staying and leaving

and what the salt marsh taught me

somehow over the last 3 years i’ve Returned Home. Home in a different way— from first returning here in early july ‘21. then returning back from that life-changing trip to england at the very end of september ‘21. and then, again, from that life-changing trip to colorado, in early november ‘21 .. somehow, this place that i first named ‘the temple of a thousand doors’— after the place in the neverending story you can only leave once you have clarity on A True Wish— this place whose second, perhaps semi-secret name, wanted to be ‘tender shepherd’— it has Become a witch’s hut. complete with hanging herbs and containers of earth, and of course all of the usual stones and bones and feathers and shells. i have Become a tender shepherd, Here. here in this place where i was So Clearly Led— back to the origin in the middle apartment in my family home; even when i palpably felt the danger and resistance in doing so. i had temporarily stayed here while still having my own studio apartment at the end of 2020 and throughout some time in the beginning of 2021; crashing in my little yellow tent i had popped up in the kitchen. but i remember how startlingly different it felt when i didn’t have My Own home to return back to— when all of my things were Back Here. the Finality of that. ‘there’s no place else to go’ …

[…]

a little over a week ago i helped shepherd my beloved ex-fiancé out of NYC and back towards home in texas. we closed the door, the final time, together— on the apartment we once shared together, which became my home again for several months last year, and on and off my safe haven over the past decade. // i took my ring off back in summer 2015 but his departure Hurts in layers and inner landscapes, Profound. in trying to ‘support his evolution’ and help push the sisyphusian boulder of his ‘seemingly stuck’ life-trajectory up the proverbial hill for so long, especially over most recent years— i of course didn’t account for how much it would actually ache once it finally happened. and it is fucking Aching.

*

‘And tell me if I go too far
Would I become the lonesome lone star?
Tell me if I go too far
Would I ever find my way back?

I wonder if I stay
Would I ever see home again?
I wonder if I stay
Now, would that be my journey’s end?
I wonder if I stay
Would I ever feel love again?
I wonder if I stay
Now, would that be my journey’s end?

No matter where I lay my head
You know where my heart remains
No matter where I lay my head
You know, you know, you know ..’

*

my right lower back is hurting; a combo of over-doing it in yoga and bike-riding and all this emotional lifting, i’m sure. i walked into a store to buy soap this morning and this song started playing i’d never heard before: ‘stay’ by abraham alexander. once i got back home to my phone i read the lyrics and played it over and over, cried and cried. it was the exact thing. i cut down the tomato plants i had been growing in cups since the summertime/early fall; i went outside to finally retrieve my manchester UK hoodie that had been left in our backyard since a sweet pigeon spent some of its final hours in it, right before i got sick. my sister told me there may be spiders in it— and there was a sac spider nestled into the darkness of the hood. both of us watched as its ghost-white form literally leapt from the sac and into the world below. whenever i see spiders, now, i think of ‘the moon palace’— the last story i told, at 5:30am for aussie-based mythopoetic community, the fifth direction [consider this recording of it a little ‘easter egg’ in this post; especially considering i don’t have any of my tellings publicly posted anywhere at this current time ..].

‘stay.’ this word that has echoed throughout my life. i remember one time in a flaring of deep hurt and suicidality, threatening bridge-jumping to my partner-at-the-time i decided to go to a little stone church in the neighborhood instead. upon entering i walked straight into a person who was a friend of my last ex i had never met in person, but knew of from instagram. i knew that they had tatted on their knuckles the word ‘STAY’— and a charged association to that word that was similar to my own. i lifted their hand up, pointed to the letters on their fingers— fell into their arms as they held me and i cried.

‘stay’ has meant Stay On Earth; for a person who has struggled with suicidality.

