Fare Thee Well!

In case I needed one more little kick in the rear to feel great about leaving this house, I caught another brown recluse spider a couple of days ago, traipsing up my bedroom wall in the middle of the morning, happy as you please I suppose, if spiders have emotions... perhaps the spider is the perfect Buddha, no attachments, no suffering, enlightened. Live while living, then die, the end. Hm. Wait, isn't "perfect Buddha" redundant?

So I'm a little sad to leave this blog behind, lost in cyberspace as it will be, but it seems to be the thing to do. We will be moving in a few months (probably less than three, maybe just two months from now) and well, it just won't be hill haven anymore. And to be honest, it hardly ever was. I might have suspected when the hawks left the hill a few years ago that the time to leave was coming sooner than I had planned. I've faced some major challenges thus far in this house. I've dealt with financial train wrecks, the perils of pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing, starting and losing a business, losing and finding myself. Through it all I've had anxiety and panic as my constant companions, keeping me hypervigilant about anything and everything, always worried about potential crises large and small, figments of my imagination over which I would have no control if they did come to pass. (So far, none did.) I've even dealt with a major infestation of brown recluse spiders. Distractions. Drama to avoid facing the banality of living day in and day out, wiping noses and bottoms, being married long enough to start losing track, getting older, accomplishing so little in terms of measurables. I am a driven woman, and mothering is something I take (far too) seriously, and although I love my children beyond all measure it is not enough, so I thrash about and flail and struggle and sink and thrash and flail and sink and find my feet and finally walk into the shallows and sit down, where I can at least breathe and see around me, even if I cannot yet get out of the water entirely.

Not that I wish any of this were different. Let me be perfectly clear that I do not. Even when it is painful and difficult; especially then. I don't need to pretend I don't have pain, that I don't struggle. I do. That's life, and it would be abnormal otherwise. Suffering exists, and even if I could manufacture some seemingly perfect existence to insulate myself from the reality of impermanence, eventually suffering will come to visit. Modern medicine has pathologized everything normal so that we as a culture seem to think we're never supposed to feel bad. Are you kidding me?? Here, take your soma?! Was no one paying attention to Brave New World?? Helloooo!!

So the final word from Hill Haven is, it's not always okay, and I'm okay with that. It will change, so if it's bad now, maybe that's good :)

Here's my new blog, on WordPress:
http://lefthandedinarighthandworld.wordpress.com/
Come on ovah! :)