quiet

i want to maintain this blog but then weeks go by without an update. i simply can't write happy when things aren't happy, i'm not that skilled. this is perhaps why i could never be a columnist or an actual writer paid to write on demand. this is not news. i've put some effort into happy updates and not complaining but all this life stuff keeps happening.

i keep living my life like someday there won't be big, huge, uncomfortable things happening but there always are and it seems i'm constantly grasping for truth and solid ground. i'm sure there's something to law of attraction and yet so much of it still eludes me and i don't discredit the concept that i'm inviting each of these experiences into my life but they just keep piling up and i don't know how to stop and i'd like some respite now, please.

i want to write about how my husband isn't really on board with unschooling and i feel like i'm failing my children and my seven year old wants to go to school sometimes so much that he excitedly asks me if i'd send him on the bus, too. i don't want to send him at all.

i want to write about how my hips and pelvis are hurting again, how pain and numbness shoot from my leg socket down to my right big toe, which twitches every now and then in the most concerning way. how the ringing and deafness in my ears is also uncool and when do i decide to go to the doctor and do i start with a chiropractor and who will watch my kids and how will i pay for it, anyway?

i want to write about how my best friend doesn't want to participate in life anymore, so much, that there's nothing anyone can do. if help is acknowledged at all, it is refused. all glimmers of hope are simply glimmers - they don't offer long-lasting solutions and it's not up to anyone but her to find and utilize solutions anyway. i want to talk about how mental health and depression are often treated in unhelpful ways, especially when you're poor and without health insurance. i want to talk about how rates of suicide attempts increase after treatment even if some studies suggest that two-year follow-ups show some promise. i want to talk about how helpless i feel, standing by and basically waiting for someone to take her own life because her only options are being hospitalized again or homeless again, neither of which she wants and understandably so.

i want to write about how sad i've been and still seem to be and how much puppies suck and how being an instrument of peace isn't just difficult but seems impossible when raising little boys who don't seem to care much what women have to say.

i need to get over this internalized criticism that i can never be happy or all i do is complain. it's simply not true. i'm awesome and i recognize and point out the bright side a lot but i can't do it all the time. i know what it's like to be unable or unwilling to find it, though, so i'm amazed at the miracle it is that i can even do it some of the time.

i long for quiet and i also avoid quiet. just one of the funny conundrums that remind me not to take this life so seriously. quiet is hard to find in a house with multiple small children. quiet is stolen in moments, all too fleeting, not quite satisfactory enough. quiet is where stillness resides but right now i'm in the season of raising children no matter how i want to cultivate stillness. it is a time of rapid growth and seasons inevitably change.

i try not to think about how things might be if the house were actually quiet.

when my children are grown, when my husband is gone. these things keep me up at night and make the art of staying in the moment a moment to moment victory.

this isn't going where i thought it was. my very loud kids are ready to exit the tub so i leave you with a progress pic of one of my newer pieces and some modest mouse lyrics just because.

as life gets longer, awful feels softer

and it feels pretty soft to me

the view :: modest mouse

you may also be interested in the backstory or my first art video, both which can be found here.