, what is possible, and if those things have anything to do with flying.

I don't change for you.

Every time I ignore a fashion trend and reach for the same clothes that have been comfortable through the last dozen fashions, I am saying in my own way “I don’t change for you”.

 

Every morning that I wake up with my only beauty routine being that of showering and maybe checking my eyebrows, I say “this is how I like myself”.

 

My unpainted nails, my boring shoes, my hurriedly brushed hair, are all saying the same thing: "I will not pretend to care about things that I don’t enjoy."  

 

You cannot trick me into investing in trends that will change just as I master them. I will invest in myself in more lasting ways. I will change when I need and want to, not when someone else decides.

Death is everywhere today. It’s the anniversary of a good friend's brother's early death. It’s the Wednesday before the memorial for my husband’s paternal grandmother. The Wednesday after the memorial for his maternal grandmother. We are in the middle, the thick of it, as they say. All this year, people have been leaving, dying, just a couple of degrees away from me. But it’s never actually me losing them. So I don’t know how to grieve.

There’s nothing lost, but something is missing from all of my favorite people. The ghost of grief hovers in my peripheral whispering things that I can’t actually hear. And I don’t mean to make this about me. I only mean to say I’m sad with all of you, but I also feel like I don’t have the right. So I’m sorry if I say the wrong thing or say nothing at all.

This evening is unbearably beautiful. All full of cicadas and the very best weather that Kansas could ever offer after too many days of hot humidity. And I am a wreck. Or maybe I am the storm with wreckage floating about in me.

I am hopeful and angry and afraid.

And the sun is silently sinking behind the trees where it will play at peeking until it finds the firm horizon. I want to let that beauty pool on my skin and soak deep into my wounded heart, but I am not ready. I am not done hurting yet.

I am impatient and frustrated and a little hungry.

The squirrels keep sneaking around the porch and making me jump. Evil, playful creatures. The birds sing out their warning but I am deaf to their language. For all I know they are laughing at me.

I am distracted and lazy and scattered.

This is my fourth day in this temporary house in a brand new state. I leave tomorrow but it now feels like home. I think I could live here forever if my husband wasn't so far away. I wonder if everyone adapts so quickly.

I don't know what I am. Tired? Still angry.

I am firmly planted in a rocking chair on the porch. Hope flits around inside of me, from my chest to my limbs and back again. It surveys the damage and tries to do what it can; but I won't let it help yet. I try to ready it for the long, cautious watch. I find the pickax, the blanket, the work boots; and I wonder over whatever it is that keeps hope alive.

What is it that keeps hope alive?

Family Games

12 years. I pause here every time just to stack the days up like poker chips that I’ve been hoarding. Lead poker chips, always heavier and colder than I expect. 12 years. Moving in and out. Alcohol. Drugs. Anger. Always so much anger. Leave. Come back. Don’t talk about it. There isn’t anything to do so there isn’t anything to say. Don’t talk about it. Love him. Like he won’t love you. Like he don’t love anyone. Forgive him. Like sunrise. Everyday. Except some days the sun shines brighter. And some days your forgiveness is more convincing than others.

It’s August 15th. Twelve years comes to full close. Now we can talk about it. He’s gone. He’s in rehab. He chose this day. Maybe he thought that he’d make God proud. Anger erupts from every corner of the family. Like it hasn’t been there the whole time. Like it hasn’t hurt the whole time. But this is the first day we say it, out loud, to each other. Can’t take it back now. Can’t say that you don’t know how bad it hurt all of us to wait.

12 years. Nearly half my life spent praying he wouldn’t be crazy, wouldn’t be evil, wouldn’t be selfish, wouldn’t be home. Or that he would be home. 12 years of not knowing what I wanted because we could never say that what we had was stealing our favorite parts of ourselves. 12 years living inside a poker face trying to bluff our family into happiness or at least safety.

And now we have 12 months. In 12 months he’ll be home and we’ll have to figure out what it means to start over. Do we start new? Start at the beginning? Start over? But mostly, will I need these poker chips?