And. ‘stay’ has also been ‘a thing i haven’t been able to do’ in my formal romantic relationships. And. ‘stay’ is the thing i have been Asked to do; here in my childhood home, here in my city i once tried and tried to escape. i didn’t only hear my ex-fiancé’s departure from NYC in that song; i heard my own journey. of Love, of different places and landscapes that pull your heart; of falling in love with someone in the UK, of my brother moving to california; of staying and leaving. of all the Layers of staying— and the over-time Learning of what it is that staying can Actually mean.

i didn’t keep my ring on. and i didn’t stay, formally, in our relationship. but/and i have never stopped loving this person— is this not some kind of Staying? .. in the years since ‘breaking up’ he has been my lover, my friend, my protector/supporter, my everything-in-between. i have fallen in love with him again, at different times, over time. And i have been in other relationships. fallen in love with other people. thought i was beginning other chances for family, for other New Lives.

i’ve felt such shame over the years regarding the fluidity of my relationships to my exes— the Returning and Returning, particularly to a select few. i had no idea how Possible that prospect is/was— how something that Has ‘gone cold’ (or, more accurately— that i kept away from myself, for years) can be completely and fully Reignited again— until i reengaged full-on relationship with my college boyfriend, now almost a year ago, after his sister’s death. all the threads, and all the fires— of grief and unfinished/ungrieved-things and deep, covered-over woundings; of falling in love with someone when you were 18 years old, at the threshold of Great Tragedy and Great Adventure. it all mixed, it all wove, it all caught flame— And There We Were. it has changed my perception, Again, on all of this— that something that began 20 years ago, in a particular circumstance, could become yet again flooded with life-blood.

[…]

i’ve felt such shame over the years about my relationship patterns. i am so proud, at this point, of All The Work i have done— in various kinds of therapy, and story, and co-dependents anonymous, and conversations, and readings, and much much independent research— on this; to Understand where i came from, why things are the way they are, why i am the way i am. And. there are All The Things that can’t be neatly filed or explained away. Being Called In to help someone you loved through A Massive Moment in their life in an incredibly intimate way. Still Loving Someone although your relationship ended a decade or more ago. complexity perhaps aside even ‘polyamory’ or being able to hold in my heart multiple loves at any one given time. something about The Long Story; something about Everything We Can’t Yet See.

[…]

i think again about Staying. about all the reasons i Had To Go. about even being able to do that, that that was A Thing That Was Even Possible to do— raised by two fiercely loving and fiercely wounded parents who met in their early teens and are literally unable to disentangle themselves from each other, despite the chaos and dysfunction that continues to ensue.

i didn’t know what it was like to Leave; without stuffing down every single fucking emotion i felt, about it. without lying about it and through it. without beginning Again immediately with another lover or a previous one. without running, and running, and running. compulsively eating, and Doing, and making and creating.

i’ve written this before— It All Finds You, sometime. someday. i truly Believe, that it does.

we don’t recognize it, of course— shrouded in the names and the veils of the overculture. it’s depression and anxiety. it’s DSM terminology of diagnosis ..

it’s not unfelt feelings. ungrieved grief. parts and pieces of us forgotten and abandoned along the way— who have beauty and wisdom to add to our current lives. who need help being called back Home, in order to be safe-enough to do that.

[…]

i think about This Moment and what it is asking of me. to not file this away under ‘but your relationship ended 9 years ago,’ ‘but you took the ring off,’ ‘but you left,’ ‘but you’ve had so many other lives since then’ … ‘get over it.’

No.

i went and sat with the salt marsh in brooklyn bridge park.

and on my ride i cried everytime i wanted to cry. including in the bathroom of another waterfront park where it almost seemed like i wanted to double over and sob, but didn’t.

after doing the presentation for sharon blackie’s substack on the urban mythic i serendipitously allowed myself to be immediately whisked to a city-place in lower brooklyn i had never been to and didn’t know anything about— marine park, for a birding event my sister and family wanted to go to. obviously i’ve seen salt marshes before, and waterfront landscapes before (this along-the-water threshold is where i was raised/am from)— but this one had The quality; the one i talk about in the urban mythic, the one that Asks You To Notice; that calls your spirit to Pay Attention. // i verified the kind of landscape and realized that it Was sunswick creek, the underground stream in my home neighborhood, asking me to See her with my actual eyes, this time. how things Used To Be, Used To Look. when my neighborhood had salt meadows and tidal wetlands. when she ran overground and not underneath.

i’ve been on a dive with salt marshes, intertidal wetlands, ever since. their relationship to the city landscape; What They Do. Who They Are. the science of them. And, i’m seeing— our shared ecology.

i took that wandering bike ride (ie: a ride with no actual destination) towards brooklyn, passing and weaving through so many, many of the places my ex-fiancé and i shared. i allowed myself to remember and Be Shown everything— including two different couples taking wedding photos […] and in this weaving i found myself, at some point, suddenly right in front of the pier 1 salt marsh in brooklyn bridge park i had come across online.

i sat with them. i felt them. i gathered up their shed/broken-off parts. i took photos. i put my feet in the water and stood between and amongst them, standing and kneeling. i saw the big industrial boats and the one that looked like a pirate ship. i talked to them. and i cried as i Watched What They Do; so seemingly effortlessly. how Rooted and how Soft, at the same time.

i watched the waves from NY harbor— statue of liberty in the distance— the meeting of the east and hudson rivers— coming in. i watched in real-time how they crashed and splashed up on the rocks piled along the shore. And i watched in real-time what happened when they met the cordgrass of the salt marsh.

the gentle undulation of the water and the grass. the near-soundlessness of it. the transformation of energy. the absorption of the motion. i sat as close as i could on the rocks in front of and with the grasses and wasn’t splashed by any of the waves. there was transference. there was quiet duty. there was Protection.

[…]

i am a person who has been taught to, and does, always brace for impact. an ex told me once i had the posture of a prize-fighter— always ready for a punch and also ready to give one. there is so much i am afraid of, have been taught to be afraid of— every single second, sometimes.

but to literally sit, in my body— with these cordgrasses, with the water. with their ecosystem. and to know that i was being Sheltered. that the waves could come in— and they weren’t going to crash on me. they weren’t going to hit, pummel, assail, or assault me. i didn’t have to scramble up the rocks— i didn’t have to put my hands up and clench my body into a ball. the force of the waves were transformed. into this beautiful undulation. this soft movement. this utter strength exemplified by something so seemingly ‘ordinary’ or ‘not strong.’ grass. water.

i Need this, right now.

as the waves are coming. as the storms are coming.

all the emotion, and all the endings and beginnings.

Come Home Again, they tell me. to Your home. sit right here, Where You Are.

watch. feel. See.

<3

a brief post-script after stepping away from this (staying and leaving, lol) ///

what i wanted to write— that i somehow missed, yet is definitely implicit, for me, betwixt all these words … is how that Long Story has shown me, in ways i couldn’t see in the moment, Why ‘leaving’ that person at that particular juncture Was the thing to do. there is a softening that happens— a recognition that i would not have been able to continue growing and blooming the Grounding of my Own life— meeting the people and having the experiences and learning the things i was meant to, for my Own evolution, and literally my own staying-alive on earth— if i had ‘stayed’ in any of the relationships i have ended/left/brought to completion. there is a further softening in each reconnection with the people from my past-turning-present, a recognition of the tenderness-still-there— a softening in Why i ‘kept going back.’ something, again, so much more complex and nuanced (and honoring to my life experience, which sometimes is not my strong-suit when seeing through purely analytical lens) than just ‘i was afraid to be alone,’ or ‘addicted to love and sex,’ or ‘acting out inherited relational trauma,’ etc etc. there was real Love, real comfort, real safety, real Shelter, in all of those places, and with those people .. Especially at the times i needed it Most.

what is Here for me now— is the other side of it all, or rather, the shades of the gradient i haven’t yet lived into, being often or always ‘the one who left.’ i am experiencing in real-time what it is like to ‘be left’ — ‘left behind’ — ‘abandoned’ — in the varying degrees of intensity of feeling/wounding — by my brother moving to california and not wanting at all to come back home. by my ex-fiancé now moving to texas to return to his family and aging parents. to be the one Still Here, even despite trying to move— as friends successfully moved on and out of NYC during the pandemic. as so many things Are Not The Same. i am the one, now Here— noticing it. i am the one here having to wade through the silt and the sediment of all the conflicting feelings— knowing that a capacity for Both/And has also grown in me, after these 10 years— a both/and that can hold the bitterness and the sorrow And the want for the person you love’s continuance and evolution— a want for them to Go In The Direction Of Their Dreams, or just— taking the Next Right Step. i have to remember how much i have been able to learn, that was absolutely Essential— that only came through moving onwards, through leaving— through Going Towards What Was True. that it is Not an abandoning, or a shutting-out— though it feels like that, to parts of me. i have to be in the muck of that—

thankfully, though, right now— maybe it can seem like a {takes a big breath} ecologically rich marsh or a life-teeming wetland, instead.

<3 </3